{"id":5643,"date":"2011-03-14T16:15:46","date_gmt":"2011-03-14T21:15:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.net\/?p=5643"},"modified":"2013-08-28T01:32:13","modified_gmt":"2013-08-28T01:32:13","slug":"on-the-shamrock-fest-post-mortem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=5643","title":{"rendered":"On the Shamrock Fest Post-Mortem"},"content":{"rendered":"

Contrary to recent appearances, allyngibson.com<\/a> is not an all-music, all-the-time blog. I do listen to music, I do write about music from time to time, but I don’t really have the right vocabulary<\/i> to write knowingly or critically about music. I really just write about the stuff that I like and the stuff that makes me feel. The only reason for the sense that this has become a music blog is that a number of releases I’m really interested in have come out in a compressed period of time and I’ve felt it necessary to write about them.<\/p>\n

That said, let’s talk more<\/i> music! \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

Over the weekend, I attended Shamrock Fest<\/a> in Washington, DC. It’s a Celtic Rock\/Punk festival that’s been held for about a decade, and this year some of the major headline acts included the Charm City Saints, Carbon Leaf, and the Dropkick Murphys. I’d thought about attending in years past; this year, things just happened to work out in that direction, and I went and spent a lovely (if seriously windy) spring day in DC.<\/p>\n

I like the Celtic Rock and Punk genres, though I’m not really an expert on them. (Carbon Leaf, I should note, isn’t Celtic Rock or Punk by any stretch. They’re Brazillian Polka Rock. Or is it Brazillian Polka Funk?) I have CDs from the Pogues, Dropkick Murphys, Flogging Molly, The Tossers, and a couple of other bands at home, so I’m familiar with the genre and some of the traditional Irish songs.<\/p>\n

One band I was most looking forward to seeing live was the Charm City Saints<\/a>. They’re a Baltimore-based Celtic Punk band, and I bought an EP of theirs, Never Go Home Again<\/i>, off iTunes a few years ago. They put on an awesome gig. They made an unholy racket, and I went half-deaf in my right ear. (Seriously. It didn’t stop ringing for about two hours.) After their set, I bought their full-length CD, Hooligans & Saints<\/i>.<\/p>\n

Another band I saw was Boston’s The Gobshites<\/a>. They put on a nice set, and I bought a CD from them, too — a collection of Irish drinking songs entitled Songs My Da Got Pissed To<\/i>. (Unfortunately, the CD didn’t play in my car stereo on the drive back home from Greenbelt, and it barely played in the stereo at home. Signs of a bad burn, methinks.)<\/p>\n

Another band I thought was interesting was Philadelphia’s Barleyjuice<\/a>; they did a Celtic Punk-ified version of The Clash’s “London Calling.” (You can hear a sample of it here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

The band I most<\/i> wanted to see?<\/p>\n

Carbon Leaf<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I used to see Carbon Leaf on a regular basis when I was a student at the University of Richmond. They would play the campus bar maybe every other month, or campus parties or a bar down in Shockoe Bottom. After I left Richmond, I didn’t see the band again until an outdoor concert in downtown Raleigh<\/a> in 2005.<\/p>\n

I tried Tweeting the Carbon Leaf setlist Saturday night. Unfortunately, not a single tweet went through, and I can’t recall the exact details of their setlist. But I can tell you they went with some seriously<\/i> deep cuts — “The Boxer,” “Desperation Song,” and “Toy Soldiers” from 2001’s Echo Echo<\/i>, “Home” and “American Tale” from 1999’s Ether-Electrified Porch Music<\/i>. I also remember “Mary Mac” and “Sloop John B.” I also think they played “One Prairie Outpost,” and I’d swear there was a song from How the West Was One<\/i>, but I don’t remember which one. It was a tight hour of musicianship.<\/p>\n

I was a bit far back from the stage, so my pictures are a bit grainy. I’m not sure why, but I found it amusing that Barry Privett, Carbon Leaf’s lead singer, was wearing a white dress shirt and a black necktie. After a day of bands in kilts and thronging crowds of college students drowned in green, he was completely incongruous. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

That brings me to my thought on Shamrock Fest. It was like a state fair, but with Celtic Rock and Punk music. There was a concession area selling state fair-like food. There was a carnival area with ferris wheels and climbing walls and ball tossing. There were vendor booths selling inflatable unicorns and metal hula hoops. Unlike a state fair, there weren’t livestock shows, and the audience, by and large, was college students. And, by the time Carbon Leaf came on stage, extremely<\/i> drunk college students. \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n

I had a blast. Yes, it was windy. Yes, the beer choices were few. Yes, there was the wafting odor of pot smoke from time to time. But! It was a fantastic day of music and fun, even if I spent more money on music than I should have. Shamrock Fest was nothing short of awesome, and I’ll have to do it again next year! :h2g2:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Contrary to recent appearances, allyngibson.com is not an all-music, all-the-time blog. I do listen to music, I do write about music from time to time, but I don’t really have the right vocabulary to write knowingly or critically about music. I really just write about the stuff that I like and the stuff that makesContinue reading “On the Shamrock Fest Post-Mortem”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[1185,93,165,166,167,123],"class_list":["post-5643","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music","tag-barleyjuice","tag-carbon-leaf","tag-celtic-punk","tag-celtic-rock","tag-charm-city-saints","tag-shamrock-fest","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5643","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5643"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5643\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}