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Kansas City Irish Festivals, Music, Pubs, & Events by an Artist in Ireland

If you want to cheer Ireland on in the Eurovision Song Contest tomorrow, you can watch it live online.

If you’re not familiar with the Eurovision it is the monster that spawned many other monsters, not least of which include Abba, and Riverdance.

To watch you will be asked to download a plugin (called OctoShape) - but I did this for last year’s show and it worked flawlessly - which is no mean feat for an event with so many people watching.

Ireland has won the competition more than any other country thanks largely to a spurt of domination in the 1990s, but it’s been a while since the last one. The Eurovision has also changed considerably over the years, most notably in the entrants and in the voting system.

There are now so many more competing countries than there used to be that qualification is necessary. The semi-finals were a couple of days ago so the twenty-four countries are now known for the final.

And the voting now is mostly done by televoting and SMS within countries rather than the former systems of national juries. If you’re not familiar with European geography and politics, the voting in the Eurovision is a great way to learn.

Ireland this year are not listed among the favourites, but with Dervish performing a folk pop number I wouldn’t be surprised to see them score well in the voting among the eastern European countries - which these days seems essential if you’re going to have a chance at winning.

I did successfully predict last year’s winner - based on the premise that ordinary people with phones in their hands would pick the biggest freaks. Following that premise this year should probably see Ukraine’s drag queen Verka Serdyuchka win.

You may think this bears no relevance to being Irish in Kansas City but a few months ago the official blog of the Kansas City Irish Festival promised that a whole host of former representatives of Ireland in the Eurovision would never appear at the festival. The list included Dickie Rock, The Swarbriggs, Sandie Jones, The Swarbriggs Plus Two, The Duskeys, Linda Martin, and Liam Reilly.

The promise that they would never appear is truly bizarre for a couple of reasons. One, Liam Reilly is the songwriting force behind Bagatelle (official website) - one of the most successful Irish groups ever. In Summer in Dublin Reilly penned one of the most commercially successfully songs in Irish music history, a ballad nostaglic Irish drunks the world over reprise more often than many traditional favourites you may know. If you have any regard for polls it’s a song that was voted the number 3 Best Irish Song ever behind Fairytale of New York by The Pogues and One by U2. We’ve talked about it before.

Bagatelle still tour, and they play Irish festivals. And even more ironically the Kansas City Irish community has already attended Irish gigs and concerts where they have listened and maybe sung along to another Reilly classic composition. The Streets of New York was one of The Wolfe Tones biggest hits, documenting a not untypical story of Irish immigration to America, and was played regularly at their Armoury Gigs.

And the second reason that promise was bizarre? The Kansas City Irish Festival has already had an Irish Eurovision performer appear. Cathal Dunne represented Ireland in the years between The Swarbriggs Plus Two and The Duskeys, and he played the festival in Crown Center last year.

Here is Cathal in the Eurovision just like all the other Irish Eurovision entrants that for some reason you’ll never see in KC’s festival (Note: new video - expect it to disappear before long):

So Cathal Dunne yes but Dickie Rock no, and Liam O Maonlai yes but Liam Reilly no.

The original post that provided the videos was on uber Irish entertainment site Blogorrah, which like Irish KC would have actually watched those Eurovisions and therefore frequently slags those performers whilst simultaneously having a regard for them.

Here’s Dervish performing the Ireland 2007 Eurovision entry, They Can’t Stop The Spring (note: new video but don’t be surprised if the Eurovision police remove it):

An for good measure here’s The Tones performing Liam Reilly’s The Streets of New York live:

Oh what the heck, here’s a video - albeit of the non-moving kind - of a not very rousing version of Bagatelle’s Summer in Dublin:

And here’s Ireland’s complete record in the Eurovison from Wikipedia. It all kicks off in Helsinki at 2pm KC time.

See Also:
   • Lyrics of Happy Man by Cathal Dunne
   • Eurovision Voting
   • Flatley The Re-inventor

This entry was posted on Friday, May 11th, 2007 at 3:06 pm and is filed under Bagatelle, Cathal Dunne, Shows, Video, Wolfe Tones, eurovision. You can follow responses via my RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.