I'm Black and I'm Proud: Musings on Irish (rock) music:

Blacks and the Irish. Blame us for rock and roll.

Being Irish, I know we like to take credit for a lot of things. Many of the claims are blarney, but in the case of rock music, give credit where it is due.

American country grew out of Celtic music. Country dated the blues of African Americans and as the song says, they called the baby rock and roll.

Not to get PC about it, but the Irish, like blacks, were an oppressed people. The niggers of Europe they were often called.

While the troubles of Ireland today have morphed to involve thugs and gangs and drug dealers, it is a little hard to forget that about 150 years ago the English pretty much tried to starve the country it occupied to death.

Then there is the matter of the Catholic Church and its iron-fisted grip on the populace which still has a bit of (rusty) grasp left.

All this made for Irish rebels, and what would rock be without rebellion? The Irish stereotypes of hard-drinking artists types plays well into the rock mythology, too.

Bob Dylan ain’t Irish, but he takes his name from Dylan Thomas, a Welsh poet. And his music owes more than a bit to the likes of the Clancy Brothers.

Paul McCartney is Irish, but hey, no place is perfect. His wimp side is part of his heritage -- the Irish show bands. To this day, there is quite a bit of schmaltz in the IRL in large part because of this tradition -- that is the Danny Boy singers who perform that song -- the Stairway to Heaven of Irish ballads -- in mawkish Manilow fashion.

There's also Irish folk and dance which made a resurgence in the 1990s. Riverdance combines the worst of both worlds, taking step dancing to Vegas proportions. The ancient Chieftains for all their musicianship, to be honest about it, are sort of boring.

I saw them recently, and they seem like nice guys. They even invite locals to sing, dance and play with them, including a Chicago cop piper (Guess what? He was chubby, had rosy cheeks, thick calves and short hair. Go figure.)

But, still they are way more NPR than rock.

The Irish did help invent punk. John Lydon of the Sex Pistols is Irish, which might explain why his vile against the queen seemed so genuine.

The Pistols inspired Irish kids to form great punk bands such as Stiff Little Fingers and the Undertones, whose Teenage Kicks should be required listening for all the punk wannabes/skaterboys around now.

We can blame Bruce Springsteen for Thin Lizzie, Boomtown Rats, the Saw Doctors, and, to a certain extent Black 47. The latter could have been a contender but for its own pretensions.

Now they are a hit on the Irish festival circuit. You have to hand it to the Irish - go to a blues fest, its mostly white yuppies. Go Irish (like to the big one every summer in Milwaukee) and the people are there enthusiastically listening to every band, clapping and singing along and proud of the music -- even if way too much of it has become slick and touristy, and many of the so-called rock acts are really middle of the road.

But back to guilt: Shane MacGowan only has himself to blame. I have never seen someone so drunk lead a band as I did when I saw MacGowan and a festival in New York City. Despite reveling in Irish cliches (booze, drugs, no front teeth, rent the documentary If I Should Fall From Grace With God), MacGowan fused punk and Irish folk with the Pogues (from the Gaelic for “kiss my ass.”

Their best album, Rum Sodomy and the Lash, was produced by fellow expatriate in London, Elvis Costello. Costello wrote the best song ever about Margaret Thatcher, Tramp the Dirt Down (or as I like to call it, Take That, Bitch!)

The Pogues spawned American Irish kids 10 years or more on to form Drop Kick Murphys, Flogging Molly and, best of the lot, Chicago's Tossers. (And Green Day's weepy ballad Good Riddance is nothing but a tricked out Irish tune.)

Gender benders Morrissey and Boy George have Irish roots, just like Oscar Wilde, who, if you think about it, was a rock star for his time.

And in the early 90s, My Bloody Valentine pretty much invented the shoe-gazer sound that was a big influence on lots of 90s indie rock bands.

I've skipped over the Holy Trinity of Irish rock: Van Morrison, Sinead O’Connor and U2 -- at least for Americans. (Among Irish I know, Christy Moore is their Bob Dylan. In the great Irish tradition, Moore is a bit of a prig in concert. Some friends went last time he was in Chicago, and he banned smoking and would stop if he heard people talking when he was singing. On second thought, more power to him, the self-righteous bastard.)

My politics are probably closer to Bono’s than W’s, but there's just something about Bono that makes you think he's a wanker.

The signs were always there -- the flag-planting, mullet-wearing Bono in the Red Rocks video; the “all we have is three chords and the truth” line; the Noble Peace Prize nomination; the tour of the Midwest with fawning reporters as he preached about world debt; the World Bank talk about him possibly heading it; those goddam sunglasses; the fucking annoying iPod ad.

My favorite Bono moment: I saw U2 in the late 80s in Chicago and he got miffed after fans didn't know the words to a cover of Curtis Mayfield's People Get Ready.

That sealed the deal for me: Bono is a pain in the ass, and, like the Chieftains, the music is often nice, but awfully boring. Bone is often way too Sean Penn and not enough Shane MacGowan.

O’Connor, of course, is a flake. But she's a flake with THAT VOICE. I just listened to her sing Skibbereen, an old folk song about the Irish famine. I don't believe in archetypes, but damn, she's a Banshee. Longing and misery have never sounded more beautiful that when she sings about it -- and that's Irish.

Which brings us to the grand old crank of Irish rock, Morrison. On the same disc, he sings the American folk song Shenandoah, and it has a pretty schmaltzy arrangement. But Morrison has me hooked from the first note.

Sure Morrison is stuck in the past, and rests too much on his laurels, and bitches too much about fame in a lot of his more recent music.

But that baritone is like crack for me. He hits the right note, and I am there staring out from the greenest cliff over the bleak Irish sea. I turn into a trite Mick and fuck it, I don’t care.

Because that voice at its best is the Irish Ray Charles. It is the raging against the dying of the light. It is soul.