Xmas marks the spot

This year’s Meteor Award nominees were recently announced and it’s encouraging to see folk so strongly represented.
In the Best Irish Male category, Christy Moore, John Spillane and Damien Dempsey are all nominated and would all be equally deserving of the award. Each of the guys has had a great year in 2005. This would be the cherry on top.
In Best Irish Female shortlist, the presence of Sharon Shannon, Mary Black and Sinead O’Connor mean that folk and roots music are equally strongly represented.
Damien Dempsey turns up again in the Best Album category, where his mighty Shots has been nominated.
This is always going to be a category where competition is likely to be fierce. Both Sinead O’Connor and Christy Moore have released albums this year which were undoubtedly worth a nomination.
In the Best Folk/Trad category itself, Christy Moore, John Spillane and Sharon Shannon are joined by Altan and Kila. This is a pretty conservative set of nominations, with only the inclusion of the quietly brilliant Lasairfhiona Ni Chonaola acknowledging the wealth of new talent in the country.
As an aside – what on earth are they putting in the water in Sligo, with Tabby, Westlife and the Conway Sisters all featuring in the Best Pop Act category?
For some people, Christmas is the toughest of seasons. For the homeless, especially, Christmas marks the low point of the bleak midwinter. The Simon Community are aware of that and do their utmost to make it more bearable for those people left on the streets.
This December the Simon Community is being supported by a very special gig featuring the best acoustic music in town. On December 22nd The Guggenheim Grotto and Tadhg Cooke will be fronting a show in Whelan’s in support of the Dublin Simon with Richard Martin and the Million Dollars also on the bill. Doors open at 8pm. It’s a great line-up and you’ll have a lot of fun as well as helping a great cause. So buy a ticket now.
Oh, and there will be a limited edition CD on sale as well. So buy that too!
Whelan’s also has another treat in December when José González brings his eclectic mix of stylistic influences to town for a show in the Wexford Street venue on the 12th.
His album, Veneer, has had a stranglehold on the charts in his native Sweden (yep, that’s not a typo. In spite of the name, he’s a Swede, while his parents are both ex-pat Argentinians). In the US meanwhile, he is moving from cult status to full blown star.
Recorded with the minimum of fuss at home on basic equipment, Veneer blends sophisticated Latin passion with Nordic stillness.
The album highlights José’s eclectic influences (Elliot Smith, flamenco, Joy Division, bossa nova), yet, in the process, carves a sublimely emotional signature that is undeniably all his own.
Across in Vicar Street too, there is a very strong crop of gigs spanning the Christmas period, with Kila on December 22nd, followed the following evening by Mundy.
As the New Year’s bells approach, Declan O’Rourke gets his party hat on for a last blow out of 2005 as he hosts an evening of special guests, including The Guggenheim Grotto, Steve Wickham, Roesy, Gavin Glass and Fiach Moriarty, also at Vicar Street.
In between all that gig going, you’ll have to find time for the Christmas shopping. As music really is the gift that keeps on giving, you could do worse than buy some of the great CDs that have been released this year.
Top of my list would have to be Old 97s fantastic live double album Live And Wired. It does exactly what it says on the tin! This is a live, warts and all evening of manic music and mayhem from West Texas’ finest. As usual, everyone in the band (give or take) gets to sing a song or play a solo.
This probably gets filed under alt-country at your local record store, but that’s really too grandiose. Old 97s make cowpunk at its rawest, complete with punk ethos editing. The applause after each song is brutally chopped off. No pussy-assed messing with faders here. As a result, it’s a little crude but hugely entertaining.
More considered, but just as direct in its own fashion, is Buddy Miller’s ‘United Universal House of Prayer’, on which this Vietnam veteran muses on the state of the world, the waste of a generation and the path to salvation.
The album is infused with stinging blues guitar and some immaculate gospel harmonies (from Ann and Regina McCrary).
Delivered with an energy that would shame most men half his age, this is one of those albums that has absolutely taken a lifetime to make.
Hot off the stampers from World Music Network is the Rough Guide to Celtic Music, from the same team who brought you the Beginner’s Guide to Irish Music earlier this year.
A great introduction to Celtic music, the album kicks off with the classic ‘Jig Songs’ from Dervish and wends its way around the Atlantic coast of Europe with a detour to the US, where it picks up a Bohola track.
There have also been a couple of great books out this year. My own favourite is Tommy Sands’ wonderfully evocative Journeyman, proving he can write prose as well as he can write songs.
Looking back on a career which has already spanned 40-odd years, the book is fascinating for a number of reasons. For one thing, it reminds us how politically engaged the Sands family were.
Walton’s exhaustive Guide To Irish Music is also prime Christmas present material. While you could read Tommy Sands’ book in a single sitting, this huge tome is one to dip into over and over.
With entries on almost everyone you can think of, it’s an enjoyable book to browse through. You can stop off at your favourites before taking off into uncharted territory.
Interestingly, it augments the usual biographical dictionary format with articles on particular styles and instruments.
If you never want to get stumped by a folk question at a pub quiz again, you’ll be asking Santa for Colin Harper’s Irish Folk, Trad & Blues: A Secret History, which brings together almost all his writing on the folk and blues movement in Ireland, helping to put into context the close relationship between the styles. It’s choc full of esoteric detail and, although it’s discursive and journalistic in its approach, it comes within an asses’ roar of being definitive.