They’re all a celebration of how good it is to be alive, apart from the ones which are a lament about how bad it is being dead.

Shane MacGowan, discussing Irish music in a 1991 South Bank Show.

I rescued the show from our aging collection of slowly decaying video tapes (that said, they still play fine after 17 years which, for sure, is a damn sight longer than the DVD+R to which I transferred it will survive) and watched it again this morning.

It’s a beautifully researched and executed programme, the highlights of which are Bob Geldof interviewing Van Morrison and the talking (and, from time to time, singing) heads of Bono, Christy Moore and one Junior Crehan.

Crehan, an old-school traditional session musician and storyteller clearly represents the old Ireland in the face of young upstarts such as Bono, however, crucially, he’s clearly a predecessor rather than the last of his kind.

Subjects of all interviews – and the programme itself, much more so than Irish music per se – are why they write songs and what is Irishness? Answers to such a searching question are, of course, few and far between, however the exploration is wonderfully researched and includes a few key insights (or, at least, assertions) about Irish music:

  • It never underwent a revival, simply because it never died out.
  • Irish songs come from experience, rarely fiction.
  • The words themselves are often less important than the sounds.

Such an exploration cannot help but include, along the way, various insights into Yeats, Joyce and Kavanagh and the distinctions between Irish literature and Irish music do, indeed, blur as Van Morrison launches into a unique version of Kavanagh’s “Raglan Road”.

UPDATE 6/1/2008:

  • I found plenty of references to this show on the web. Directed by Peter Lydon, it’s entitled “Clear Cool Crystal Streams” and was first broadcast on ITV on 21st October 1991. It was entitled “Shamrock ‘n’ Roll” for broadcast in the USA and was reviewed in the New York Times. A 2002 article in Hotpress makes mention of Phil Lynott’s omission which, now I think about it, is a fairly glaring one.
  • Perhaps surprisingly, I can’t find any clips on Youtube. It was definitely worth rescuing my ancient recording.