By JASON HARPER
If you can look more jaunty with your jacket thrown over your shoulder while strolling through the Plaza than Larry Kirwan did this past Saturday, then you should run for office. I encountered the author and legendary leader of Irish/Bronx-based rock band Black 47 at the Bloomsday Books tent, where they were selling Black 47 CDs and DVDs, plus copies of Kirwan's book Green Suede Shoes. Kirwan was in town to discuss his memoir and the art of non-fiction writing at the Kansas City Literary Festival, which lasted most of the day and occupied a good portion of the Plaza's southwest corner.
Kirwan looks a bit like Larry David in a wig and is just as smart and funny but is fearlessly political (and politically fearless). I quickly bought up a copy of his band's 1993 major-label debut, Fire of Freedom. Kirwan gave me change for my $20 out of his own pocket and talked about working with album producer Ric Ocasek as he signed the insert of my CD. Nice as hell, that Kirwan.
MP3s & more shenanigans after the jump
Popping Fire in when I got home -- after killing a cockroach, a proletarian image appropriate to the listening material -- I found myself giddy over the rediscovery of 47's off-kilter, gawky, bashing, eclectic sound. Rhythmically, and even lyrically, the band careens between straight-up rock, Celtic music, reggae and even a little hip-hop ("Rockin' the Bronx"), with Kirwan rattling off tales of the drunken and the downtrodden, scattering words in a half-spoken-half-sung style then slowing down to croon the occasional bark-throated ballad ("Fanatic Heart"). I have to wonder whether Craig Finn has ever heard of Kirwan.
Fire of Freedom has songs for the oppressed ("Black 47," about the 1847 famine after which the band is named) and songs for the working man ("Livin' in America") and songs about forming the band ("New York, NY 10009" -- Sheila, baby give me one last chance / I've just gone and formed Black 47 / I don't care about the money, you can keep the fame / I just want to beat this city at its own dumb game") and about love, though it's rare for a Black 47 song not to cover all of the above, all of it colored by the immigrant experience.
I asked Kirwan if I could post a couple of tracks, and he said it was fine -- he and the band don't get in the way of their fans' sharing. "Music's out there to be listened to," he shrugged.
So here you go. Listen.
MP3: Black 47, "Maria's Wedding"
MP3: Black 47, "Funky Céilí (Bridie's Song)"
From Fire of Freedom (1993, SBK Records/EMI)
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