"yesterday's pies tomorrow"

That was a phrase Mike used in the middle of a late night psychedelic ramble the night I got to Ireland. I can't even remember the context.

So here I am having a typically surreal, chilled-out time up in the mountains of West Cork with my old friend Mike Collard. It's been raining for days and we've just been listening to music and talking for hours on end, various comers and goers coming and going, as they do, endless cups of tea, a near Rizla crisis, an amazing thunder-and-lightning storm last night. Andy Ra and a percussionist friend came over for a brilliant jam the other night, but that didn't get recorded. I invented an entirely type of music by the turf fire the night before, after immersing myself in the Cantigas da Santa Maria for hours. It sort of bounced out of my saz and seemed to have a life of its own. Only Mike got to witness this, and neither of us can remember what it sounded like. "Where is this music from?" I remember him asking, looking up, perplexed. "It's from here." I managed to say, while watching my fingers dancing on the fretboard to a pattern I couldn't discern.

So now I feel like sharing some of my favourite (non-traditional) Irish music.

Yesterday, we were listening to Hendrix's "1983" and got on to the topic of Rory Gallagher as rock shaman, reborn Irish bard/musical warrior archetype. I looked for my favourite recording of him on YouTube, ended up finding this, with some wonderful footage of the man himself and Cork City in '74, as Mike remembers it when he moved out here. Such a beautiful musical soul. Born in Dongegal, but made Cork his home. There was (probably still is) a shrine to him in a pub in nearby Middleton.

 

I've loved this for years — Dublin-based Incredible String Band fans doing their own quirky Irish take on that approach to songwriting. Belgian Kris (who I'll be seeing up in Kerry in a few days) played in a band with one of this crew a few years ago, as he was living nearby:

 

An acid-folk classic from '72, written by a couple of very young women. I vaguely remember Michael Tyack of Circulus bringing them out of retirement some years ago:

 

Mike got quite emotional the other night, reminiscing, while I was selecting tunes. I'd been playing soul classics, which suddenly seemed totally inappropriate, so I took it in a "Celtic soul" direction. This seemed to fit the mood perfectly at the time, from my second favourite Van Morrison album (you can guess the first):

 

Finally, somewhat confessionally, the first rock band that grabbed my attention when I was 12 or 13. Although I have no time for Bono's bombast or messianic tendencies, what Edge was doing with the electric guitar at this time was pretty extraordinary in its inventiveness. And you can't dispute the energy or tightness of the band at this time: