So if someone were to ask you "Who was the first successful Celtic Rock band", who would you answer?
You might ask that the quizmaster please "Define Celtic-Rock" and "Define Successful".
If the quizmaster says "They mine a deeply Celtic Tradition and combine it with Rock", and "Sell a couple million records", you might arrive at "The Pogues", Shane MacGowan and his merry band of rum-sodden Irish folk-punks who left a trail of vomit and great albums in the eighties and early nineties.
But you'd be wrong.
Or the answer could be "A thin veneer of Celtic tradition atop a booming rock base" and "Multiple Platinum!", and guess Big Country, who brought Celtic and Scottish sounds and rhythms to the Billboard Top Forty in 1983, after scoring a hit or two in the UK. They twisted their guitars to sound like bagpipes and fiddles, the sword-danced about the stage, their whacked you over the head with their Scottich Celticivity. Surely they're the right answer.
Nope.
Perhaps the answer would be "Ethnically Irish with the odd nod to the music of their culture" and "Mega-successful!", and arrive at U2. Not quite as overtly ethnic as Big Country, they still showed bits of their Gaelic roots on their first few albums ("An Cat Dubh" from Boy jumping immediately to mind).
Maybe even "Irish but not Irish-y" and "Sold a few record, but predated U2 and the Pogues", which would mean Boomtown Rats or Stiff Little Fingers or Thin Lizzy - who, while their music was not remotely "celtic", certainly wore "Irish" on their sleeves. Maybe?
Nope. And don't even bother guessing Jethro Tull, which hit the disqualifying trifecta of being Non-Irish, Druidic rather than Celtic, and of course sucking chunks through a straw.
Naturally, after eliminating the above, the savvy music fan would fall back on the only possible remaining answer: "Deeply immersed in the folk forms of the British Isles" and "sold a lot of records, and spawned a generation of British/Irish folk/rock", and voila, you'd come to Fairport Convention. The classic folk/rock group mined British, Celtic and a jumble of other folk traditions, sold a ton of records, and launched the careers of a scad of Brit/Celt folk rockers - Ashley Hutchings, Bob Brady, Bruce Rowland, Dave Mattacks, Dave Pegg, Dave Swarbrick, Gerry Conway, Ian Matthews, Sandy Denny, Simon Nicol, and of course the great Richard Thompson.
That's gotta be it.
Not at Keegan's Irish Pub's Thursday Night Trivia night.
No, apparently by answering the two questions above as "Irish, yep" and "Successful enough to have ranked as a footnote to the careers of all of the above", the "correct" answer at Keegan's is Horslips.
I'm a music geek nonpareil - so I've heard of Horslips. I even had some of their stuff on cassette in the mid-eighties. They never quite ranked as even an "obscure cult favorite" in the US; even Celtic music fanatics thought Horslips fans were a little off.
Oh, well. Next week's the charm.
Posted by Mitch at July 1, 2005 06:12 PM | TrackBack
Who ?
Posted by: Just Me at July 1, 2005 12:51 PMWhen I think Celtic music, I think The Chieftans.
And I think of Battlefield Band, but neither of them are exactly rock, are they? Although BB's rendition of Bad Moon Rising is one of my favorite live music memories ever (made even more surprising by the fact that it occurred during a live taping of A Prairie Home Companion...).
Posted by: Steve Gigl at July 1, 2005 01:06 PMBB, Chieftains, the Dubliners, The Clancy Brothers, Tommy Makem - I love 'em all, but none are "rock".
Posted by: mitch at July 1, 2005 01:09 PMYou've probably sussed this out, but when listening to a trivia night question, you have to be a bit like Dan Quayle. You don't want to give the right answer - you want to give the answer that the DJ has on his paper...even if it's "potatoe."
I know, it's crazymaking.
Posted by: Brian Jones at July 1, 2005 01:55 PM"BB, Chieftains, the Dubliners, The Clancy Brothers, Tommy Makem - I love 'em all, but none are 'rock'."
Maybe they're "rock" in the same way that Jethro Tull won the first "Best Metal/Hard Rock Performance" Grammy.
Posted by: Just Me at July 1, 2005 02:24 PMBrian,
That's the rub, of course. You're not just trying to get the answer, you're trying to get what Marty THINKS is the answer...
Just,
Heh!
Posted by: mitch at July 1, 2005 02:38 PMAsked this once before, but...has anyone attended the Irish Festival in St Paul before? This year we are going and would like to have any tips on what to expect...when to show up for the "headliners" (well, Danu is all we care A LOT about seeing), etc. Thanks for any help anyone can give.
Posted by: Colleen at July 1, 2005 07:28 PMIrish Rovers with"the Unicorn" got plenty of play on pop/rock stations in the sixties, heard tell of Irish Rover only stations in Canada, like a couple of Elvis only stations in the US.
Posted by: chiefeng at July 2, 2005 10:53 AMMitch -
This is why I keep reading you! Every now
and then you pull out something that really
hits home. As a 17 year old rocker in 1979
I was introduced to Horslips and became an
instant fan through their 1977 albums
Exiles and Aliens. Still break out those
cassettes ocassionally...
Any idea if their other work rocks as well?
I had listened to "Man In America" or some
title like that and didn't find it nearly
so edgy/raw/good.
Thanks again for all you do and write.
Posted by: Eric at July 2, 2005 07:16 PMWe guessed Clannad. I thought they were sort of folk rock though, but I really couldn't think of anyone else. Except for the Boomtown rats who weren't really celtic and U2 who were too recent. Horslips couldn't have been that sucessful if I had never heard of them.
Posted by: Margaret at July 2, 2005 08:53 PMOh hi! Hadn't heard of Horslips myself until a few years ago and became one of those 'off' fans you mention. The usual lunchtime Google search brought me here. I'm pretty damned amazed that Horslips was the answer to that trivia question, because -- as you note -- not much is ever heard of Horslips over here.
But the thing is that three of their lifelong fans mounted an exhibition in March 2004, a documentary rolled out of that and aired on RTE last spring, an acoustic album called Roll Back that was the result of the documentary released and went platinum in December, there's another exhibition in October, and it all rolls along. Here's the official site with all the latest news and sound files of the new album:
http://www.horslipsrecords.com
Maybe some of this news filtered over to Keegan's and spurred that trivia question.
This April in Omagh, a group of school kids got together as a Horslips tribute band and performed their entire Book of Invasions album (something the band never even did!) with a history narrative and Horslips' bassist Barry Devlin presiding over an intermission raffle. Heres their site:
http://www.horslips.tk
Johnny Fean, who did the definitive Celtic guitar riff in "Dearg Doom" -- later sampled in the Irish world cup song for Italia '90 "Put 'em under Pressure" by Larry Mullen (and Jack Charlton) -- is still performing with Steve Travers. I'm hoping to catch him Saturday July 23:
http://www.feanandtravers.com/
And obviously, I've got this unofficial tribute site thing going. Showcases various musicians and groups influenced by Horslips including Mama's Boys and The Radiators (Phil Chevron's band before the Pogues). But if you only want to listen to one song, you gotta check out the mid-70s era "Diable Fou" by Christian Reigneau, a French musician and friend of the band who played in various Kerry hotels at the time and did a total French version of the classic "Dearg Doom."
Hey! I hope I haven't overstayed a welcome, but did love your story about the trivia question. As for me, I'm now on the hunt for a VERY obscure psychedelic proto-goth band from Canterbury England called Fucshia. Named for a character in the Gormenghast trilogy and only one album to their name released in 1971. Gotta hear that!
Posted by: Lee Templeton at July 11, 2005 03:57 PMyou must remember you were in an irish pub and any music fan who grew up in ireland in the 70s or early 80s would have got the answer straight away. horslips might not have had as much commercial success outside of ireland but they were relatively successful in england, europe and in parts of america.'the man who built america' shifted 250,000 units in the good ol' U.S. of A.
Posted by: francie quinn at July 18, 2005 05:46 AM