hollow sidewalks: Who Loves Ya, Baby?!

The Itinerants, Joe Hurley & the Gents
The 7th Annual All-Star Irish Rock Revue
The Bowery Ballroom, 3/17/06

When else can you get Rogues, Gents, Dolls, Dictators, She Wolves, Everyothers, Sick Fucks, Broadway stars, Losers, and Used Country Females on one stage singing songs by Thin Lizzy, The Undertones, Stiff Little Fingers, The Pogues, Boomtown Rats, and Elvis Costello--as well as protest songs and trad numbers--but the Annual All-Star Irish Rock Review? (It's a good thing that a lot of artists from previous revues come back every year--and I got the pix from last year developed--so I can have photos for this.)

Shortly after I got the ticket did I find out about Blotto @ Otto's. Of course. See, I thought they should've had a show on the 19th and send the weekend out with a bang. I waited for as long as I could before securing the ticket, but then again this is all Joe's fault because the Rock Revue is usually the week before and this time it's on the night of. And people say cloning is a bad thing? Too many shows, too little me. Though at the Rock Revue launch party/listening party for Whiskey in the Jar--Essential Irish Drinking Songs And Singalongs (featuring Amsterdam Mistress, by our own dear Rogues March) I found out that the show is being taped for a DVD, so it's good that I get a chance to reprise the role I've perfected: fangirl up front who knows all the words and is taking pix. Yeah, an Xmas song on a CD such as that may seem odd, but as Joe is fond of pointing out, this is the closest we've been to Xmas all year. He's also fond of pointing out that he never did like that dog anyway during Irish Rover. The party was full of enough regulars so that I shouldn't've been the only one yelling it, but Joe said, "What was that?" "I...never liked that dog anyway?" "Thanks for that human teleprompter." And the whole bar cracked up. They were laughing near me, not at me.

On Friday I woke up with my sinuses feeling stuffy from the humidity @ Rocky's and my throat hurting from my irritated sinuses--and all the singing. I think only I can manage to be such a wreck on St. Pat's; usually it's my back, and with all the running around in the cold weather. The show wasn't sold out and I knew I wouldn't have to sweat it, but I still did. I got a ride in and traffic was killer over the QB Bridge. Down 2nd Ave, where bars were a mob scene outside and lines snaked around the block. I wondered if the traffic was held up because everybody was rubbernecking to watch the people outside, or looking for the place with the shortest line to turn off at. We got there @ 10 after 7 and Pat was supposed to be on @ 7:15 so I was thinking doors were @ 6, even tho the tix said 8. There was no line. Downstairs, I kept an eye on the door as I talked to people and when I went to use the bathroom, I couldn't help but feel that I was robbed of due process. Not that I enjoy waiting on line in the 20-degree weather for 2 hrs and then getting insulted by a bouncer, but if that's going to happen, it should happen. It's all in a night's work. And I didn't even see that asshole bouncer. Maybe they just get him in for soldout shows.

Marty introduced me to his friends as Joe's #1 fan and a big groupie. Normally I correct people because can't a gal just go to see bands if she doesn't have to, but he was really off the mark since I only started seeing Rogues March in 1999, which really doesn't count for squat. I felt bad for Pat that he didn't have much of a crowd, but figured it was going to be like that all nite. When Joe sang Desiree I started getting all sad, seeing them up there on the big-kid stage. Joe seems to be on the 2 albums every other decade plan, which hurts cause they're such a good band and Joe a brilliant lyricist and they've only played the Bowery Ballroom 2 other times--once, in 1999 as part of a local singers/songwriters showcase thing, and in 2001 with the Rock Revue. See, this is why it's a good thing I can't afford to drink when I'm at shows. Imagine how bummed out I'd get every time I saw a band I love and know they probably won't get there even tho they deserve to? But I sweated it all out jumping around to Shut Up and Drink, so I was good to go by Revue time and wouldn't be doing something typically me--dropping my good camera, loading film in incorrectly and thereby exposing a good portion of the roll, slipping in a beer puddle, using the incorrect flash setting, dancing crazy, bumping into others and hurting myself....Oh, wait. That's shit I do on a regular basis.

(Joe and Rock Revue cohost Ed Rogers, of Green Rooftops and the Bedsit Poets.) So since I didn't get a Revue setlist, nor did I take notes, and it's a week later, I'll just have to give highlights. I hope the DVD does see the light of day at some point because Joe's opening speech was great. Gibson guitars was one of this year's sponsors and they gave Joe a custom-made, Irish flag guitar. Standout performers were producer Don Fleming (Hole's Live Through This and Sonic Youth's Goo, which he sub-produced and sang on)--"So he should know something about sound!" quipped Rogers. Credentials which aren't for everyone, because even though his version of The Bogside Man was a stunner, one year when he did it at the Knit someone yelled, "That was shite!" Annie Golden from The Shirts, who joined Lisa Burns on Man You Don't Meet Every Day; Review newcomer Elias Khan, from Nervous Cabaret, with Dirty Old Town; Owen McCarthy of The Everyothers with Boys Are Back In Town; Ed Rogers w/Teenage Kicks, w/the full, electro backing band as opposed to the acoustic rendition he did at the party; the usually buttoned-down and serious Pat Robinson, former Rogue and current Itinerant, his band pass upside down on his shirt, with Sally MacLennan; Tammy Faye Starlite said that even though Marianne Faithfull isn't Irish, fuck it, she knows how to party, and did Ireland (insert joke here); Tish & Snooky on back up vocals and synchronized dancing, did Male Model. Joe's pogo classic (or maybe that was just me pogoing) Irish Rover and Revue closer God Save The Queen lead to a pit breaking out irregardless of the spilt beer on the floor. But I wish someone would do Alternative Ulster already.

So you're gonna have to wait for the DVD to come out to see what I'm talking about. Better yet, go to the show yerself next time.

Due to a parking ticket and me needing to photograph the evidence I ended up w/some pix from this year, which I was not expecting to have. So the last 4 are from this year. The pix are a pain in the ass to load up on the sly, so I didn't put that many up.

King Missle's John S. Hall wants to bite the hand that feeds him. He also finds it easy to stand like this because he has a detatchable penis. (This is what I get for being a wiseass and trying to jump the gun by working ahead: Hall changed his song choice. Still doing Declan McManus, but this year it's Chelsea.)

SNL bandleader Christine Ohlman sang Domino last year as well as this year.

Annie Golden usually wears that shirt for every Revue and I thought I could get away w/using the old pic of her & Lisa Burns singing Man You Don't Meet Every Day. She had to go change.