Promoted by Avalon.
Band: Larry Kirwan, vocals/guitar; David Conrad, bass; Chris Byrne, uileann pipes/vocals; Geoff Blythe, sax/clarinet; Fred Parcells, trombone/tin whistle; Thomas Hamlin, drums.
Black 47 are the Irish-American (not African-American) agit-prop rockers who created such a buzz at Paddy Reilly's Manhattan pub that they got their self-pressed CD nationally reviewed, picked up the Cars' Ric Ocasek as volunteer producer and earned a contract with SBK. And while their musical antecedents are closer to Springsteen than Seattle, they've been pigeonholed as "alternative" due to their political earnestness. Think of them as Midnight Oil with a brogue.
Led by the hyperkinetic poet/rocker Larry Kirwan (awfully charismatic for a Johnny Whittaker look-alike) and boasting instruments from pennywhistle to pipes , Black 47 inspired passion in an almost full house at the Roxy Monday night.
The 90-minute set led with three of the band's strongest, best-known songs: "James Connolly," the rousing story of an Irish martyr; "Fire of Freedom," the reggae-tinged title track of their new LP; and "Funky Ceili" (pronounced "Kay-lee"), the upbeat cut currently getting airplay.
Happily, the sextet has tons of strong material to back it up: the crowd-pleasing "Maria's Wedding" ("Rosalita" goes cross-cultural); the humorous "40 Shades of Blue" (perfect bar-band fodder); the hip-hop inflected "Rockin' the Bronx" (think House of Pain meets the Pogues).
So with all this going for it, why was this show vaguely dissatisfying? True, there were a few clunkers -- a sluggish "My Fanatic Heart," a sloppy cover of countryman Van Morrison's "Gloria."
The biggest problem was the band's gratuitous use of taped and sampled material. When passion is your stock in trade, electronics are your nemesis. As "Saturday Night Live's" David Spade might put it: "Two words. Drum Machine. Lose it."
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Date in print: Thu., Mar. 11, 1993