Don’t believe all that scabrous criticism of Pat Kenny you have been hearing over the past fortnight for his conduct of the Late, Late Show interview with Pete Doherty. He was worse.
I am told that some younger members of Mr. Kenny’s extended family are still not back at school.
It wasn’t so much the blind focus on Kate, drugs and the Irish connection. It was the fact that he couldn’t name a single Doherty song.
A man whose mind knows no trace of ‘Fuck Forever’ or ‘Killamangiro’ or ‘Albion’ or ‘The Man Who Would Be King’ shouldn’t be allowed out, much less let loose on public television.
Would Pat Kenny, if he was interviewing Martin McDonagh, admit as easily that he couldn’t name a McDonagh play?
Kenny used to present a music programme, The Outside Track, on Radio One on Saturdays. I recall looking forward to the eclectic selection of album tracks and Kenny’s intelligent commentary.
Now, looking at the two of them there on the screen, I couldn’t help wondering, Ah, Pat, Where did it all go wrong...?
I made a dash for Mason’s the instant the interview was over to catch Scott H. Biram, a proven antidote.
Biram is the real deal, a stubbly hulk from a delta downriver of Austin, tensed over a double-mike that mangles the vocals as prescribed, wrenching blues riffs and roughneck punk from a sturdy, bruised guitar, eliding from hard-rock stentorian savagery to sweet caress of country. There’s even a waltz-time tune and a bit of a yodel, before getting back to aural assault. I’ll swear he plays lead and bottle-neck and rhythm guitar simultaneous, the meantime thudding out beats with an amplified boot. Plus, he poses relevant philosophical questions, such as, “Where the fuck have all the good times gone?”
With the economy in the grave, Scott H., alongside Kenny’s cred.
Also at Mason’s was another who force-feedbacks unfeasible sounds from an ordinary-looking guitar, Andrew McGibbon, one half (with drummer Chris McMullen) of Lurgan’s Bonnevilles, who reek of the blues and have growly songs that patrol the edge of what’s personally and politically possible, as if there’s a difference.
“It’s garage bluegrass,” Big Jab confided. Next time I see them, I’m going to pass that on, knowledgeably, to whomever’s alongside.
Keep an ear out for the album, Good Suits And Fighting Boots.
Didn’t make it in time to hear keyboardist Connor Kelly showing off he can turn a trick with the banjo as well. Scott H seemed well impressed.
I have mentioned before there’s nowhere near enough banjos around, despite the proselytising impact of the Seeger Sessions. No banjo, no skiffle. And then, where would we be?
Cat Malojian, too, feature a banjo, from the Ozarks if my ears didn’t deceive me at the Craft Village shout-out last summer. They also are from Lurgan. Amazing, the connectedness of things.

I see that The Mighty Stef has cancelled the Northern segment of his tour, on account, so I am told, of a counter-offer from the US of A. So, instead of the open highway from Coleraine to Kilrea and onwards to Aughnacloy, he’s right now slumming through Cleveland, Kansas, New York, in the company of Flogging Molly. Takes all kinds.
Stef is dark and dangerous if you take the sound as symptomatic, with an ominous vibe like he had something suppressed you have to hope he’ll keep contained ‘til you’re clear of his space.
He has a couple of sea-shanties on the seriously sensational 100 Midnights. There’s another thing you don’t hear much any more. Sea shanties. Especially not shanties such as these, shaped to be sung as you subside to the deep. As last time around: “You have been selected as a woman of the king/You will be expected to wear his ring/You have been elected by the devil himself.../Sail, sail, sail the boats.”
He duets here with Cait O’Riordan on ‘Safe at Home’, with Shane MacPogue, 50, on ‘Waiting Round to Die’. Everywhere you listen, there’s intelligent reference – Johnny Cash, Jim Morrison, Nick Cave, Ronnie Drew, Tom Waits...
Mellifluous, melodious, menacing, macabre, songs to bunch your knuckles to, and altogether brilliant.

There’s nobody in the mainstream more important than Springsteen, but did you see that spectacle at the Superbowl?
“Patriotic” wasn’t the word. This was America love-bombing itself. Old Glory rippling everywhere. Thick shafts of colour-coded light strobing for the sky. The Boss in blue jeans belting out rock’n’roll euphoria.
Has there ever been a country as pleased with itself as America is now in the New Age of Obama?
And Springsteen’s providing the music.
Incidentally, the E Street Band was miming.

“Tell Dave not to forget about our debate.”
So said Bono last May to Dave Marsh’s wife in the Merrion Hotel, confirming his suggestion the previous evening of a public debate on the effectiveness of celebrity politics.
A couple of weeks later, U2’s New York office said they’d schedule the discussion once the new album was finished. So when’s it happening?, I emailed Marsh last week.
“He backed out, without offering an explanation (and I was too smart to ask)”, came the prompt reply. “We may draw our own conclusions.”
Yeah. Perhaps he’s realised that the main effect of all that moral posturing has been to provide a toxic cloud of fluffy rhetoric behind which the liars, murderers, cowards and whores who run the world have been able to hide their crimes against humanity.