16/11/2010

N 17


One of the songs most beloved of the sentimental and the drunk alike is Danny Boy, the archetypal Irish ballad dripping with pathos from its famous opening lines:” Oh Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling, From glen to glen, and down the mountain side”. In fact, songs about Ireland have often combined two themes – the lament of the exiled and emigrant romanticising their homeland and the magical and mysterious rural Ireland rooted in ancient cultures. Songs that painted pictures of a never-never land of rolling green fields, misty mountains, Guinness in country pubs served by a red-haired colleen and a hint of leprechaun have always found a ready market in England and the USA. One of the best-selling acts in the British charts in the sixties were The Bachelors, who had more hits than the Beatles in 1964 by laying on the Irish charm and whimsy thicker than butter on soda bread. (In 1966 , rather bizarrely, their version of Sounds of Silence outsold Simon & Garfunkel’s in Britain). In a post-punk era, groups like The Pogues may have had a harder, less romantic, edge but songs like A Pair of Brown Eyes could still lament “the streams, the rolling hills ,Where his brown eyes were waiting”.

Equally a recurrent theme in songs has been a nostalgic sense of loss voiced by those living and working overseas and who sought to recreate Ireland elsewhere. Songs that range from the purely sentimental to the ambiguous-the Pogues’ Thousands Are Sailing - to the dark bitterness of Christy Moore’s Missing You:"So you sail cross the ocean, away cross the foam, to where you're a Paddy, a Biddy or a Mick, good for nothing but stacking a brick”

The song here, N17, first released by the Saw Doctors in 1989, combines both themes in a infectiously joyful ode to the trunk road that goes through Sligo and Galway. An echo of Watford Gap and Driving Away from Home but with a more romantic setting. Over the last 20 years the Saw Doctors have produced a string of Irish folk/rock songs, often based round their home area of Tuam and County Galway. At times, you think that songs like The Green and Red of Mayo or Never Mind the Strangers might topple into sentimental cliché. What stops that, apart from the general upbeat and uplifting mood of much of their music, is the little snapshots of everyday life in the lyrics and the wry humour behind much of the observations, as in Music I Love –“ I've tried going to disco, throwing shapes on the floor, nothing ever happens. I don't go any more. Girls never know what I'm talking about, so I think I'll just take the easy way out. I'll just sit in my room with all the lights off, my mother and father think I'm gone daft .I stay home with the music I love”

N17 became one of their perennial sing-along anthems. As with many other songs about Ireland, it is written from an exile’s perspective ,of someone daydreaming on the filthy overcrowded trains of the stone walls and the grasses green. Yet it also recognises the usual truth behind such yearning: “I know things would be different if I ever decide to go back”. The same truism as in Kari Bremnes’ Song to a Town: you return at your peril as a stranger.

Even with the Saw Doctors, it seems sometimes hard to escape the clichés about Ireland. Yet cliches are usually just such because they are based on some sort of common experience and it is not difficult to find the Ireland of these songs. I once went on a holiday in Sligo in a caravan drawn by a monster of a horse called Ross who, over-dosed on oats, took out a farm gatepost in his urgent desire to get into the field. Maybe I expected to see what I saw because of the songs but there really were rolling green fields and the misty mountain of Knocknarea and country pubs where people with accordions and concertinas, fiddles and pipes wandered in for a ceilidh.

I don’t remember the N17 in that slow meander round Sligo. However, in the last week I have experienced the “twists and turns on the road” of the N20,further south near Cork, sitting in a mini-bus with a group of Finns and Poles as heads bounced off the ceiling with the bumps and swerves as the driver gave assurance he was only driving slowly, mind. Yet there was a feeling of going back in time, to the past as a foreign country- and perhaps a sense of the never-never land hovering somewhere just out of sight.

Link to song

40 comments:

  1. Thanks for the great column Geoff! It wasn't until you posted this that I realized I'd missed your insights into cities/countries - although I did enjoy very much the exploration of the moon/sun/sea/trains/planes/automobiles!

    This posting makes me want to visit Ireland!!

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  2. In case anyone wants the lyrics, I found them - they are below!:)

    Well I didn't see much future
    When I left the Christian brothers school,
    So I waved it goodbye with a wistful smile
    And I left the girls of Tuam.
    And sometimes when I'm reminiscing,
    I see the prefabs and my old friends,
    And I know that they'll be changed or gone
    By the time I get home again.

    Chorus:
    And I wish I was on that N 17
    (Stone walls and the grasses green)
    Yes I wish I was on that N 17
    Stone walls and the grasses green
    Travelling with just my thoughts and dreams

    Well the ould fella left me to Shannon,
    Was the last time I travelled that road.
    and as I turned left at Claregalway,
    I could feel a lump in my throat.
    As I pictured the thousands of times,
    That I travelled that well worn track,
    And I know that things would be different
    If I ever decide to go back.

    (Chorus)

    Now as I tumble down highways,
    Or filthy overcrowded trains,
    There's no one to talk to in transit
    So I sit there and daydream in vain.
    And behind all these muddled up problems
    Of living on a foreign soil,
    I can still see the twists and turns on the road
    From the square to the town of the tribes.

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  3. Geoff, The Saw Doctors are apparently playing a couple dozen shows in England, Scotland and Wales in November and December to promote the band's new album, The Further Adventures of The Saw Doctors - there is info here: http://www.ticketmaster.co.uk/The-Saw-Doctors-tickets/artist/776886. I might head to the London show on December 18; let me know if you go too!!

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  4. Thanks for posting the lyrics, Berg. I always thought they were singing "N17, Snow balls & the grass is green" (not "N17, stone walls & the grass is green") :)

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  5. The Sawdoctors are just the best 'feel good' band EVER! But ohhhh, to be back in Galway again!

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  6. Thanks for info Tiffanye. Yes-I'll let you know if I can get there. I am sure they are great live.

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  7. The first time I heard this song was on a coach going to Athenry, from Ballaghadreen, just outside Tuam! Whilst over visiting family in both locations. It was my favorite song then, and still is. It was even better to see them perform this live in Birmingham in the early 90's.

    Thanks Geoff!

    And I love that you're writing about Ireland after just getting back from there - it makes you a travel writer, out on assignment, reporting back!

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  8. I love driving on Irish roads. They’re lumpy, bumpy, rough and wild. In winter they use salt for seasoning, not gritting, and street lights are quite the rarity out in the sticks. Then there’s the speed limits that are in kilometres per hour – rural roads are 100 km/h and driving on them tricks me into thinking I’m going awesomely fast when I’m only really doing 62 mph. Doing 120 km/h (75 mph) on the new motorways feels like I’m doing a breakneck speed, when it’s almost no different to what I do on UK motorways. Maybe because the pace of life here is so much slower and more relaxed than in the UK that 75 mph feels absurdly quick. As an Englishman who has driven on Irish roads it’s interesting to get stuck behind someone going slow because I can get very irate very quickly. A lot of rural Irish roads have these sort of hard shoulders to move over to so faster moving traffic can overtake, but many don’t use them. Instead they just go slow. Massive queues can form and nobody seems to care, except the irate Englishman.

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  9. In case anyone is wondering, this is apparently what part of the N17 looks like! - http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/4d/IMG_N17atN60road479w.jpg

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  10. I love the album that this is from - Sing A Powerful Song - And don't they look like nice blokes on the cover:) - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/images/B00005YTRW/ref=dp_image_text_0?ie=UTF8&n=5174&s=music

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  11. I remember back in 1990 when I Useta Lover spent nine weeks at number one, becoming Ireland's best-selling single of all time. This is actually an incredibly successful band. Thanks for writing about them Geoff!

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  12. This song is the dog's bollox.

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  13. I heard this song on a different album, the US-only compilation "Sing A Powerful Song." Thanks for the great discussion of the never-never land of mythologized Ireland Geoff!

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  14. I love how they combine the rock sound of the Beatles, Irish musical traditions, punk rock and a working class vibe.

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  15. I think they are known mainly in the U.S. for the song "Never Mind the Strangers," which was used by Guinness in a million-dollar radio ad campaign for Harp Lager. They should be better known though!

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  16. I love the new album's cover art!! - http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/images/2010/0917/1224279033066_1.jpg

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  17. Love this song. Saw the guys in Norwich UEA for the first time, now a huge fan. It's a pleasure to watch a band having so much fun doing what they obviously love.

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  18. Seen em 8 or 9 times ….best group to come out of Ireland since early U2.

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  19. Love the description of the band in Rolling Stone: "The band's formula can best be described as one part Creedence, one part Hootie, and one part Irish Historical Society" - so true!

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  20. Hi, thought you might enjoy my cover of the song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZibcffIPFL0

    Cheers!

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  21. They never disappoint at their gigs. I can’t wait to see them again.

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  22. Have you heard their latest single Geoff, ‘Takin’ The Train’? It is from the new album. I think you'd like it and it fits with the theme of the column too...... It starts off all wistful:

    So I’m taking the train

    In the soft Galway rain

    and I’m heading for the green hills far away.

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  23. No, they are known over here - not just for the Guiness ad. They just finished touring in the US too. Great band!

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  24. Ah, my beloved Galway (if only it were nearer)

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  25. Their music is stunning. I had long wanted to drive the N17 whilst listening to the song – an achievement I managed last November on the N17 to Ireland West Airport Knock. Win!

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  26. No, I havent heard it-will look it out.

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  27. One of the first Saw Doctors songs i heard, loved em since .......

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  28. Did you notice that in the video Geoff posted, it is long enough ago that the beer cans have pull tabs!:)

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  29. You would also maybe like "Friday Town" – the Irish words of the chorus are place names, towns near Tuam, where the Docs are from. Caherlistrane is where the official video for the song was filmed. I LOVE this video! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KEkE4ZGLQU

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  30. They are just fantastic live. Thanks for the great column!

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  31. Re Amy's comment, in the comments under the video there is a discussion about whether the can is Carlsburg or Heineken!

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  32. Yes, I agree about them being great live. I feel like it's their live shows that has made them internationally famous. Definitely see them on this upcoming tour if you can Geoff!

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  33. The column raises such interesting questions about the act of writing a song about a place you're homesick for - another subgenre of songs maybe? This song seems to be all about an immigrant's homesickness, and as you point out in your column, Geoff, this is something that happens a lot with songs about Ireland: the songs are wistful, nostalgic, about being displaced, about a homeland. I can't think of another country that elicits this genre of music to the same degree - presumably because of the sheer number of Irish immigrants around the world, or people with Irish heritage somewhere. So I guess I see this song as more an example of homesickness songs, than never-never land songs. Or to put it another way, this is a song about a never-no-more land, not a never-never land.

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  34. It's definitely Heineken:)

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  35. I agree that this seems to be a song about leaving and then never quite making it back home. But I think that people of any country can relate to this - it doesn't seem specific to the Irish, to me.

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  36. Re Laura's point, it is a theme in a lot of Irish songs because of the large numbers who had to emigrate. However, I think the homesickness is also mixed up with the whole mythology in Irish history

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  37. Yes, I can see that - I guess i just wonder if it will be a theme in Polish songs now, for example, after the emigration to Western Europe recently - or other immigrants. But you're probably right that it's specific to the Irish:)

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  38. It's VERY specific to the Irish - take it from a Dubliner!

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  39. nice blog, like it a lot.

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