Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Derek Warfield "Washington's Irish"



Great new album put together by the living legend, Derek Warfield, one of the founding members of The Wolfe Tones, with an indepth history booklet in the jacket sleeve reminding everyone of the massive Irish contribution to the American Revolution, as well as all of the Irish musicians/composers whom wrote so many tunes , often connected to the american revolutionary...Every song on this singing, fiddling, and dancing bad baby is superb, but my favorite so far is "Captain Molly (The Ballad of Molly Pritcher)" which tells the tale of the Irish-american heroine, Mary Ludwig Hayes McCauley, who took up arms and risked her life, time and time again, so that the american revolutionaries could drive the Brits from american shores. There are so many stellar ditties, reels, jigs, ballads and anthems on this superb Irish tribute to the american revolutionary that I would need to write a short novella to describe all of them in detail. Suffice to say that this CD should never be passed up and is a brilliant musical lesson that reminds listeners of the massive Gaelic contribution to America's independence from Britain. "A Dream of Liberty", (which closes Radio Rebel Gael's "New Years Feile" a couple paddycasts ago) is another fave, brilliant spoken poetry to music that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up, it was so powerful and stirring. Absolutely best patriotic tribute to the Irishmen who fought with George Washington to turn the tide and keep the tentacles of British Imperialism at bay. Don't be a naysayer,  ye Fenians, get yer copy soon before this bad-baby is sold out.

http://www.theyoungwolfetones.com/

*On A Side Note* I hope no one misreads my CD review of Derek Warfield's kick ass latest album as some kind of rightwing, pro-war, flag waving patriotic jingoism. Far from it, while I think the american revolution was brilliant (especially kicking out the Brits and becoming independent from Britain), I am not a fan of the U.S. government today, the U.S. military, the U.S. military industry, and I am a life long opponent of U.S. Imperalism like many of my family. But I do like some of the basic ideals of the american revolutionaries, including the seperation of Church and State, the founding fathers (even though they were slave owners) dislike for the power of the Church and the Banks (they all warned against corporations, banks and the Church having too much power), and especially their strong dislike and resistance to the British Crown. (More than lip service, they took up arms against the biggest super power of their time and with a rag tag army, many whom had no shoes and barely a coat or food in many cases, they kicked those Brit bastards back to the otherside of the Atlantic). The Bill of Rights, The Declaration of Independence, and the U.S. Constitution, are still some of the most progressive documents enacted as law. Howard Zinn's book , "A People's History of the United States", gets into how different the revolutionary language of the Declaration of Independence is, to , that of the U.S. constitution, a more conservative document, more catering to the ruling class and the property owners. That aside, the U.S. government today, has slowly but surely eroded the peoples faith in its governance, and has more and more turned out to be nothing less than a giant, and very corrupt and often violent, Corporation kow towing to the Banks, The Pentagon, and the Multinationals, time and time again. And worse than that, is this government's sickening relationships with the United Kingdom and Israel.