Category: Song Reviews/Great Songs

Hit the Road Jack! | Freegal Top Ten Songs to Escape With

by Conor McHale

January was never the easiest month to begin the year with grey skies and chilly temperatures. As if that were not enough the country is enduring yet another national lockdown and we are all told to stay at home and not to venture out beyond 5k of our homes. As we wait in the hopes of returning to normality perhaps a welcome distraction would be compiling playlist for our listening pleasure and what better theme could there be than listening to songs about hitting the road by whatever means necessary, venturing out to the far reaches and leaving all our woes behind. Here are just a few available on the Freegal app that can get you started:

Listen to the full playlist on Freegal

We got to get out of this Place: The Animals
This was a very popular song with soldiers during the Vietnam War. Although not written about that conflict it is a song that resonates to this day and can be applied to any situation. We’re all feeling restricted at present and this sentiment is very much at the back of our minds.

Leaving on a Jet Plane: John Denver
Close your eyes and picture yourself heading down to Cork airport and heading off to sunnier climes. The song was written appropriately by Denver while on layover at Washington airport.    Another Denver classic Take me Home Country Roads evokes West Virginia although he had never been and was inspired by a picture postcard. For Denver West Virginia seemed so far away and exotic it may as well have been in Europe.

Born to Run: Bruce Springsteen
An early anthemic classic from The Boss. Written when he was only 24 it has become a staple of his live shows ever since. It’s a song about roaring down open highways and never turning back.

Come Fly with Me: Frank Sinatra
Another song to tempt one away to warmer locales.  It is a song that heralded the “Jet Set” when travel by plane was seen as something enjoyed by only wealthy people who could afford to travel for pleasure. Michael Buble also does a version of this song.

Freedom ’90: George Michael
George Michael actually wrote this about his experience of trying to get out of his contract with Sony Music, but it became a huge hit.  It feels like a song about bursting out of our confines and going wherever we choose.

Get Away: George Ezra
Ezra wrote this about his anxiety at where to go next after finishing his first album. It’s a common feeling especially during these uncertain times when we all want to get away.

On the Road Again: Willie Nelson
Yet another airplane related song in a sense as this was hastily written on the side of a sick bag on a flight for a little remembered film called Honeysuckle Rose. However, the song itself subsequently became one of Nelson’s signature tunes.

Chattanooga Choo Choo: Glenn Miller
A different mode of transportation this time. Miller is best remembered for his Big Band swing tunes such as In the Mood and Moonlight Serenade, this tune was inspired by the steam locomotive that travelled from Cincinnati to Chattanooga.

Down the Highway: Bob Dylan
This time we are on foot. Dylan released his second album The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan in 1963 which contained well known tracks like Blowin’ in the Wind and Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall. This is lesser known song being a stark blues about” walkin’ down the highway with a suitcase in my hand.”

Hotel California (Live): The Eagles
After all this travelling it would be nice to stay in a luxury hotel. Except Hotel California is a state of mind! For the Eagles the song was their interpretation of the high life in Los Angeles. This is their most recognised song and this is a superb live version.

Online Musical Treats This January

Happy New Year to all our Rory Gallagher Music Library patrons. Unfortunately, we face another national lockdown meaning the libraries are closed for now. However, we have a couple of online musical treats for you to enjoy in the comfort of your own homes.

We hope you enjoy a special online version of the popular Music Recital formerly known as the Gramophone Circle. Philip Brennan introduces a variety of his favourite compositions sung by the likes of Richard Tauber, Sarah Brightman and Andrea Bocelli and Majella Cullagh with the Cork Youth Chamber Orchestra:

Watch local musicians Jimmy Morrison and Joe O’Sullivan (known as Ceol Coolroe) online as they play a selection of traditional songs and tunes:

Don’t forget you can access a range of online services such as the Freegal music app using your library card and four digit pin number: https://corkcitylibraries.freegalmusic.com/home

Hope to see everybody soon!

Conor MacHale

January 2021.

Top Ten Christmas Songs from Freegal

by Conor MacHale

Normally this time of year as the festive season approaches we would be wheeling out the trolley packed with all the Christmas music for our patrons to borrow. However, as the library remains closed for the time being there is an alternative to accessing a great variety of Christmas music by streaming and downloading all the festive hits on the Freegal app. You can also create playlists in the My Music section so you can stream your favourite Christmas tunes and shuffle them in any random order. Here are a few to get the party started:

Dean Martin: Let it Snow! Let it Snow! Let it Snow!
Written by Sammy Cahn who wrote it in California during a heat wave, naturally, this is a festive favourite covered by many singers from Frank Sinatra to Michael Buble. Dean Martin’s sublime laid back vocals make this version stand out.

Bing Crosby: White Christmas
This has been recorded by artists as disparate as Perry Como and Iggy Pop. One of the most popular and well known renderings is by Bing Crosby whose version is one of the highest selling singles of all time. It remains one of the most recognisable of all Christmas songs

Miley Cyrus & Mark Ronson feat Sean Ono Lennon: Happy Xmas ( War is Over)
2020 marks 40 years since the death of John Lennon so it is fitting his son Sean features on this version of his Christmas single.

London Fox Children’s Choir: Walking in the Air
A well known Christmas song from The Snowman, this is given a choral treatment by the London Fox Children’s Choir who also perform arrangements of many well known Christmas carols such as Deck the Halls and Away in a Manger .

Christmas Carols: O Holy Night
Plenty of carols can be streamed and downloaded. Written in 1847, this remains today one of the most popular of all carols.

Nat King Cole: The Christmas Song
Of the many yuletide songs recorded by Nat King Cole, this is a stand out song written by Mel Tormé and Robert Wells. Although there are many versions by Perry Como and Frank Sinatra, Cole’s rendition remains a most popular favourite.

Wham: Last Christmas
Beaten to the No. 1 spot in 1984 by Do They know it’s Christmas by Band Aid, this nevertheless remains a pop Christmas favourite. It’s available on multiple compilation albums as well as the recent Last Christmas film soundtrack. The music video can also be downloaded on Freegal.

The Ronettes: Sleigh Ride
Produced by Phil Spector at the heights of his “Wall of Sound” period in the mid 1960s. Check out the Now That’s What I Call Christmas completion for this and many other favourites.

Ella Fitzgerald: Winter Wonderland
A perfect jazz number for the Christmas, this version recorded by Ella Fitzgerald is the most known and a rightful addition to any Christmas song list.

Elvis Presley: Blue Christmas
This was recorded in 1957 at the height of Elvis’s Rock n’ Roll fame. He also recorded a version with the country singer Martina McBride for his ’68 comeback special.

A lot of these songs appear on various compilations thus leading you onto many other Christmas favourites. Note, whole albums can be saved onto your Christmas playlist instead of just picking random songs.

Listen to Playlist: https://corkcitylibraries.freegalmusic.com/browse/playlists/library-playlists/241795

Songs of Cultural Importance from the Cork Traveller Women’s Network

As part of Heritage Week 2020, the Rory Gallagher Music Library in collaboration with the Cork Traveller Women’s Network (CTWN) are pleased to present a top ten list of culturally important Traveller’s songs and what they mean to the community. It is of special interest that there is a strong Cork representation with several of these songs. Louise Harrington who is a community development worker with CTWN has done tremendous work with her colleagues in providing a list of songs.

We want to thank Louise and her colleagues for this fine list and for providing this interesting background information about the songs, discussing the selection process and what the songs mean to the Traveller community.

RGML Team

 

Louise explains the process of how the songs were shortlisted and significantly what these songs mean to the community:

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The songs were selected; firstly by reaching out to our members via social media and by phone, to create a long list of culturally significant songs for Travellers and then shortlisted to the final 10 by our steering group of Traveller women via Zoom call.

So the top 10 (in no particular order) is as follows.  Click on the title to listen to the song.

  1. Kathleen’s Song – Spring Lane Girls
  2. 4 Lackeens – 4 Lackeens
  3. A Tinkers Lullaby by Pecker Dunne sung by Selena O’Leary
  4. Last of the Travelling People –Pecker Dunne
  5. Rambling Man – Thomas McCarthy
  6. Galway Shawl – Finbarr Furey
  7. A Friend Of Mine – Myles Gaffney
  8. Campfire in the Dark – Finbarr Furey/ The Fureys
  9. What Will We Do When We’ll Have No Money – Mary Delaney
  10. Sweet 16 – Sharyn Ward

The first two songs listed (Kathleen’s song and 4 Lackeens) were recorded locally. They are both of very special significance to members of CTWN as symbols of pride and identity. “Kathleen’s Song” (which was nominated many times by CTWN members) was written by a young woman Kathleen McCarthy, as part of a community music initiative, it celebrates Traveller culture, nomadism and horse fairs. Kathleen sadly died young, and the song was later recorded by her cousins in the Spring Lane girls group, who also performed it live at cultural events in Cork city. 4 Lackeens was recorded by four young women from Spring Lane site last year as part of a youth work project by our colleagues in the Traveller Visibility Group – it is rap style and is the only song that we have chosen which is not traditional, but we felt that it really talks about identity and issues affecting these young women who still hold a strong sense of culture and heritage.

Our top 10 list also includes songs by famous and recorded Travellers such as Pecker Dunne who travelled the length and breadth of Ireland  busking with his wealth of ballads and banjo; Thomas McCarthy, Traveller storyteller and singer who was awarded Traditional Singer of the Year at the  2019 Gradam Ceoil Awards; the musical legend that is Finbarr Furey; “Blind” Mary Delaney who’s amazing voice and 1970s recording of “what will we do when we’ll have no money?” brought us all back to memories of campfire singing and Sharyn Ward who’s beautiful voice and charm won Irish hearts by making it to the finals of Ireland’s Got Talent 2019. We include Selena O’Leary’s version of Tinker’s Lullaby – a very popular song for Travellers, Selena, the first Irish Traveller to sing at Carnegie Hall, also appeared on RTE’s Traveller Journey programme last year.

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The song “A Friend of Mine” is the only song by a non – Traveller or “buffer” on the list – Myles Gaffney a Cork based singer songwriter and was included to show the links between communities that music can make.

The short-listing group found it hard to make the final selection as there are so many other songs and musicians and it was not possible to include everyone, we thought about other fantastic Traveller musicians Paddy Keenan, Trish Nolan, Mary Francis and Davey Keenan, Paddy Ward and others who we could have included.

In the end, the final criteria that we used was that a Cork Traveller might hear a song from the list playing and recognise it easily as being about them. We also aimed for a mix of modern and old style songs, a mix of male and female singers, and a mix of very famous and perhaps less well known songs.

We also talked about some very recognisable songs about and collected from Travellers, subsequently recorded by settled people e.g. some of Ewan McColl’s or Christy Moore’s songs, which we didn’t include as we wanted to focus as much as possible on Traveller musicians as well as songs. Interestingly for us, we realised in the process of looking at the 10 songs, that there isn’t any accessible resource to look back at the history and contribution of Travellers to Irish traditional music (not unlike other areas of Traveller history which are not properly recorded) – something for us to think about going into the future, although we would need someone with more skills than ourselves to look at this.
As a community development organisation, used to decision making by committee, we decided against an approach of individuals nominating certain songs, and instead would like our top 10 to be attributed to Cork Traveller Women’s Network.

Some background information on CTWN:

Cork Traveller Women’s Network is a community development organisation working for Traveller rights and run by Traveller women in Cork city. Our work includes supporting Traveller women as leaders, promoting Traveller health, advocating for Traveller accommodation rights, challenging discrimination and promoting Traveller ethnicity and culture. This includes curating Toraig on the Tobar, the Traveller culture exhibit at Cork Public Museum as well as supporting the inclusion of Traveller culture into the programming of the Triskel Arts Centre where we have our base. With our partners in Cork Traveller Visibility Group, CTWN run the annual Cork Traveller Pride festival. This is part of our work to challenge negative stereotypes of Travellers, and raise awareness of the rich culture and heritage of Travellers as an indigenous Irish ethnic group.  For more information, follow Cork Traveller Women’s Network on Facebook.

We are delighted to collaborate with the Rory Gallagher Music Library and look forward to seeing the end result online.

 

By Louise Harrington, Community Development Worker, Cork Traveller Women’s Network

‘Fairytale of New York’ – the best Christmas song ever?

In late November 1987 The Pogues, featuring Kirsty MacColl, released ‘Fairytale of New York’. It went straight in at number one in the Irish Charts and peaked at number two in the UK, only kept off the top spot by the Pet Shop Boys’ cover of ‘Always on my Mind’. ‘Fairytale of New York’ was composed by Pogues’ banjo player Jem Finer and Shane MacGowan, and featured on The Pogues’ album If I Should Fall from Grace with God. By November 2015 the song had sold 1.18 million copies in the UK alone and was certified platinum in 2013. Its popularity with listeners and critics shows no sign of abating and every December it re-enters the singles charts in the UK and Ireland and many other countries around the world. In Ireland, at least, Christmas hasn’t officially started until you hear ‘Fairytale’ on the radio and it’s often the closing song of the night in pubs and clubs across the country during the festive season.

Shane_macgowan_moscow
Shane MacGowan

What’s so good about it and why is its appeal so enduring?

‘Fairytale of New York’ is quite simply a masterpiece. Like all great Christmas songs, it’s not really a Christmas song at all. The events just happen to take place at that time of year. Apart from the last line of the chorus and a couple of other cursory references, most of the lyrical content would be considered anathema to everything that the common conception of Christmas brings to mind. Far removed from the Disneyesque setting of most other, more well known, seasonal staples — featuring smiling Santas, prancing deer, and ‘chestnuts roasting on an open fire’ — ‘Fairytale’ would be more at home in the world of the Abbey Theatre of a century ago and has more in common with Synge and his Playboy of the Western World than with Bing Crosby and his ‘White Christmas’.

Jem Finer
Jem Finer

Shane MacGowan’s ingenious tale of modern Gaelic tragedy contrasts beautifully with Jem Finer’s uplifting melody, and the verbal tug-of-war between the male and female characters, constantly teetering on the brink between tenderness and outright venom, is littered with sardonic wit that could have come straight from the pen of Brendan Behan or Patrick Galvin.

Thematically, MacGowan — who, coincidentally, was born on Christmas Day in 1957 — deals with matters very close to his own heart. This is a song about emigration, addiction, hope, broken dreams, and lost love. It’s an anthem for the downtrodden.

Kirsty MacColl
Kirsty MacColl

When the song was released in 1987, Ireland was experiencing its worst recession since the founding of the state and the country’s youth were leaving en masse in search of a better life elsewhere. The UK was deep in the throes of Margaret Thatcher’s anti-socialist regime and it’s no surprise that the song struck a chord with people in both countries and, by extension, with Irish emigrants around the globe. Here, at last, was an honest Christmas song that spoke to the dispossessed and the disenfranchised. The song is as popular today as it was when first released, which is hardly surprising, considering that in post-Celtic Tiger Ireland the youth are again leaving in their thousands. You can be sure that ‘Fairytale’ will be sung by many of them this Christmas wherever they are in the world. Also, it’s a damn good song with an infectious melody and a hypnotic 6/8 folk-waltz rhythm that would incite anything short of a corpse to tread the boards!

As the winter solstice approaches and the sky darkens, it’s not only those smug crooners in snow-sprinkled ivory towers that reflect on the year past and on what’s been lost or gained, but also the homeless, the exiled, and the addicts who look to the rising of the new sun with hope for a better year to come. ‘Fairytale of New York’ is a song for the latter group.