admin @ Mon, 2006-03-06 09:00
PITTSBURGH - Larry Kirwan doesn't mind the green plastic hats, the tacky "Kiss Me, I'm Irish" pins or the mugs of green beer poured for St. Patrick's Day.
"There's a certain part of St. Patrick's Day in the Irish-American psyche that says 'We made it,'" said Kirwan, frontman for New York-based Irish rockers Black 47.
"We arrived disheveled with no money in our pockets, and were treated like slaves all over the eastern United States, but we persevered and put our children through school and they became professionals and now we're an intrinsic part of American life. We arrived and survived," Kirwan said, "and St. Patrick's Day is a celebration of that."
The locally legendary house band at Connolly's pub in midtown Manhattan, Black 47 will treat Pittsburgh fans to cuts from "Bittersweet Sixteen," a retrospective of the group's 16-year career.
Due out March 21, the CD's centerpiece is a Vietnam/Iraq war trilogy, "My Love is in New York"/"Downtown Baghdad Blues"/"Southside Chicago Waltz," inspired by e-mails Kirwan receives from U.S. soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"Our job as a band is to take what those soldiers are saying and put it into a song that people will want to listen to," said Kirwan, a staunch opponent of the Iraq war. "There were a lot of soldiers, from the New York tri-state area especially, who joined the military after 9/11 because of their patriotism, but then they got over there and found out they're being badly used.
"They're still patriotic, but the situation is not how we see it, because there's so much spin going on in the media and how governments use the media," Kirwan, a native of Ireland, said.
He would be tempted to call the book "So, You Want to Be a Rock and Roll Star," and would urge up-and-coming bands to retain rights to the master copies of their songs. Black 47 didn't do that, and now the group's 1994 and 1996 CDs no longer are available in stores, and major labels EMI and Mercury Records aren't re-releasing those discs.
"That's the way it is with record companies, they don't care if you sell 5,000, 10,000, 20,000 CDs a year," Kirwan said. "That's nothing to them, they want the big money."
"I take a very broad approach," he said, discussing his playlist, which ranges from 1960s Fairport Convention songs to current Irish-themed punk bands Flogging Molly and Dropkick Murphys.
He occasionally will take requests to play Black 47's 1992 alternative-rock hit "Funky Ceili," which appears in its original form on the new disc.
"Funky Ceili" amusingly tells the tale of an Irishman who gets his girl pregnant and ducks his responsibility by moving to New York with the far-flung hopes of becoming an MTV star.
Produced by Rick Ocasek of the Cars, "Funky Ceili" remains a misunderstood song, said Kirwan, who intended the lyrics as a cautionary tale to the lads "that if you're going to have sex, be careful.
"I wrote it in a lighthearted manner so the point would come across better," he said, but instead of heeding the message, fans rejoice in the lead character's rakish ways.
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