Sunday, March 1, 2009

Bang on!

I've loved Celtic music since I was a kid and now have a pretty decent collection of it but I have no skill or patience for playing it. As a result, I'm left with my jaw agape after the latest "oh I'll just bang something out" performance by my brother, an immensely talented natural musician, with the Irish bodhran he got for Christmas. Damn, I wish I could do that:



It takes some skill to play this and play it well. In some Irish pubs, they don't allow bodhran players because they can drown out all of the other instruments. An Irish musician of our acquaintance told us a joke once -- a guy walks into a bar with a satchel and the bartender, looking alarmed, cries out "Hey is that a bomb?" "Yes," replies the man with the satchel. "Oh good," says the bartender. "I thought it might have been a bodhran."

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