What got you hooked to 'our' music?

[Les Cruttenden]

spent time living in Ireland in my twenties.....got to love most things Irish...the music especially............Les.

[BrassBlower]

It was a slippery slope.

Enya led to Clannad
Clannad led to Fairport Convention
Fairport Convention led to Steeleye Span
Steeleye Span led to Solas
Solas led to Cherish the Ladies

and here I am!

[Key_of_D]

Dropkick Murphy's then onto Flogging Molly, then onto the Pogues, and then finally the Chieftains. And I haven't turned back!

[Alexander]

It began with Enya, I think
then Clannad,
after a holiday in Eyre there was a jump over to De Dannan,
Pogues then,
after a second holiday in Eyre with an "Altan"-concert up there in Donegal came Tommy Hayes,
The Bothy Band, Christy Moore, Chieftains, Moving Hearts and still going "forward".

Regards
Alex

[Xylogoat]

For me it was computer game Quake (3D first person shooter) with a little help from Paddy Glackin (bare with me on this one).

In my younger years I started playing the said game on my pc (which basically involves running down passageways shooting anything that moves). What I thought was the backing track to the game was unusual but very suitable & addictive music. I later discovered that the game was just playing a CD (Paddy Glackin's Full Spate) in the drive which my brother had left there. Well from then on I was hooked, and I've never been able to listen to the tunes on that CD with out felling the urge to whip out my shottie and blow a few heads off.

PS. I'm seeing the doctors next week to review my release date.

[dubhlinn]

For me it was computer game Quake (3D first person shooter) with a little help from Paddy Glackin (bare with me on this one).

In my younger years I started playing the said game on my pc (which basically involves running down passageways shooting anything that moves). What I thought was the backing track to the game was unusual but very suitable & addictive music. I later discovered that the game was just playing a CD (Paddy Glackin's Full Spate) in the drive which my brother had left there. Well from then on I was hooked, and I've never been able to listen to the tunes on that CD with out felling the urge to whip out my shottie and blow a few heads off.

PS. I'm seeing the doctors next week to review my release date.

I think that wins the prize for the most novel introduction to ITM of all time

Slan,
D.

[Wormdiet]

I can only imagine what must have been going through yer head as that music was playing. . .

"I am killing things and yet I feel . . .. . . like dancing a little jig!" That's hilarious!

[BrassBlower]

It was a slippery slope.

Enya led to Clannad
Clannad led to Fairport Convention
Fairport Convention led to Steeleye Span
Steeleye Span led to Solas
Solas led to Cherish the Ladies

and here I am!

Now, watch it go back the other way:

CTL to the Chieftains
The Chieftains to the Fureys
The Fureys to Bohinta (Martin and Aine Furey)
Bohinta to It's a Beautiful Day
IABD to Avalon Rising
Avalon Rising to Blackmore's Night and the Mediaeval Baebes
Blackmore's Night to Clannad, and the Mediaeval Baebes to Enya

[LeeMarsh]

My music started with singing around the house and piano lessons at age 8. Choirs and chorus through middle school. I started playing guitar to accompany my singing in the mid 60's with the folk revival but didn't include Irish. 70's saw more folk music and even managed a semi-weekly coffee house for a couple of years. In the late 80's I moved to Baltimore, and found my self alone (wife and kids decided not to join me). So I got involved with contra dance music. It had a combination of blue grass, old time, cajun, french-canadian, and Irish. Baltimore had an open band that played for one of the weekly dances each month and had rehersals at folks housed each month. After a couple of years I started to notice that most of my favorite tunes were Irish. So I started to attend a few sessions and finally settled into a regular session with folks gratious enough to let me play most of the sets and occasionally to forget they were all better musicians than I.

So what hooked me was playing the music, first for contra-dancers, and then in sessions. As my interest increased I went from guitar to whistle to flute to bodhran. I can play intermediate guitar and bodhran; I am still a beginner on whistle and flute. I am hooked on the music and my wife complains I get cranky if I don't get out to a session at least once a week, twice a week is even better.

[anniemcu]

The Chieftains, The Boys of the Lough, The Battlefield Band, and more... way back in the mid to late 70s. ... not to mention the Scottish pipes that my mother weaned me to way back before that. I am grateful for an exceptionally ecclectic musical upbringing!

[Tony McGinley]

We're a big gang of different people, I was wondering what it was that got you hooked to this kind of music in the first place.

I myself got hooked in 1991, the first time I went to Scotland, my first cd, I believe, the compact collection by the corries.
.

I had an instant love for Scotland, and for its music (among other things ), and so the story goes..

Put it down to my age or to
failing eyesight or just plain stupidity!!
But I have just twigged - Amar -
that you have actually posted
on the wrong board.
That said, Dale and the guys
haven't yet put up a Scottish
board.

Maybe you are also hooked
on Irish Traditional Music?

[amar]

We're a big gang of different people, I was wondering what it was that got you hooked to this kind of music in the first place.

I myself got hooked in 1991, the first time I went to Scotland, my first cd, I believe, the compact collection by the corries.
.

I had an instant love for Scotland, and for its music (among other things ), and so the story goes..

Put it down to my age or to
failing eyesight or just plain stupidity!!
But I have just twigged - Amar -
that you have actually posted
on the wrong board.
That said, Dale and the guys
haven't yet put up a Scottish
board.

Maybe you are also hooked
on Irish Traditional Music?

Hmm, Tony, when I wrote our kind of music, I didn't mean only irtrad, but also scottish, quite similar anyhow.

[Tony McGinley]

Hmmmmmm!! Yes very similar!!



Like Swiss and German?
Or Like Swiss and French?
Could it be like Swiss and Italians?
Or maybe Like Swiss and Dutch?



The Scots and Irish are like brothers
when fighting a common enemy. And -
The Scots and Irish fight like brothers,
when they compete.

The Irish like the Scots - well most of them,
and the Scots like the Irish - well some of them.

We speak a similar language - have fought
the British - have a rebel attitude - and OH yes!!
as you mentioned - we have much the same music.

In fact its the IRISH who gave the Scots their
music - well their good music anyways.

[Charlene]

. . . . . . .(snip)

In fact its the IRISH who gave the Scots their
music - well their good music anyways.

I've heard it said that the Irish also gave the Scots bagpipes and the kilt - and the Scots haven't seen the joke yet!

[Tony McGinley]

As to the question posed by Amar's post
in the first place, I would say that I was always
hooked but I didn't realise it due to the anger
I felt at the "guardians" of Celtic culture,
and the born-again Gaelgóries, who had
succeeded, for a long time, in keeping Irish
music and culture in the dark ages.

It's a bit like the attitude to dancing that is
portrayed in the excellent and very funny
movie "Strictly Ballroom"

Then guys like Sean Ó Ríada, The Chieftans and later
Micheál O'Súillleabháin with his different approach
to Irish music on piano, and in the dance music
Martin Hayes & Denis Cahill - helped to open my
ears to the treasure that lay hid in our music.

There is not a week goes by now, that I do not marvel
at the "discovery" of some beautiful "new" tune when I start
to learn it on the piano or whistle.

I just wish I had made the discovery a bit earlier in my life.