FOR MANY Galwegians, the Claddagh Palace in Salthill was "the first cinema we went to...a place of wonder, a doorway to everywhere", and a place still fondly remembered.
The cinema has inspired the latest single from Connemara singer-songwriter Me Auld Flower, which is released, with an accompanying video, tomorrow, Friday October 9, via Redemptress Records.
Me Auld Flower was inspired to write the song while leading a group of North American tourists around Ireland. "I got feeling a bit nostalgic about my childhood and how people you were once inseparable from can become absolute strangers over time," he said. "At first it's imperceptible, then it's irreversible.
"The Claddagh Palace would have been the first cinema we went to, in the early 1990s. It closed a few years later but somewhere in the dark of my mind a projectionist is puffing on a cigarette and the picture is still rolling."
The track also features on Me Auld Flower's vivid album The Vaults of Consciousness. See meauldflower.net, Spotify, and Instagram.
