- The Coronas - San Diego Song
- Horslips - Dearg Doom
- Imelda May - Mayhem
- Royseven - Dance
- Two Door Cinema Club - I Can Talk
- Jape - I Was A Man
- Fight Like Apes - Tie Me Up With Jackets
- Ash - Burn Baby Burn
Irish music. What on earth is it really? I mean, we have the diddly-eye that everyone else associates with us, then we have The Undertones, Thin Lizzy and Boomtown Rats, then Luke Kelly and the Dubliners, then Gavin Friday and Sinead O'Connor, then the Cranberries, then Westlife and Boyzone, then The Coronas and Royseven, then Republic of Loose, then Lisa Hannigan and Cathy Davey, then Imelda May, then Fight Like Apes, then Two Door Cinema Club, then James Vincent McMorrow, and then back to the Saw Doctors? And that's what we love (well, what I love anyway) about our music - it can be anything. Whether it's about emigration (IT'S ALWAYS ABOUT BLOODY EMIGRATION), war (IT'S ALWAYS ABOUT THE BLOODY TROUBLES), alcohol (IT'S ALWAYS ABOUT BLOODY DRINKING), you know, those 'Irish' things, or about anything else, it always manages to surprise.
And we can never forget the diddly-eye either. They have the best choruses (Whiskey In The Jar - "Musha ring droma do droma da/Whack fol the daddy-o/Whack fol the daddy-o/There's whiskey in the jar"), everyone knows them, and they're the perfect thing to depress or excite everyone at a gathering.
I take this from Stuff Irish People Love by Colin Murphy & Donal O'Dea -
17 - Shouting 'Yeeeeeooow' in the middle of a traditional Irish tune.
Put a handful of Irish musicians together, particularly in a pub, and as sure as eggs is eggs, as the fiddles and whistles and bodhrans begin to whip up a frenzy of a rhythm, one of the musicians or someone in the audience will be compelled by a rising fire in his or her breast to proclaim loudly 'Yeeeeeoooow!'
Some believe this to be the musical equivalent of an orgasm, others that it is an expression of joy that only Irish music has the ability to evoke. It is even possible, some think, that is is an expression of a deeply buried primordial scream which is given release by the thundering pace and rhythm of the music, such as sa caveman might yell having just downed a wild pig with a stone axe.
Whatever the reason, there are endless variations on the word itself, the most popular being 'Yeehaaayeboyye', 'Yeeeeeeeeeeeeehoo' or 'Yeeupdereyefineting'
There ye are so.
I've put some more contemporary Irish music in this mix, (with the exception of Horslips, but it's just a song that everyone knows), and I hope you like it. I should talk about Irish music here more often!
Happy Saint Patrick's Day!
Eleanor Roscuro
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