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 BLACK 47/Live In New York City (Gadfly Records) October / November 1999 By Bill Nevins
Named for that apocalyptic memory, Black 47 is pissed-off, in-your-face, New York-attitude rock laced with Irish trad and reggae lilt. Wexford-born lead singer/writer Larry Kirwan wails, "She don't like perverts! Why ain't I a yuppie?," or invokes the angry ghost of rebel Jim Connolly, "Marchin down O'Connell Street/The Starry Plough on high," while blasting his Stratocaster over a hard-ass brass and rhythm section. Co-leader Chris "Seanachi" Byrne growls hip-hop curses on "that scumbag, the mayor" and the Sassenach enemy while hammering his bodhran drum or riding soaring Uilleann bagpipe lines. This is not the sedate Chieftains or the tasteful Altan, nor is it the stupid green-beer sing-alongs of a thousand St. Paddy's Day bar bands you wish you could forget. This music has balls and brains and a fierce determination to say what boils in the souls of so many immigrants and their children. This is what happens when the Irish come to Amerikay and seriously mix it up with the wide world. Songs in Gaelic, Spanglish, and even voodoo Haitian cover Paul Robeson, drug dealers, interracial romance, a dying NYPD cop, and a two-fisted gay construction worker from the County Cork. Not your usual diddly-diddly-dee. And never mellow. Kirwan has been known to tell hecklers to "Shut yer fuckin' faces," and on this CD, Byrne, himself an ex-cop, scolds rowdy slamdancers: "Hey, fellas, ya know alternative radio don't play us, so we don't haveta put up with that alternative bullshit, so yez quit pushin' the people up front!" (Byrne scored a major hit in Belfast with his solo single, "Unrepentant Fenian Bastard.") Black 47 shows tend to be rough, rowdy, and raucous (the town of Hoboken, New Jersey, was shut down by authorities when 30,000 fans overwhelmed an outdoor gig), but tremendous fun. This live CD, recorded St. Patrick's Day 1998 at New York's Wetlands, captures that wild spirit more than any of their five studio albums. There are no breaks between songs, so the effect is of one long, mad whiskey-dance building through many crescendoes—with a lot of laughs along the way, as Kirwan hams the role of rogue in "Funky Ceili" and "Different Drummer," and Geoffrey Blythe (saxophone veteran of Dexys Midnight Runners) and Fred Parcells toss snippets of every-Irish-tune-you-half-remember into the instrumental gumbo. Drummer Thomas Hamlin and bassist Andrew Goodsight ground it all with a heavy backbeat and infectious rhythmic interplay. The effect is intoxicating, with or without pints of Guinness to wash it down. "The Reels" is a showcase cut of this whirling Celtic dervishry, while "Fanatic Heart" is the high point of Kirwan's dramatic incantation: a scary tale of a working stiff pushed to the wall and beyond by the murderous forces of history. "James Connolly" invokes class war against "the bosses and their screws," urging warriors to "hold onto your rifles!" This CD is not perfect, and not for every listener. The voices crack and break, and the players sometimes step on each other. Cacophony or terrible beauty? Your choice. You also may find annoying the frequent self-references ("We got a whole lotta hell, a little bit of heaven/That's the story so far of Black 47!" and New York bias ("Gonna shoot you full of our New York fix!"), though these quirks contribute to the band's candid charm. Ultimately, for all the ragged edges, you can feel the sweat and the moving hearts behind this music. It's a street-level feeling, shoulder-to-shoulder with the millions who shove, claw, connive, and joke their way through the jungle furnace of our capitalist utopia. Black 47 touches the pulse of that struggle, stares into the horror of it all, and laughs straight back at it. |
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