Going out with Magill November 1977

Restaurants by Ulick O'Connor, Traditional Music by Ciaran MacMathuna, Pubs by Anthony Cronin, andTheatre by Conor Cruise O'Brien

Restaurants - 'Will some poet write a lament for the Dublin cafes Mitchell's, Robert's, the Cafe Cairo?'  By Ulick O'Connor

Annabel's Night Club, Burlington Hotel, Upper Leeson Street, Dublin 4. (688838)

ANNABEL'S is under the Burlington Hotel and you can get a first class meal here for about £2.50. There is a mix of doctors, TV personalities, lawyers, TWA hostesses, foreigners attending connventions, nubile lasses who interpret for them and men of commerce who don't shout. One reason they don't act the heavy is Aiden Doyle's eye. He is like a lizard on a wall watching what is going on: he can spot the buffs like a flash and somehow they don't come back. His style makes the place the nicest in town.

Sometimes a figurc will appear beside you as if he had popped like Mephistoopheles up through~~the·jiloor. This is Vincent Doyle who owns the Doyle hotel chain and likes to know what is going on on the ground.

There is discernment at the door here, which is what places further down in Leeson Street lack. The doorman at Elizabeth's, for instance, put me off by his manners three years ago and. I havcn 't been back since, nor have others I know.

Unicorn Minor, Merrion Court, Dublin 3 (688552)

Will some poet write a lament for the Dublin cafes - Mitchell's, Robert's, the Cafe Cairo. They belong to the era when Dublin was a boulavardier town before property barons and foreign business chains gobbled up Grafton Street. There is only one place now where you can get a whiff of the atmosphere you can find at a thousand corners in Paris. This is the Unicorn Minor. Here, Benedict Kiely, Mary Lavin, Denis ] ohnston come for lunch. The restaurant is run by an Italian, Renato Sidoli, who has been in Dublin for 30 years. He also owns the Unicorn Major round the corner.
 He and his niece Miss Dam (who is a ringer for Maureen Potter) breathe character into the place that makes it special. It is not just the posters of Italian cities on the wall that give it flavour. Maybe it is Renato telling you of a beach in Italy where they bury you up to your neck in sand to cure pains in the back. As hc talks you can feel the muscles around your neck relaxing and a soothing balm fills your whole being. The extraordinary thing is that I like this restaurant in spite of its chef. I can't eat onions and he puts them into almost everything. But I can console myself with delicious ice cream and Risotto della Nona, which Renata tells me was invented by his granny.

Brendan Behan did his last work at the entrance to Merrion Court, where the restaurant nestles. A few weeks before his death he pain ted w hat he told Kenneth Allsop were 'the most influenntial works that any writer had got through to the public '.

It is on the right-hand wall, half way up: 'No Parking'.

Lord John, 14 Saekville Place, Dublin I (786294)

You can meet Lord John at his restaurant disco off Sackville Place. There is a whirl inside ~ beautiful girls dancing to Punk Rock while overhead TV screens project famous singers. Loads of tiny Malaysians here, clicking their heels as they ask the chrissies to dance. I ask one of them what brought him to Dublin.

'Bally fermat Christian Brothers,' he told me.

It's true. The Irish Christian Brothers in Kuala Lumpur send their overflow to Dublin in order to get A-levels for Oxford.

Here one night recently, I was quesstioned at different times about the existence of life after death, Gay Byrnc's sex life, Scan a 'Casey's religion and .J ohn Robbie's pass from the serum. A lovely girl with long fair hair and blue eyes called Marion who looked as if she had corne out of a Burne-] ones painting told me she was into vampires. I got her 'Dracula' by Bram Stoker and she was a friend for life.

I got to know Derek the disc jockey at Lord John's after he'd asked me if I could find him Jack Kerouac 's 'On the Road'. In return, he loaned me Burrroughs' 'The Wild Boys'. Derek has pinnup good looks, rather like a tall Cliff Richards. I wondered if he was a male model. Actually, he is a farmer in County Meath with 100 acres and drives ou t each evening to the disco scene after work in the fields.

You can get very good lamb cutlets here. Around you while you eat, secrettaries, nurses, factory girls, twirl themmselves into a somnambulistic state which they won't wake up from till after they hit the office nex t day.

Finbarr Nolan, the faith healer, comes here a lot. They only drawback is an appalling leprechaun from Listowel who thinks I can get a play of his prodduced and is constantly reciting ghastly verses in my ear. The great thing, though, is that Lord John (he likes to be called that) can protect you from aggro. He is one of the fittest guys in town, rides horses, knows exactly how to handle a mill, and sieves customers coming in with an expert eye.

There are three enormous floors here, with mahogany furniture and figures in armour - Errol Flynn Gothic. The whole place is a zillion times more elegant than a lot of the Leeson Street strip, and since it is not 'in' yet, you don't get the buffs.

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MAGILL EATS OUT

As well as Ulick O'Connor's restaurant review we give below Magill's pick of reliable places to eat. Obviously prices given here depend on what you order. Ours are based on middleerange choices. Your comments 'on these and other restaurants are welcome.

Trudi's 107 Lr. George's Street, Dun Laoghaire (01-805318) Small, pretty restaurant, everyything fresh and cooked by Trudi herself. Average cost per person £6. Open from 7.30 pm (last orders 11 prn] Monday to Saturday. Booking advisable.

O'Henry's Restaurant 5 Dawson Street, Dublin 2 (01-782300), Cool, highly polished, with lots of cane and thirties mirrors. Pates, home-made soups and large helpings of uncomplicated food. Quick lunches in wine bar. Cost per person from £2. Wine 42p per glass. Open9 am to 12 pm Monday to Satu rrday, 12.30 to 11 pm Sunday.

Squirrel's Nest 1 Lincoln Place, Dublin 2 (01-764300), Small French restaurnat with disco. It has lost some of its tatty charm since changing hands but food is still good. Cost per person from £4, slightly less for lunch. Open 12 noon to 3 pm for lunch, 7 pm to 2 am for dinner, Monday to Saturrday, 7 pm to 2 am on Sunday.

Coffee Dock Jury's Hotel, Ballsbridge, Dublin 2 (01-767511). Quick, efficient grill open practically all hours of the day and night. Stick to simple food, steaks,chickenMaryland and good big hamburgers. Cost per person about £2.50. House wine £2.10 per bottle. Open 23 hours a day (closed between 5 am and 6 am) except Sundays when it closes at 11 pm.

Bay Leaf 41 Pleasant Street, Dublin 2 (011753257), Small, homely restaurant where plain, wholesome food is served on local pottery. ££5.50 per person with wine. Open Monday to Saturday 6.00 to 11 pm.

Henning's Restaurant 3a Market Lane, Cork (021-56879), Popular, slightly showbiz restau rant where the owner/chef special ises in home-made soups and veal dishes. Cost per person: Lunch £1.60, dinner £5 or so. House wine £2.40. Open 12.30 to 2.30 pm for lunch, 7.00 to 10.00 prn for dinner, Monday to Saturday. Booking advisable.

Pot Pourri 2 Parliament Street, Dublin 2 (011770006). Small, friendly restaurant. Swiss French cuisine. £7 per person with wine. Booking advised. Open Monday to Saturday for dinner, 6.30 pm to 12.30 am.

Barrell's Steak and Wine Bar 61 Lr. George's Street, Dun Laoghai re (01-809136). Basically a steak restaurnat. £5 per head with wine. Gooking necessary. Open for dinner Tuessday to Saturday 7 pm to 1.00 am.

The Trocadero 3 St. Andrew Street, Dublin 2 (01-775545), Cheap, undistinguished FrancooItalian food, and good crack. £3 to £5 with wine. Open Monday to Saturday 6 pm to 12.30am.

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PUBS ANTHONY CRONIN

'One of the few instances in history of the traditions of one pub being taken over by another:

McDaids, 3 Henry Street, Dublin 2 (01-775272)

The Castle Lounge (Grogans), 15 South William Street, Dublin 2 (01-779320)

IF THERE W.ERE knighthoods, peerages or honorary doctorates going in this country for barmen, Paddy 0 'Brien ought by now to have one or other of them. Apart from anything else, it was. he, more than any other single individual, who was the making of the old McDaids, and when he left McDaids for Grogans, or The Castle Lounge, in nearby South William Street, he took his constituency with him.

That they were a motley enough throng an impartial observer would have been forced to admit, but at least when Gotterdammerung came they proved to have the supreme virtue of loyalty and trooped down the road like the last of the legions. Most of them are still there in the Castle Lounge, a variously talented but cantankerous brood which largely composes the day-time, as opposed to the early evening and the night-time traffic (partly for the reason that some of them are at home, tucked up in bed, when the evening gets into gear) and it is not Paddy 0 'Brien's fault if Patrick Lis to wei, County Kerry

Kavanagh, Brian 0 'Nolan et al are not any longer among them.

His contribution to making McDaids what it was is the more remarkable in that his ultimate philosophy of barmannship - live and let live, I suppose you could describe it - was not shared either by the Proprietor or by Another Member of the Staff. The Proprietor seemed perennially to regret that he had been driven to the flesh-pots of Harry Street from the barren but indubitably moral wastes of his native Donegal; and Annother Member of the Staff had a way of emanating moral disapproval which would have put Savonarola in the ha'penny place. Sometimes, it is true, he could rise to heights: "This was a poets' pub before ever never you came into it, Mr. Kavanagh. And don't you forget that ".

The fact, though, was that it wasn't, either before or after, and it certainly never became a literary pub in the sense that The Palace and The Pearl, as I dimly remember them, were literary pubs: a lot of solemn men with big black hats on them sitting round square tables talking about assonance and the Catholic novel. Anti-literary would be a more fitting way to characterise the literary aspect of McDaids, at least in the great days (it did get a bit precious and littleemagaziny later on) and for the most part the literary men, when they mentioned literature, were at pains to make clear their contempt.

The strength of the old place was in diversity; and the literary men really only mixed happily in because they too were pulling the divil by the tail a large part of the time and they too were somewhat outside the law. On this ground, at least, they could mingle courteously with the semiiemployed, the neo-criminal, the declasse and the various 'representatives of rebellion and revolution (two things not so easily to be distinguished then as they are supposed to be now).

It was (as was said) therefore a diverse bunch that Paddy 0 'Brien took with him, united only perhaps by a love of discourse at the hours of day when other people are supposed to be working, and they met, in Grogans, with a companionnable enough selection of people from the rag trade, the post office and the George's Street shops. By a freak of chance, though, the new proprietary of Grogans had interests which coincided with some of those represented in the old McDaids, Tommy Smith being a literate man with patriotic views. There was accordingly a re-birth of sorts, one of the few instances in history of the traditions of one pub being taken over by another, but it was accompanied in Grogans by the efflux into Grafton Street and its side-streets of the sort of customers to whom the pub is a prelimminary to the night-spots and whatever transpires therefrom (which is not much different in essence from the pub being preliminary to the sugar bags of stout and the bohemian party, but considerrably more expensive). They compose a good part of the night-traffic now, aggreggating excitedly in their de rigeur denim, until those of other persuasions are pushed gradually into the darker corners, and they seem to the present writer to be an O.K. bunch of people, many of them personable and all of them apparently well-disposed towards each other, so, whatever they get up to afterwards, more luck to them.

He (the present writer that is) naturally views the people now in McDaids with rather more mixed feelings. Ignoring for a moment those who call it pseuds' corner house (for after all it was described as that twenty odd years ago when it was bulging with genius), he is yet inclined to wonder what it is about ballads (themselves so full of energy) that seems to rob people of energy and resolve. Chords frequently hang in the air here as bits of song are begun and

abandoned in a rather spiritless way, and the occasional philosophic or literary assertion seems often to be left hanging in much the same tired manner. It could be that they're all at it forty-eight hours round the clock, of course, and that would make anything difficult to keep up, but in any case it is as hard for some of us to be objective about the present inhabitants of McDaids as it would have been for those who regretted Rome to be objective about the Goths and the Huns. If one walked into such a bar in any other city one would doubtless merely remark on what a fine, radical, lively and truly with-it lot went in there.

The old McDaids had really three periods anyway, and we might call them, after the scheme of Mr. Vico, the barbarism, the civilisation and the decadence - the barbarism being the old original Catacombs period, the civilisation the state of affairs under the iron rule of Mr. Kavanagh and his coadjutors, and the decadence what remained. One night during the decadence a rather boring individual who was that way inelined took off all his elothes. This put Another Member of the Staff in what he deemed to he a quandary. "What 'II I do?" he enquired of the onlookers. "If I put him out like he is it could give the house a bad name. "

MAGILL GOES DRINKING

PUBS

Higgins' Lr. Abbey Street, Dublin 1. Haunt of Jervis Street Hospital staff, journalists and Hector Grey. Recently renovated upstairs in now classic style with pile carpet, wrought iron work and frmica tables. Contrasts sharply with the dimly-lit downstairs bar; only redeeming feature here is a series of cock-fighting prints. Service, however, is good and the company often enlivened by the presence of one particular regular who buys drinks all round and on one occasion was seen handing out fivers in Abbey Street. Prices: (downstairs) stout 40p, beer 41 p, spirits 36p, mixers 17p. Good pub lunches upstairs and downstairs for about £1.

Searsons 42 Upper Baggot Street, Dublin 4.

Used to be the in place when plushness was novelty rather than boring norm. The bar is elegantly faithful to traditional city pub decor; the lounge full of tired upholstery and advertising executives. Service very erratic, especially in the aquarium chamber at the back. Lunch menu extensive and expensive. Prices: stout and beer 45p, spirits 40p, mixers not listed. Good pub lunch £2.

Green Acres Country Club Woodtown, Rathhfarnham, County Dublin. A gigantic barn of a pub in the mountainy part of Rathfarnham, the County Dublin Nashville of raucous and doleful C & W music. There are dead trees in barrels inside the premises, with green bulbs shining on them to make them look less dead. Between the juke box, the television lounge and the three function rooms a high decibel level is attained, expecially at weekkends. An ideal place to go with people you don't want to talk to or listen to.

Prices:
These vary between day and night, bar and Cabaret Lounge. Cheapest. stout and beer 39p, spirits 42p, mixers 14. No pub lunch.

O'Brien's Sussex Terrace, (Off Upr. Leeson Street). Unquestionably THE young swingers bar in Dublin. Convivial and unpretentious - the old bar has associans with Paddy Kavanagh who lived nearby. Prices: (downnstairs lounge) stout and beer 43p, spirits 36p, mixers 12p. No pub lunches.

Sachs Morehampton Road. The most fashionnable bar in town with the most fashionable prices. Tasteful Gatsbv-tvpe decor, excellent service , but the clientele are very much of 'the beautiful people' variety with a few chancers and lots of ladies-en-the-make thrown in. Prices: stout and beer 56p, spirits 48p, mixers 17p. Pub lunch £3.50 (approx)

Palace Bar 21 Fleet Street. One of the best of the centre-city bars. Old-style pub, with partitions and mirrors in the bar, but the back lounge has been despoiled recently by renovation. Prices: dvout 41p, beer 42p, spirits 38p, mixers 13p. No pub lunches.

The Shakespeare 160 Parnell Street. A pub with strong GAA associations, in spite of its name. Much singing and cavorting after big matches, especially for Kerry fans. Long, spacious old-fashioned downstairs bar and a typically awful upstairs lounge. Prices: stout 41p, spirits 37p,mixers 13p. No pub lunches.

Conways 70 Parnell Street. One of the few tastefully redecorated bars in the city. Built in 1745. Main clientele from Rotunda opposite - quite a few nurses, radiographers and clerical staff on their own. Whether because of the above or because of its proximity to An Phoblacht offices in Parnell Square, the bar is also frequented by welllknown republicans. Prices: stout 43p, beer 44p, spirits 39p, mixers 13p. Excelle.it pub lunches costing about £1.50.

Ryans Parkgate Street. Reputation for exxcellent pints of stout, possibly because of its proximity to Guinness. Also reputation for very discreet snugs. Lovely old-fashioned pub with no nonsense and no singing. Prices: stout and beer 41p, vodka and gin 36)1;,p, whiskey 37p, mixers 12p. No pub lunches.

Sinnotts 3 Sth. King Street. The best of the Grafton Street area bars, coming down with lefties, actors, economists and other droppouts. A very indiscreet snug. Prices: stout and beer 43p, spitits 38p, mixers 12p. Poor pub lunches for £1, but who wants to eat on an empty stomach!

Old Stand 37 Exchequer Street. Scene for middle-aged, aptly described as pot-bell ied,' roues, expecially at lunch-time. Imagination's taxed more than the drink as the unlikely exploits of the nights before are described for the benefit of the whole pub. Prices: stout and beer 45p, whiskey 40p, vodka and gin 39)1;,p, mixers 14)1;,p. Good pub lunches for about £2.

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Theatre CONOR CRUISE O'BRIEN

'A tempo of galloping along in the best and most playful high spirits'

Abbey Theatre: Travesties by Tom Stoppard. Directed by Tomas Mac Anna.

TOM STOPPARD'S Travesties is a success, a kind of success at which some people may turn up their noses, but beeyond doubt a success. It is not a beddroom farce or a drawing room farce; it is a library farce, as was the author's success of ten years ago, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. More than that, even much more? Sometimes; certainly, as I watched it, some words from one of Nietzche's rare eulogies came spontanneously to mind: 'Machiavelli in his Principe .... cannot resist presenting the the most serious matters in an ungovernnable allegrissimo - perhaps not without a malicious artist's inkling of the antiithesis he is venturing and thoughts that are long, difficult hard and dangerous €in a tempo of galloping along in the best and most playful high spirits.' (Beyond Good and Evil). Mr Stoppard would probably not be displeased with that comparison, which I think is valid, exxcept for the words in parenthesis. In any case, the audience in the theatre does not feel itself oppressed by 'thoughts that are long, difficult, hard and dangerous', it is no more puzzled than is pleasing, kept alert by the fear of missing any part of an excellent joke. The play does maintain over long and exhilarating stretches, especially in its first half (after a slightly sticky start on the .first night) 'a tempo of galloping along in the best and most playful high spirits. '

The play is set in Zurich, during the First World War. Mr. Stoppard's imaginnation was set galloping by the coinciddence of the combined presence in that city of Lenin (played by Raymond Hardie), Joyce (Desmond Cave) and the Dadaist leader, Tristan Tzara (Derek Chapman). The incident which provides the germ of the play is litigation which occurred between Joyce and an emmployee of the British Consulate in Zurich, Henry Carr (John Kavanagh), p'Private Carr' in Ulysses - arising out of performances by the English players, Zurich, (a group of which Joyce was business manager) of the Importance of Being Ernest, with Carr playing Algernon Moncrieff. Carr is both the central character, as a young man, and the narrator, as an old man, whose memory, stumbling like a clown on a tightrope, provides the comedy with its acrobatic flexibility.

The part of Carr must be a taxing one, but John Kavanagh moves with apparent ease, and a charade-like air of enjoying himself, from the groggy, resentful pathos of the old man, to the doubly-imaginary heartless elegance of the young man, a fine Wilde-Saki passtiche. Much of the fun - including almost all the most obvious and wellcome fun - is provided by Derek Chappman's Tristan Tzara, earnestly preachhing a gospel of absurdity which actually 'turns out to be funny. Mr. Chapman also makes it lively, touching and vullnerable. One of the best scenes in the play is the love-scene between him and Carr's sister Gwendolen with the words of Shakespeare's sonnet Shall I compare thee to a summer's day, cut up and shuffled in a hat. Bernadette Shortt's reading of the sonnet, in its dismemmbered and randomly resurrected form, is strangely and hauntingly beautiful.

The mock-stage-Irish trappings and tags with which Mr. Stoppard adorns his Joyce ,- more or less as Joyce himself framed a picture of Cork in cork Pshould not deceive or distract: this is a portrait of that artist by a sincere addmirer. Desmond Cave, in ill-fitting, illlassorted clothes, contrasting with a high degree of surrounding elegance, plays the part with un-selfconscious dignity and saturnine authority, even when what he is trying to do is to borrow money off Carr's bibulous and classsconscious manservant (effectively played by Dermot Tuohy). He has a

fine scene with Derek Chapman in which he inflicts heavy losses on the avant-garde, then enrolled in Dada's Army" by a incisive scholastic interrrogatory, accompanied by a series of conjuring tricks.

The Lenin bits, I fear, are not so good, through the fault of the playywright, not the actors, Raymond Hardis plays Lenin with appropriate gravitas: Kathleen Barrington, as Krupsskaya, nicely combines commitment with cosiness; both handle their Russian lines with a commendable bias (not so easy, and significant of the attention to detail which has gone into this producction). But the fact that Lenin also was in Zurich formed a temptation which Mr. Stoppard would have done better to resist, or to indicate only peripherrally: a silent figure in a library, then an empty chair.

Alternatively I suppose, a Groucho Marxist interpretation would have been possible; perhaps not even Mr. Stoppard has quite that much nerve. As it is, we have a (largely) realistic Lenin with quite a lot to say, alas. Some 'hard and dangerous thought' about the relation of word and deed seems to be implied (though not necessarily actually cogiitated) when the library turns (very neatly, I thought) into a railway plattform for Lenin's momentous departure to the Finland Station. Then we have, with Lenin on a rostrum against a red backcloth of poster-stylized revolutionnary Moscow, a sequence of Lenin's statements of literature and art, as if Lenin had returned to Russia for a lecture tour, and a remarkably jejune one at that (not Mr. Stoppard's fault that last, Lenin's). Like most of the audience, I was very glad to get back from Stoppard's Lenin's Moscow to Stoppard's Carr's Zurich, and to a very witty duet and dance, charmingly exxecuted by Bernadette Shortt and by Fedelma Cullen (in the part of the libbrarian, Cecily, in love with Carr). But by that time much of the breath had been knocked out of the second half, by Lenin's little trip, out of place and out of scale.

I thought this production mostly very strlish, highly professional, and a credit to Tomas MacAnna. The settings have been the subject of some commplaint; I thought both them and the costumes (both by Bronwen Casson) elegant, appropriate and pleasing to the eye, in the Zurich scenes; (nothing much could or can be done about Moscow). Some people think the Abbey ought not to be doing this sort of thing. Personally, I am glad that they are doing it, and even gladder that they are doing it so well.

Bertholt Brecht. Directed by Donald Taylor-Black.

Project Arts Centre: The MotfLer by

The Mother, on the other hand is an abomination. Agnes Bernelie does her gifted best with the title role, but it is a great pity that the Project Arts Centre; during the theatre festival, can make no better use of the fine talents of this actress, and of the other talents availlable to them, than to dredge up Brecht's most 'didactic' play: that is, his most determined effort to produce the kind of propaganda, and instruction for proppagandists, approved and demanded by Stalin in the thirtIes (in this case 1931-2). He hit the button. The Soviet critic Sergei Tretiakov described this playas 'a whole seminar on methods of propaganda and tactics in revolutionary strugglc. How should people be utilized

in the struggle?' We know how they have been utilized, by those whom this pr~p:lganda served. Why should a proogressive theatre, in i 977, utilize its own talents, and its audiences in this way? And please don't tell me about its 'epic quality'; at its very best this is a techhnically cunning exercise in giving a sentimental and romantic image to the concept of revolution mid to some very tough babies who have prospered by reason of the same.

...

Project Arts Centre: (Open air performmance in Merrion Square) On Baile's Strand by W. B. Yeats. Directed by Jim Sheridan.

I saw On Baile's Strand performed in the open air in Merrion Square on a fine Saturday afternoon (October 8). A small crowd (perhaps two hundred peoople; many of them very 'young) had gathered on the playground in the , north-west corner of the square to watch the play performed on the stone steps Ieading down from the railings to the playground. It makes a good opennair theatre, an addition to the reesources of the city. The masks catch the eye; one. of them was reproduced in this section last month. Indoors I haven't much use for masks - 'what would a man need a mask for,' Laurrence Olivier once asked, 'if he had a face?' - but outdoors it is a different matter. There was an air about it which the audience clearly felt; an air of a rite, something sinister and shamanistic:

' .... Some cruel thing Done by SOme great arnd smiling king In daylight on a deck. '

The old master/monster who wrote the play would have been pleased about that (which is more than he would have been about the Abbey doing Travessties); he knew the use of 'freshlyysevered human heads'. He would not have been pleased with how his words were treated; they were mostly inauddible, except for those assigned to The Fool (John Murphy) who sang them out loudly, clearly and to good effect. The revolutionary writer, Isaac Babel, set a high value on 'snivelling peasant feroocity' and Mr. Murphy's performance possessed this desirable quality _ It wen t well with the: masks. The audience smiled a lot, and were a little frightened. In the natural setting, the play didn't feel, as it does indoors, artificial and archaic. It felt horribly real, and update.

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TRADITIOIAL IRISH CIARAN MacMATHUNA

'Two of the non material things brought by Irish emigrants to the United States were the Irish language and Irish traditional music:

AT THE TIME of writing, a large group of our finest traditional musicians, singgers and dancers are touring the United States under the aegis of Comhaltas Ceoltoiri Eireann. We wish them the very best.

It might not be amiss to take a short look at the background of Irish tradittional music in the New World. This has also been prompted by some recent publications in this field; the re-issue in 1973 of two large books by Captain Francis 0 'N eill, the great collector of Irish music, and the more recent appearrance of a series of recordings from a new company in New York, Shanachie Records.

Two of the non-material things brought by Irish emigrants to the United States in the 19th century were the Irish language and Irish traditional music. T? all intents and purposes the language died but the music survived. The fortunes and the personalities of this music in America make a fascinnating study. We are fortunate indeed that Francis 0 'N eill thought it worth while writing down this story and giving it to us in two books which are a most valuable survey of one aspect of Irish-American social history from approximately the end of the American Civil War to the 1920s.

Many people visualise Irish tradittional music in the US as a series of pleasant family entertainments with fiddlers and step-dancers in nice Catholic neighbourhoods or in Catholic High School auditoriums. This image is partly true.

It has been argued that the Catholic authorities discouraged the early Irish immigrants in the United States from moving on to the open lands of the Mid-West. It was felt that their faith could be better protected and Catholic education better fostered by keeping the Irish together in large city neighhbourhoods with their own people, rather than having them scattered in isolated communities where priests were scarce. In time the city parish did in fact become a centre, not just of relligious observance, but also of social activity and entertainment.

But this is not the whole story. The Irish did move out from the cities of the east coast and they brought their traditional music with them. One hunddred years ago this music was part of the general American entertainment in musichall and pub without any consccious ethnic boundaries or ghetto limittations.

o 'Neill describes Irish musicians in all sorts of situations. One of his acquaintances was John Conners, an uileann piper from Dublin who, before the American Civil War, played proofessionally on Mississippi steamboats plying out of Memphis, Tennessee. That's a far cry from the Boston Catholic High School.

With the extension of the record industry and of radio in the 1920s Irish traditional music found a new dimension in the United States and especially in New York. This also coincided with a great wave of emiggration from Ireland to America after our own Civil War. Many of our best fiddle players went at this time and got involved in the Irish music scene in a semi-professional way. As it happened Sligo supplied a lot of these and the Sligo style began to dominate the scene:

Many names come to mind: Larry Redican, Paddy Killoran, Paddy Sweeney, Martin Wynne and, of course, the great Michael Coleman. Coleman became a legendary figure and his series of records (78s) were the showwpieces which many fiddle players proceeded to imitate just as tenors imitated, John McCormack. As in the case of McCormack the imitations were often bad and were made at the expense of other regional styles.

The sounds of this period of Irish music in the US - combined with a great deal of background information °have become available in the last couple of years in the albums of a new recordding company Shanachie Records. As well as publishing the finest contempporary Irish musicians in Ireland, in the United States and elsewhere they are re-issuing historical recordings of mussicians like Michael Coleman, Paddy Killoran and Patsy Tuohey. Without going into critical details of each record one can say that Shanachie Records and the books of Captain Francis 0 'Neill cover the greater part of the history of Irish traditional music in the United States.

THE WHEELS OF THE WORLD, classics of I rish Traditional Music as captu red in the timeless recordings of Patrick J. Tuohey, Michael Coleman, James Morrisson, Tom Ennis and other legendary performers. (SHANACHIE 33001)

THE LEGACY OF MICHAEL COLEMAN, see above. (SHANACHIE 33002)

PADDY KILLORAN'S BACK IN TOWN Classic Recordings by one of the great Irish fiddlers of our time. (SHANACHIE 33003)

SHANACHIE RECORDS, 1375, Crosby Avenue, Bronx N.Y. 10461. USA. Distribbuted in I rei and by Claddagh Records.

IRISH FOLK MUSIC: A Fascinating Hobby. by Capt. Francis O'Neill, The Regan Printing House, Chicago 1910.

IRISH MINSTRELS AND MUSICIANS: by Capt. Francis O'Neill, (The Regan Printing iHouse, Chicago 1913.)

Both of these books were re-issued in photolithographic facsimile by E.P. Publishhing Ltd. East Ardsley, Wakefield, Yorkshire in 1973.

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POP BRENDAN BALFE

CONSIDER the Reverend Charles Boykin, a good shepherd in Florida who persuaded his flock to gather together over 2,000 dollars worth of pop records and publicly burn them outside his Baptist Church. The Rev. Chas. mainttained that rock 'n ' roll's appeal is to the flesh - a sensuous quality that grabs the youngsters by the cars and leads them to the bedroom. In fact, he added that, of 1,000 girls who became preggnant out of wedlock, 984 committed fornication while rock music was being played.

Recognise the year, sports fans? 1956, perhaps? No - the Rev. C.B. gave voice to that little gem in 1975, after which, presumably he made like the good shepherd and got the flock outta there. Such utterances were not unusual in the early fifties, when Bill Haley and Elvis Presley started a form of popular' music that became the pre· dominant sound of the western world. Pop music was a peculiarly American music form - a hybrid of black rhythm and blues and white hillbilly music that was greeted with righteous indiggnation by the adult America. 'Jungle Music " they called it. 'Diabolical defiance', they shouted, a 'voodoo of frustration' they proferred, and the more they shouted stop, the more the kids bought the records. Ten years after Presley's arrival, record sales in America alone exceeded one billion dollars. This year, a decade later, pop music is the single most profitable arm of the entire entertainment business. It also became America's most visible ex port (with the possible exception of the U.S. army and Coca-Cola).

So , despite the Reverend Boykin's warnings on its aphrodisiacal qualities, pop music has finally become respecttable, not to say profitable - a member of good standing of the good 01' showwbiz industry, filling theatres, selling newspapers, dominating the airwaves. The rebel has mellowed, become a little paunchy around the waist and looks for tax relief for being an Art form. It forgets it was once a happy carefree teenage kid, balanced between innocence and rebellion, and all the healthier for it. But Art, it ain't. If there is an art involved, it's simply perfecting

a method of producing music that is instantly disposable and forgettable, like a paper plate: music that was meant to be danced to, and not analysed. As someone said of the meaningful-lyrics genre - 'If I wanted to send a message, I'd use western union'.

Trends and styles come and go, but in its early days, rock 'n ' roll was a tremendously liberating force. Once the command had been taken out of the hands of the businessmen of Tin Pan Alley by rock 'n ' roll, any young kid could grab a guitar and write a song and conceivably have a hit record. The bussinessmen retired to grow corn, instead of peddling it. And that's what pop was all about - instant success, the Amerrican dream that anybody could become president (and I'm beginning to believe it). And lots of anybodys did make hit records, thousands of them - some successful, some one-hit-wonders. The music lives on, even if its golden age has long since passed. It's perhaps indicattive of America's lack of tradition that writers and broadcasters were prompted to analyse and dissect pop music - a self-conscious attempt to pin down the ephemeral, to explain the magical.

The real heroes of pop were few in retrospect - Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley, n., Roy Orbison, Bob Dylan, The Beatles - and the essence of their music was inexplicable. But that didn't stop people trying to explain it. Dylan and the Beatles were easy too, until they attracted the attention of the analysts.

Long tomes were written by the quality newspapers on the allegation that the answer, my friends, was blowing in the wind or that the initials of 'Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds' spelt L.S.D., or that 'Yesterday' was comparable to the best of Schubert (Sunday Times, take a bow) or that 'Eight Miles High' by the Byrds was a hallucinary drug experience and not, as it was intended, the impressions of an uncomfortable plane journey. The meanderings were such that the artists, surprised at first, delighted in believing the weighty critiques that pop music was suddenly Meaningful Art of the Highest Order. And so pop entered its worst phase yet interminable, shapeless, self-indulgent guitar solos, experiments with rock groups and symphony orchestras that were neither good pop nor good classical music, and where the ten-minute drum solo used to be the bane of every listener's life, the newest curse was the tasteless over-use of the moog synthesizer, a nasty piece of work that could reproduce everything from 'bagpipes to air-raid sirens, and usually did.

The pretentiousness of the music was matched only by its length.

Today, the cry is for punk rock and whatever reservations you may pin on them about destructive lyrics, the punkksters have certainly gone back twen ty years to basic rock 'n ' roll. The music of the late seventies reminded them of the Tin Pan Alley candy floss that rock 'n ' roll had originally replaced. For them, the music had become too resppectable - the format had become too smooth, too laid-back, too sophisticcated. Even the up-tempo disco hits sounded like groovy Ray Conniff Singers.

Nevertheless, pop is still in good health, and despite the publicity, punk rock hasn't become the force it was expected to. Maybe it will quietly fade away - before the Reverend Charles Boykin gets to hear it.

Irish Heritage: Celtic Treasures on Tour
Liam de Paor looks at the implications of sending Ireland's most valuable antiquities abroad.

THE SENDING of Ireland's 'nattional treasures' to America, to be placed on exhibition at five cenntres there, has understandably provoked some protest and controversy. There is always some risk in moving fragile and ancient objects. When dozens of them. are transported across the Atlantic, and then moved from city to city across a continent, the risk obviously cannot be dismissed lightly.

What purpose then does such an exxhibition serve, to justify taking the risk? Well, one good result will be to raise consciousness. There can hardly be anyyone of age in Ireland who is not in some measure aware of the existence of the Book of Kells, the Ardagh Chalice and the Tara Brooch. But their existence is largely taken for granted. They are inert certificates of former civilisation, filed away in the museums and libraries which are charged with their custody. Schoolchildren are led past them in croocodiles, on the day in their lives on which they visit the National Museum, or are taken to Dublin to visit the Museum, the National Gallery, Dail Eireann and the Zoo. The institutions which look after the 'national treasures', study them and in most cases have been reesponsible for their preservation in the first place, are on nobody's list of priorities for public funds. The newest giimmicky Institute, whose creation will assist the political career of a minister as well as the careers of the bureaucrats and apparatchiks who will man it, will have precedence over older bodies. This is the way of things. It has led, however, to underfinancing and undermanning of institutions with large responsibilities,

The bodies involved in mounting the American exhibition are Trinity College, the Royal Irish Academy and the National Museum of Ireland. The Museum objects going on display are from the Academy's collection, placed on permanent deposit in the National Museum in 1890, under an agreement by which the Academy retained respoonsibility for them. The exhibition will bring to these bodies funds which it is difficult to envisage being provided in any other way. The Americans museums and galleries in which the Irish material will be shown are all both prestigious and, by Irish standards, extremely weaalthy. Their money, provided by a country which contributes more than lip-service to culture, will pay for the transport costs, the security, the elaboorate precautions against damage and the production of the catalogue (which proovides, for some of the objects, the first full description in print).

The major objects have travelled before. the Book of Kells has been to London for binding and examination. The Ardagh Chalice and the Tara Brooch have. also benefited from the attention of the conservatio laboratries of the BritIsh Museum. While Trinity now has good conservation facilities, the National Museum has not got the facilities necessary for its responsibilities. It employs experienced technicians, but no qualified conservationist.

It is also worth noting that these objects normally do not have the serviices of anyone expert in the arts of design and display. The American exhiibition will show them to the best advanntage. Normally, all the objects can be seen readily enough by anyone who has a few hours to spare to visit the three institutions, within half a mile of one another in the centre of Dublin: But a specially mounted exhibition, if it is well done, will demonstrate something of content and meaning. It should, from the American exhibition of nearly a huudred objects, be possible to get a real sense of early Irish civilisation.

The works which that civilisation produced are ours in the narrow sense that a culture located· in our island and created by people remotely connected to us by blood is ours. Bu t they belong to the world and our relationship to them is essentially custodial. They are not widely known outside Ireland - or at least not as manifestations of a distincctive civilisation. In America, far more people will see them in a year and a half than would see them in several lifetimes in Ireland. To achieve this is in itself worth doing.

Anyone who has worked on the connservation and preservation of ancient monuments, works of art or antiquities; knows that every decision one makes in this area must be a compromise of some kind. These things are to be enjoyed and to be studied (and the two are never fully compatible). There is no such thing as absolute conservation or absollute restoration: one must always decide on some kind of balance. Watercolours fade by exposure to light: on the other hand a picture is meaningless in the dark. Works of art are to be seen: exhiibition has its dangers. The decision for the American exhibition having been taken, perhaps we should enjoy the benefits, not least that an important part of the world will be dazzled by an Irish splendour.

- This exhibition, at present on show in New York at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, will also be going to San Francisco (opening Febbruary 1978). Pittsburgh (June), Boston (October) and Philadelphia (February 1979).