Every year, millions of people grab whatever small sliver of Irish identity they have (or just simply fake it) to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day. While the origins of the holiday have now been Hallmarked and Guinness’d1 to death it is the biggest bar night (week, month) of the year with the national past-time of fending off drunken fake Irish girls with cheaply printed pins that say, “Kiss me! I’m Irish!” to crappy Celtic bands that think that by adding “Mc” to everything it’s suddenly Irish.
With that being said, when it became clear that our launch date was to be a week before St. Patrick’s Day, obviously the songs we picked must reflect that spirit and mood. At first we were going to attempt the idea of picking songs that were traditional Irish drinking songs sung by contemporary artists with the sub-rule that the band themselves had to be non-Irish AND were not Dropkick Murphy’s, Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Flogging Molly or the like. Needle in a haystack people, needle in a haystack.
Thus, while TheBrit was getting lost in his cups over moody music (and yelling at me that I could not use Scottish-Celtic influenced bands, the bastard!), I took an alternate route – finding songs that celebrated the modern holiday spirit of St. Patrick’s Day – which of course, is drinking and more drinking, getting drunk and passing out. And with the following bands, everyday is St. Patrick’s Day – and you know what? I’m totally okay with that.
Dropkick Murphy’s – Dirty Glass
I broke my first rule, but you know what, so what? I love this song. I love the slow build up, the call and response between Murphy and Darcy. I love the fact that I want to either get up and start jigging on top of tables, drink whiskey and crash the empty shot glasses to the floor or just basically make a general fool of myself when this song comes on. I adore how the music crescendos back and forth and back again. It’s poppy, it’s fun, it’s light – you know, like the fake drunken Irish girls you’ll meet at the bar this weekend. Is the song about Murphy and Darcy’s relationship as lovers? As drunk and barmaid? Both? Neither? Do we care? Probably not, but one thing is for certain, put on this tune and you’ll want to jump into the fray.
Dirty Glass was not released as a single but it can be found on their album, Blackout, which was released in 2003. While it was their third studio album, it is the first one to chart at #83 on the U.S. charts and they would later have bigger success with later albums.
Dropkick Murphy’s - official website
Dropkick Murphy’s - Last.fm
Dropkick Murphy’s - Blackout (Amazon US, Amazon UK, iTunes)
The Mahones – Drunken, Lazy Bastard
CANADA’S PREMIER IRISH PUNK BAND! Why does it always make me giggle when one adds “Canada” in front of anything? And the worst part is – not only am I a Yank, but I’m also a Canuk!2 Either way, fronted by a real Irishman (Drats! Broke another rule!), this self-penned song is styled in the way of traditional Irish drinking songs – man loves his pints, woman threatens to leave, man continues to go to the pub, woman leaves, man goes to the pub and finds his woman with his cousin! But it’s an upbeat tune complete with tin whistles and fiddles, so you know that in the end, everything will be fine (and as long as your having a pint, cheers to Finny!).
Drunken, Lazy Bastard was originally released on The Mahones first disk, Draggin’ The Days, which is now out of print. You can find the song on Irish Punk Collection, available via Interpunk or on Paint the Town Red, which is available on amazon.com and .co.uk as an import.
The Mahones - official website
The Mahones - MySpace
The Mahones - Last.fm
The Mahones - Paint The Town Red (Amazon US, Amazon UK, iTunes)
Bondo – Fuck You, I’m Drunk
The problem, admittedly with a lot of sub genres of music, is that if the lead singer sounds remotely at all like another lead singer, often there will mismatched and incorrect tagging of the initial band’s song. This is the problem with the song, Fuck You, I’m Drunk which is being purported to have been written and sung by a Chicago-based blues-Celtic band Bondo with apparent evidence going back to 1999 of them singing the song in a bar on their (I think?) website. I say purported and apparent because this IS the Internet and I could crock up a webpage declaring that I wrote War and Peace, but you know what? I want to believe that this little band that no one has really heard of outside of Chicago wrote a song memorable enough that it was apparently covered by bigger and more well-known bands. I like the idea this is the little song that could.
P.S. If anyone knows what happened to Bondo, can you let me know? The information on their garageband page is haphazard, at best.
P.P.S. While the player says “Dropkick Murphy’s,” it really is Bondo as confirmed by numerous people and the recording below is directly taken from their first album, Fistful of Biscuits.
Bondo - official website(?)
Bondo - GarageBand
The Tossers – No Loot, No Booze, No Fun
I’ll admit that I’m a lazy bastard (but unfortunately, not a drunken, lazy bastard at the moment) and when I chose this song, I based it on a quick listen and the title alone, thinking, “Hey! I can research this later!” Of course later, now that I have started writing everything out, I discover this is not a song about drinking and trollops, rather it’s a memorial to Dee Dee Ramone who died of a heroin overdose in 2002.
At first I thought it was a response to Adam Ant’s, “Goody Two-Shoes,” but you know maybe in a way it is; just 20 years down the road. For this song, pour a small bit of your Guinness on the ground for the dead Ramones and other homies.
The song appears on the band’s 2005 album, The Valley of the Shadow of Death. The Tossers are currently on tour.
The Tossers - official site
The Tossers - MySpace
The Tossers - Last.fm
The Tossers - The Valley of the Shadow of Death (Amazon US, Amazon UK, iTunes)
Jimmy George – Token Celtic Drinking Song
One of the reasons I like Los Campesinos! is that they don’t take themselves too seriously and how can you not love a band that has a song called ...And We Exhale and Roll Our Eyes in Unison? I bring this up because when searching the internets for material for this week’s column, the song Token Celtic Drinking Song kept popping up and attributed to various bands all over the place. Any band that uses the word “token” in their song title has sold me (much how LC! sold me on their elite titling powers). And even though 90% of the attribution went back to The Pogues, I decided that as long as it was not Fairytale of New York, I’m totally within my rights to use Token Celtic Drinking Song this week for the theme.
And yet, it turns out that in another case of mistaken identity, Token Celtic Drinking Song has been mistakenly appropriated to The Pogues even though when listening you can clearly tell that is not Shane MacGowan singing. The song, in fact, belongs to a long–defunct Canadian Celtic punk band3, Jimmy George. While the fans discussions over at The Pogue’s fan forums clarifies some of the misunderstandings and but yet, DAMN YOU INTERNETS! Start tagging shit correctly!
The lyrics, are definitely unintelligible (and from research, this is apparently the album version of the song by Jimmy George) and are also not cataloged. The song is fun to listen to and has all the elements of an Irish drinking song including (but not limited to from what I could figure out): the copious mention of whisky, drinking, working class, union cards, women, and I’m sure some fighting is going to happen at some point or another.
1. Don’t get me wrong, I love me some Guinness.
2. Dual citizenship and two passports!
3. Mad love to my peeps!
