- Paperback: 60 pages
- Publisher: Patrick Pinder Publisher (Dec 2010)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 095678240X
- ISBN-13: 978-0956782403
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,390,740 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Love Death and Whiskey - 40 Songs
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More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
40 song lyrics by Patrick O'Sullivan, selected from the long back catalogue. New songs that measure themselves against tradition, folk, chanson, stage song and the crafted form of the literary lyric. A book for musicians looking for worthwhile words, performers looking for a new text - he writes good songs for women singers. A book for lovers of real verse and real feeling, who respect traditional skills and lyric forms.
About the Author
Patrick O’Sullivan was born in Ireland. He lived the first part of his childhood in Doneraile, County Cork, the second part in inner city Liverpool. From there the wonderful English education system sent him to university, at Oxford, Kent and Bradford. He had a career in social work and in the probation service, specialising in work with drug misuse, and in family breakdown. In recent decades he has concentrated on the study of the Irish Diaspora, creating a series of books and organising support networks for Irish Diaspora scholars throughout the world. Alongside that formal work he has been involved in music and in theatre, and has taught courses on theatre and literature. And all the time, inside his head, there were voices making songs. He lives in Bradford, Yorkshire, with his wife, Alison, and their two sons, Dan and Jake.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Here are forty songs of great beauty which stimulate the intellect and the emotions. I was attracted to the cover. It seems to capture so well the atmosphere of Irish pub music at its best. First surprise - it's a production shot from one of O'Sullivan's stage plays. And if you come here looking for Paddy McGinty's goat or so and so's mounted foot, you're in for another surprise.
O'Sullivan is a playwright, poet, song writer, academic and, it would seem, an all round clever lad. His introduction to this volume is as paradoxical as the cover pic, swooping from the arcane to the quotidian and back in half a sentence.
The songs themselves have a scarcely liminal loppiness of the Irish-English language. But it's there, and, after half an hour's reading you find fresh springy rhythms in your own head and speech. It's a refreshing experience, like dipping into James Joyce and letting his birds settle on your consciousness for a minute or two.
The songs feature love, pain, regret, nostalgia... in other words: the lived and considered life lit by the glow of humour. They provoke thought and elicit memories. The word is 'delightful'.
How much I'd like to hear them sung. How much I have enjoyed reading them. How sure I am that I'll come back to these songs and that phrases will stay with me for a long long time.
You can buy this book all over the place, including for your Kindle. Buy one for yourself and one for your lover! Ulysses (Penguin Modern Classics)
O'Sullivan is a playwright, poet, song writer, academic and, it would seem, an all round clever lad. His introduction to this volume is as paradoxical as the cover pic, swooping from the arcane to the quotidian and back in half a sentence.
The songs themselves have a scarcely liminal loppiness of the Irish-English language. But it's there, and, after half an hour's reading you find fresh springy rhythms in your own head and speech. It's a refreshing experience, like dipping into James Joyce and letting his birds settle on your consciousness for a minute or two.
The songs feature love, pain, regret, nostalgia... in other words: the lived and considered life lit by the glow of humour. They provoke thought and elicit memories. The word is 'delightful'.
How much I'd like to hear them sung. How much I have enjoyed reading them. How sure I am that I'll come back to these songs and that phrases will stay with me for a long long time.
You can buy this book all over the place, including for your Kindle. Buy one for yourself and one for your lover! Ulysses (Penguin Modern Classics)
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Like I said on Twitter this is a great book for those nervous of poetry. They are simply wonderful lyrics.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This book of song lyrics is pure poetry from the introduction, where Patrick compares a song to a 3-legged stool, to the last line of the final song where `Pierre wasn't there in Pierre's special way.'
Irish to the core, the lyrics are also truly international, as perhaps the Irish are too, having penetrated every corner of the World in their search for something better than their own piece of paradise. The dreams of the girls in `The green hills of Australia' put a neat twist on the oft-repeated traditional longing of the emigrant for home. `Autobiography of a Navvy' where the Irish `work on every man's land, but not their own,' is a surprisingly non-sentimental look at the life of a man forced from his own country by the lack of work, while the wonderful opening line of `To Be Irish' - `you don't know you're Irish till you're Irish no more' - is a poignant, but not mawkish, reflection on emigration. Perhaps my appreciation of these songs was heightened by my recent maiden visit to Ireland which presented many opportunities to learn much more about the potato famine and emigration, against the background of the current economic crisis, which may yet tweak the seemingly never ending emigrations yet again.
Internationally, following my visit, I turned eagerly to `I met my love in Baltimore' to find that it was the more famous city of that name in the USA, rather than the little piece of heaven in West Cork, that was featured as well as Carolina, Savannah and New Orleans, while the quirky almost-Latin lover from the deep south of `Tooting Bec' (compared to the far north of Walworth), caused me much more than a slight smile.
Perhaps my favourite lyrics though - very hard to make an absolute choice - were those to `You taught me to cry,' though inevitably that choice may well say more about me than the song. This really is a book about life, love and longing, and an affirmation of those things despite the pain.
These lyrics made a great impression on me, and I found fragments of melodies popping into my head as I read them, although I was also aware that many have already had their own tunes and performances. Rest assured, however, that the first leg of each song-stool is very strong, and if you have the desire to set great lyrics to your own tunes and perform them, I can strongly recommend them - there would be few better places to start.
Irish to the core, the lyrics are also truly international, as perhaps the Irish are too, having penetrated every corner of the World in their search for something better than their own piece of paradise. The dreams of the girls in `The green hills of Australia' put a neat twist on the oft-repeated traditional longing of the emigrant for home. `Autobiography of a Navvy' where the Irish `work on every man's land, but not their own,' is a surprisingly non-sentimental look at the life of a man forced from his own country by the lack of work, while the wonderful opening line of `To Be Irish' - `you don't know you're Irish till you're Irish no more' - is a poignant, but not mawkish, reflection on emigration. Perhaps my appreciation of these songs was heightened by my recent maiden visit to Ireland which presented many opportunities to learn much more about the potato famine and emigration, against the background of the current economic crisis, which may yet tweak the seemingly never ending emigrations yet again.
Internationally, following my visit, I turned eagerly to `I met my love in Baltimore' to find that it was the more famous city of that name in the USA, rather than the little piece of heaven in West Cork, that was featured as well as Carolina, Savannah and New Orleans, while the quirky almost-Latin lover from the deep south of `Tooting Bec' (compared to the far north of Walworth), caused me much more than a slight smile.
Perhaps my favourite lyrics though - very hard to make an absolute choice - were those to `You taught me to cry,' though inevitably that choice may well say more about me than the song. This really is a book about life, love and longing, and an affirmation of those things despite the pain.
These lyrics made a great impression on me, and I found fragments of melodies popping into my head as I read them, although I was also aware that many have already had their own tunes and performances. Rest assured, however, that the first leg of each song-stool is very strong, and if you have the desire to set great lyrics to your own tunes and perform them, I can strongly recommend them - there would be few better places to start.
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