Peter Laban

On another -locked- thread we briefly talked about 'the Russian/box fiddle'. I had in mind when I mentioned it. Michael Dinan is playing one of these, of his own make. I couldn't find the clip at the time, as it turns out now the clip had Michael's name misspelled. Here it is, belated and all.

The unfortunate thing, as I recall, is that the explanation/translation of Caher Rua-Redhaired Charles appears in the sleeve notes of the Glackin lp. They were written by Séamus Ennis, who, you'd expect, knew/should have known better. The Caher=Cathall never worked for me. Caher is commonly used here for ringforts so the Red Fort can be a local landmark, if you know the locality the tune originates in.

Nearly, it was Johnny Moynihan, who took 'Tripping up the Stairs' along from Tony Hall's to De Dannan shortly after.

It IS a great listening adventure. Between the internet and everything else though I sometimes think there's almost too much to listen to. So it's important to pick the right stuff and really listen to it. I sometimes think I was better off during the eighties when I had maybe a dozen tapes and a bunch of lps but knew every note on them. Now I have a veritable archive but have loads of stuff I have heard maybe once or twice. And I won't even touch o nthe abundance of CDs available, I bought three this year. Today I still find I can recall many tunes I learned from those early tapes (I mentioned the one above) while I have trouble remembering I learned a tune last week (I will have the tune when prompted, the problem is remembering I have it at all). That may be age kicking in though.

Lovely stuff. I happened to sail into that first tune yesterday while scrounging around the corners of my brain for old repertoire. Caher Rua it was called at the time, by some. Paddy Glackin recorded that under that name didn't he?

They had a shot at it though with the box/'russian' fiddles and the brass ones

That lp was also (re-issued as?) Outlet solp 1041. Mine is dated 1980 As for the other example, I don't know now...

Although written for pipers, you'll find this article useful.

He was talking about playing for a good bit and doing the air concertina all through that, I have a sequence of six or seven of them. It was hard to resist. He did all his set pieces: how he was left in the concertina room at Wheatstone's to pick an instrument. Waking up to find the Ballinakill asleep in the van outside his gate (after a gig) and getting them in for breakfast, the threshing stories. He was on great form.

The battle there is keeping the microphones out, and not covering instruments, hands or sticking in to faces, as much as possible The photographs are part of an archival project: sound, image and video recordings of all official events at the school.

You can safely assume repeated first and second parts for AABB. DDKK has me stumped.

hehe, yes we did. Found a whole batch of them just now, for some of them I even have soundtracks, if'd look through the tapes. But you're right about it being '85, not sure about the weather on the day though although it probably was damp enough. I remember it sunny and warm too though. I remember you asking Liam if he wanted a photo of a jig or a reel for your avatar pic. And you took off the watch for it. Oops, I meant to edit this into the last post.

hehe, yes we did. Found a whole batch of them just now, for some of them I even have soundtracks, if'd look through the tapes. But you're right about it being '85, not sure about the weather on the day though although it probably was damp enough. I remember it sunny and warm too though.

I know, that's why it's called the OLD Silver Spear, as opposed to the regular one. Try this one then: T:Old Silver Spear, The M:C| R:reel K:Ddor AD~D2 D2EG|AcBG AGEG|AD~D2 EDEG|G2AG EDEG| AD~D2 D2EG|AcBG AGEG|c2cA B2BA|1 GBAG EDEG:|2 GBAG EGBc|| d2Bd edBd|d2BG AGEG|d2Bd edBA|GBAG EGD2| d2Bd edBd|d2BG AGEG|c2cA B2BA|1 GBAG EGBc:|2 GBAG EDEG|| or transpose it up to eAAG A... like Noel Hill and McMahon do it

Memories blur Geoff, the years roll into one. The year you were wearing that handsome jacket you hadn't made my pipes yet. Was it '84 maybe, and not such a wet summer? I don't suppose Steve Chambers will remember either although he was there too as the picture shows. I have some other pictures ( which I couldn't immediately find, Pier Kuipers took them) of groups of people sitting in the street listening to us and it looks like it was a lovely day.

Not when the photograph was taken it wasn't

I may as well get another batch out of the way: During the Corofin festival in March Paula Carroll conducted a public interview with Chris Droney which was highly entertaining. A presentation was made to Chris and music was played. Chris was joined by some of his children and grandchildren so we had the third, fourth and fifth generation of concertina playing Droneys on stage. It was a good night. A few shots :

I have just rejoined the site after a year's leave of absence. In the past I posted photographs taken at the concertina concert at the Willie Clancy Summer School here. A tradition broken this time. A bit belated but enjoy (or not if you are so inclined) I have now deleted the slideshows.

Joe Maire Micilin is the name Coimhin O Rgallaigh used for the tune on his CD. It's more wellknown as (nearly there Leo) The Old Silver Spear and more yet as The New(ly) Mown Meadow[/i. You will find it in several different keys, the old concertina players would have played it in the lower key