Jack barely scrapes over the line this week – –

The title of this post is a reference to a comedic recording of a mythical Irish ceili band featuring the great Peter Sellers and produced by George Martin (later famous as the ‘fifth Beatle’).

But this is about ‘something completely different’.

My good friend Tom Swadley who leads a rather better band playing Irish traditional music, and based in Virginia and Tennessee, sent me a link to a documentary a few days ago. It traces the history of the Bothy Band from their inception to their recent 50^th anniversary reunion concert.

The Bothy Band emerged in the 1970s along with a few others such as ‘Planxty’ and ‘De Danaan’ playing not just very skillfully but with an obvious deep understanding and love of their inherited Irish music. One of their first recordings was of a concert in Paris and like everyone else I was blown away when I first heard it.

They play mainly instrumental sets of tunes with the occasional song thrown in to break things up, but it’s the sets of tunes that grabs you. There’s a tremendous energy and drive that comes from the combination of guitar, bouzouki and keyboard topped with the pipes, fiddles and flute. As others have said – this takes Irish music into the equivalent of ‘rock and roll’!

The documentary is really excellent and traces their career from the earliest days, using archive material, fly on the wall snippets of their rehearsals for the reunion concert, and then finishes with the actual concert. It reminded me of another great documentary about ‘The Weavers’ preparation for their farewell concert at Carnegie Hall (not the one in Dunfermline!). The treatment seemed very similar. In some ways the Bothy Band did for Irish music what the Weavers did for American music, so somewhat fitting!

Here’s a link –