With the country awash with corruption in our political, church, banking and legal professions, and the warmongering Americans wondering which innocent civilians to bomb next, this 20th anniversary issue commemorating Luke Kelly’s premature departure underscores how feeble most of our artists have become in speaking out about the horrors of the day. What Kelly would have thought, said and sang about the greed of racist Ireland can only be imagined.
In songs like ‘Springhill Disaster’, ‘For What Died The Sons of Roisin’ and the American ballad ‘Joe Hill’, Kelly expressed a uniquely clear sense of social awareness that added a passionate sharpness to the content of the songs he chose to sing. Those same songs, mostly unsung today, are sadly more relevant than the empty schlock purveyed by the You’re A Star generation. Indeed, few living wannabes could express the pain he sketches in Ian Campbell’s ‘The Sun Is Burning’, and his searing versions of Phil Coulter’s ‘Scorn Not His Simplicity’ and Kavanagh’s ‘Raglan Road’ are likely to remain the definitive ones.
Luke Kelly’s passion for literature lead to him giving full value to every syllable in every word and to every note and nuance. But he was equally capable of injecting more than enough gusto into lusty ballads of the class of ‘The Black Velvet Band’, ‘Whiskey In The Jar’ and ‘Home Boys Home’.
One serious flaw with this double album of 31 tracks is the inexplicable omission of ‘Days’, Kelly’s gutsy reworking of the Ray Davies song that proved he could cross borders into contemporary rock with panache. The absence of sleeve notes for such a historic release is no less sinful. Thankfully, the music transcends such carelessness with stunning power.