A December run of shows with The Frank and Walters in Cork and Damien Dempsey in Dublin prompts a look at ageing, live music, and loyal hometown crowds. It’s a reflection on two enduring acts and w…

On April 10, 1999, I was in the producer’s chair in Studio 4 in RTÉ while we aired a special episode of a live Saturday night chat show called Kenny Live, hosted by Pat Kenny. The show was paying i…

For the week that’s in it, we asked our Toronto Bureau Chief – and long-time Oasis anorak – Eoin O’Callaghan, to file a guest post about the Irish influence on Noel Gallagher’s work.    M…

YouTube video by Nicky Fennell

In this evocative and sharply tailored piece, David Heffernan takes us back to the dancefloors of 1970s Ireland — a world of mohair suits, platform shoes, and Dubonnet-fuelled dreams. From the revo…

There’s much to admire and plenty to recommend about Sophie Oliver’s documentary series ‘No Matter What’ which, over three episodes, looks at a careful selection of the colourful life and times of …

‘Him ? Sure, he doesn’t know if he wants to be a man or a woman’. It was the end of the summer, 1980, and David Bowie at his most theatric, glamorous, playful and compelling, wasn’t convincing my m…

YouTube video by johnniejukebox

Mick Lynch, the Cork-born musician, singer, actor and performer who passed away yesterday after a long illness, will be familiar to those of us who served our time around the margins of left-field …

The actor, Kevin Kennedy, takes the lead role in ‘Cinderella’, this year’s pantomime at The Empire Theatre in Consett, a small town in the Northeast of England. Best known for playing Curly Watts, …

A week or so before The Pogues headlined the closing night of the Féile festival  in Thurles in August, 1991, I saw them play live in one of their regular and most boisterous U.K. haunts, The Bri…

“From the echoes of Croke Park’s battlefield to the timeless melodies of ‘From Langley Park to Memphis,’ Prefab Sprout’s brilliance offers solace on the darkest days.

David Long and Shane O’Neill have been friends since they were six years old and were neighbours in Churchtown a half century ago.  They have been close ever since – there’s a lovely description of…