Please, Let’s End Gaelic Warming!

Irish Voice Entertainment

Please, Let’s End Gaelic Warming!

January 14, 2008

By Mike Farragher

I ALWAYS look forward to the report that comes from the American Dialect Society each January. They are the ones who name the buzzword of the year.

This year’s word is “subprime,” which became a dreaded adjective in some households financed through questionable mortgages. I’d like to get a jump start on a new buzzword, or should I say words — Gaelic Warming.

It represents the erosion of live Irish music in bars around the Big Apple. You would hardly notice the change, as there are no melted ice caps or starving polar bears to illustrate the dire consequences of neglect and abuse, but the catastrophic consequences are being felt throughout the Irish music scene nonetheless.

Carbon emissions might cause global warming, but Gaelic Warming is more like death by a thousand cuts for our culture.

We can blame ourselves.

Like most of you, I have gotten accustomed to getting my personalized entertainment on the desktop. Bands can be seen playing live on You Tube, while Amazon and iTunes provides me with plenty of musical snippets that keep me on the cutting edge of new music. I rarely listen to new music piped in through shops and coffee houses, preferring to manage my listening through an iPod playlist.

“Establishments like Paddy Reilly’s that have amazingly kept the flags flying for years, through thick and thin, deserve every support,” says Greg Grene of the Prodigals.

“These small pubs are dealing with the ongoing migration from a late-night smoking/drinking/flirting culture, to a stay at home, listen to an iPod and connect on Facebook culture. They stand for live music, and real musicians, and real interaction, versus virtual versions of all the above.

Hopefully, audiences will choose reality over virtual reality in 2008.” If I was honest with myself, this shift in how I consume entertainment has bled into my day job. Given the daunting blankness of a page that I need to fill each week for this fine paper, it is infinitely easier to swipe a few news items from Google and review a few CDs in the comfort of my own office than it is to pull an all-nighter in the clubs.

Let’s take this past weekend, for example. I was maddeningly envious of the flannel-toasted redness of my kids’ cheeks as I tucked them in, shivering all the while at the prospect of walking the cold streets of Hoboken to attend this weekend’s Irish Rock Fest.

What was the matter with me? It was a killer bill that featured the Gobshites, Icewagon Flu, and the Prodigals!

Not only was I being paid by the Irish Voice to be there, I also co-sponsored the event through Celtic Lounge.com for crissakes! Why the dread?

Being Irish, I rushed to the worst case scenario. Was I getting too old to rock a rock column? Should I give this space to a young turk who can holler out for a third encore at 3 a.m.?

Nah! It was just the idea of going out. Once I got there I ate, drank, and was merry as the decades peeled away and those groups barnstormed through the finest Celtic music I heard in many moons.

As I watched them sweat onstage, I also thought how rare it was to see an Irish act in a pub, let alone three in one night. This is another big contributor to Gaelic Warming.

I’m not sure if it’s a chicken or the egg scenario here, but it is getting harder to find real Irish live music in the pubs lately.

“I don’t bother with the live stuff anymore,” shrugged one Mayo bar owner dismissively as we rode back to Jersey on the train recently.

“All night you’re up and down with people telling you to turn the music down or up, and of course, you can’t do that with a live band. You can tell a deejay to turn it down and with a twist of a knob, he does.”

We can blame the economy for Gaelic Warming.

“The music scene has changed drastically since 2001,” says Larry Kirwan, who still gigs regularly at Connolly’s in Times Square most Saturday nights during the winter.

“No matter what the Bushies say, money is tight. People no longer hit the bars on weeknights. There is less work for musicians. Many have quit for the safety of day jobs and guaranteed health insurance.”

There are a few who tough it out, like Mary Courtney. Her band, Morning Star, has been playing for years, but she recently told me that band gigs in general have dried up a bit. She takes on solo and acoustic duo gigs.

“I’m one of the few lucky ones making a living, but there are not many of us out there,” she said. “I consider myself extremely fortunate.”

Some suspect that New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s smoking ban did irreparable damage to the Irish bar scene when it was implemented a few years ago, which might very well have been the initial catalyst for Gaelic Warming.

“It killed our business for a long while,” Chris Byrne told me right after the ban went into effect. Byrne is the leader of Seanchai and the Unity Squad and owner of Rocky Sullivan’s, which recently moved to the Red Hook section of Brooklyn after years thrilling rock audiences on Lexington Avenue.

“The Irish love having a cigarette with their pint, and I think a lot of people would prefer to buy a case of beer and play music at home with their friends so that they can smoke in peace instead of going back and forth out of the bar into the cold air for a smoke. There are a lot more house parties now.”

Like holes in the ozone layer, Gaelic Warming is worse in some spots than others. Across the river in Hoboken, there seemed to be an Irish bar every block. My heart warmed when I heard more than one fiddle and flute coming from the pubs as I walked over to the Irish Rock Fest this past Saturday.

“The Irish bar scene in Hoboken seems to extend from the very neighborly vibe of the town,” writes Kevin Adkins in an email. Adkins lends vocals, harmonica, tin whistle to the Celtic jam band sound of Hoboken’s Icewagon Flu.

“Multitudes of bars compete with one another by each offering their own style, atmosphere and specialties. The Irish bar scene hosts a special community of drinkers who seem to enjoy the camaraderie and fellowship found only in a local public house.

“My fear though, is that bar owners may turn to deejays and other entertainment instead of live music. My feeling is that live music goes hand-in-hand with an Irish pub — it’s live music’s natural habitat.

“And nothing promotes community more than singing along to a live band with a drink in your hand and your arm around a friend. My hat is tipped to all those Irish bars that still support the live music scene!”

There are an endless number of additional symptoms of Gaelic Warming that one can point to when considering why live Irish music is becoming an endangered species — fewer Irish immigrating here, undocumented Irish throwing up their hands at our ethnic cleansing in the guise of immigration control, etc.

Like global warming, we have the power to reverse the trend. While recycling and installing energy efficient bulbs can help our climate crisis, there are a few equally painless things we can all do to turn the tides of cultural crisis brought on by Gaelic Warming.

For starters, let’s all make a New Year’s resolution to get out there at least one weekend evening a month and let a live band fiddle their way into your heart. Connolly’s in Times Square has installed a fantastic high tech sound system to attract national bands, Joe’s Pub is always good for a handful of Celtic themed shows, and bands like the Prodigals and Black 47 are the large pole in the proverbial tent most weekend nights in the Big Apple.

When you visit the bands, stop by the merchandising table and pick up a shirt or CD. Ordering those things online help if you are homebound but want to show your support as well.

Things are looking up. Let’s not forget that the big green holiday will be on us before you know it!

Our situation may seem dire, but if we set down the iPod, turn off the computer and speak with our wallets and pocketbooks in supporting clubs that support live music over the deejay, we can bring our bar scene back to the “green” pastures!

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