Songs Of The Workers

LUKE KELLY

Songs Of The Workers (Outlet Records)

BRENDAN BEHAN

Sings Irish Folksongs And Ballads (Outlet Records)

Luke Kelly and Brendan Behan had much in common. They were both Dubliners to the marrow, sang a lot, drank a lot and caused more social unrest merely by strolling down Grafton Street than an entire army of Irish "rockers" would achieve in a decade.

Of the two, Kelly was the more focused musician. His rough-hewn voice had a tenderness that comes into its own on this collection of labour songs from the pens of Ian Campbell, Ewan McColl and Peggy Seeger amongst others. Listen to his sweat-drenched performance on 'The Sun Is Burning', for example, and you'll understand why thousands took to marching on the streets. 'Springhill Mine Disaster' will be familiar to U2 fans and more recent converts to the genre, while other songs similarly extol the heroism of workers for whom risk of death was ever-present. All the material is delivered with a compassion and a conviction rare today.

'Thirty Foot Trailer' is a paean to the end of the travelling life; 'Alabama '58', in which Kelly's voice matches Peggy Seeger's words, is a vicious stab at worldwide injustice; and 'The Button Pusher' is an eerily humorous, satirical depiction of the man who holds his finger on the nuclear button. All in all, this is an album that scores better than most contemporary efforts in today's folk field and it serves as a fitting tribute to one of Ireland's greatest musical originals.

Brendan Behan, on the other hand, simply sang because he felt like it, more or less defying anyone to stop him. His album reveals not only his spontaneous conversational humour, but, contrary to his representation in some quarters as an ignorant drunken rebel, his erudition as well. (How many of his listeners knew who Gertrude Stein or Alice B Toklas were?).

The songs include such old warhorses as 'Down By The Glenside' (twice) and 'The Zoological Gardens', but you also get a chilling version of 'The Old Triangle', the eccentric 'We're Here Because We're Queer' and the magnificent 'Don't Muck About With The Moon’. Between tracks we are treated to Behan's unscripted asides, witticisms and even a spot of nose-blowing. Of course, he never missed a chance to poke fun at perfidious Albion, whether adopting an Oxford accent for 'The Captains And The Kings' (which he says he wrote in six minutes with the help of a bottle of whiskey and a manager threatening him with a revolver!), or his rendition of 'I Am A Happy English Lad'.