Search Results for 'The Times'

ACOUSTIC BLUES singer-songwriter Eric Bibb was born in New York in 1951 and grew up surrounded by the Greenwich Village folk music and literary scene which included Bob Dylan, Dave Von Ronk, Pete Seeger, Odetta, Judy Collins, and Joan Baez.

LORD BYRON once said “Always laugh when you can. It is cheap medicine.” He was echoed in this by Doris Lessing who declared “Laughter is by definition healthy.”

“IF YOU want to guarantee putting a smile on your face, it’s hard to think of a better show to see,” so declared The Daily Telegraph about the English comedy sketch group Idiot of Ants, who make their Irish debut in Galway next week.

PORTICO QUARTET are four young East London musicians who sound like nothing you have ever heard before. “There isn’t a band that sounds remotely like them,” according to The Observer.

Early on Friday August 18 1882, John Collins, a tenant farmer, having heard disturbances during the night coming from his neighbours’ house, the Joyces, went to check if all was well. He must have feared the worst because he brought with him two neighbours, Mary and Margaret O’Brien. They discovered an appalling sight. Even today, when our senses have been hardened by so many atrocities, it was a scene of savage murder that cried to heaven. No mercy was shown to this unfortunate family.

It’s very hard to describe a true Irishman, without acknowledging that we all share a complicated inheritance. At no time was that complication more powerfully amplified than in the crisis of identity leading up to and during War World I. On the one side is the unionist image of Irish Protestants loyally, and exclusively, rallying to the Union Jack, and sealing that union with their blood; while on the other side, the Catholic and nationalist men and women, the people of the 1916 Rising, who represent the ‘true’ Ireland, in sharp contrast to the misguided Irishmen slaughtered in France on the altar of British imperialism.

Week II

IT IS 1976. Sean Farrell has been mistakenly linked by the State to IRA activity and Emma Balstead, the daughter of a British military attaché officer, has run away from home.

Tom Humphries from the Irish Times stable is one of my favourite sport journalists. He is a terrific wordsmith; however, like most of us, he can be hit and miss on occasions.

Only a month after the superb Rhythm and Roots Festival, Americana fans in Kilkenny will be spoiled all over again with the much-anticipated arrival in town of the Handsome Family.