AS TRAD AS IT GETS

The revelations in this organ that members of one of our leading folk groups have variously smoked the waccy baccy, snorted the divil s dandruff, swallied the divil s butthermilk and danced the third leg reel, may have come as a shock to some poor innocents but not to Samuel J. Snort Esq.

But then, as the recognised first man to put the horn in hornpipe, my contribution to the evolution of sex, drugs and diddley-aye, like my dong, has been immense.
When I first happened upon this scene in the early sixties it was in a pretty dismal state. A typical traditional tableau back then comprised of four or five oul fellas, smelling faintly of pee, playing spoons in the corner of some dark and dank shebeen, the Stygian gloom of the whole grim scene illuminated only fleetingly by the brilliant shine that would occasionally emanate from the arse of someone s trousers when he d briefly adjust his leathery old buttocks to let go a rasping fart, whose shattering report the others would endeavour to cover with a raucous collective yahoo .
That was Irish trad music before Sam hoved into view about as sexy as an evening on TV Taliban but without even the prospect of a live execution to add a bit of zip.
Fuzzy Foam
At this stage in proceedings, there was only one aspect of the trad music scene that gave any grounds at all for optimism and this was the fact that the whole field was practically pickled in alcohol. Through his long years behind the scenes in the business they call show, Sam Snort has learned the crucial importance of ensuring that the artist be kept out of his head at all times. Allow him into his head, as it were, and he may start asking awkward questions about per diems, publishing, royalties, why his manager has a bigger house and the like. But keep him ripped to the tits and he ll pretty much do anyone s bidding and no questions asked.
It was this profound and ultimately transformative psychological insight which Sam brought to bear on the Irish trad scene, by ensuring that, as well as maintaining and indeed strengthening the traditional predisposition towards intensive farming of the fuzzy foam, our leading practitioners of throat-warbling, nose-whistling, banjo-plucking and other ghastly but authentically ethnomusicological pursuits, were also exposed to ganja, hallucinogenics, fast white powders, satin loon pants, Jethro Tull s Aqualung and the further reaches of sexual decadence and depravity.
Hence, Horslips, for example.
There were other success stories too, of course. Where once upon a time, a sean nss singer would have been locked up for disturbing the peace and rightly so under the strict laboratory-controlled conditions of Sam s brave new world of trad, he could be allowed into, say, a top, state-of-the-art German television studio to have his cacophonous mewlings not only broadcast to millions but actually savoured by a whole new generation of brainless dingbats boasting fishermen s caps, pony-tails, roll-ups and Nuklear Nein Danke stickers on their tin cars. Indeed, hose our hero down a bit and you could even set him off on a tour of the great concert-halls of Europe to help shift even more copies of his dreadful album, Blasket Case.
Prominent Mazoomas
Largely thanks to Sam s expert ministrations it wasn t long before trad became so hip that all music began to aspire towards the condition of diddley-aye. Suddenly, no self-respecting rocker could pass up on the opportunity to collaborate with our top folkies, as a result of which we ended up with such unlikely hybrids as Ted The Fuckin Nuge Nugent s Wang Dang Sweet Poontang Of Mooncoin , Aerosmith s She Moved An Ounce Through The Fair , Eminem s I Am Stretched On Your Grave, Dude and Ol Dirty Bastard s Oh Muthafucker Macree .
Needless to say, Sam has come in for criticism from purists for allegedly showing disrespect for the tradition but, interestingly, nearly all these complaints are expressed by the kind of still struggling trad musician whose squeezebox has yet to see the Great Wall Of China, the dressing room of Carnegie Hall or even a naked babe with prominent mazoomas.
And, hey, say what you like about the Snortian one but he has never knowingly used the word C****c .
Your ever-lovin Samuel J. Snort Esq.