Last Night's Fun: A Book About Irish Traditional Music [Paperback]

Ciaran Carson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 17, 1998

Last Night's Fun's is a sparking celebration of music and life that is itself a literary performance of the highest order. Carson's inspired jumble of recording history, poetry, tall tales, and polemic captures the sound and vigor of a ruthlessly unsentimental music. Last Night's Fun is remarkable for its liveliness, honesty, scholarship, and spontaneous joy; certainly there has never been a book about Irish music like this one, and few books ever written anywhere about the experience of music can compare with it.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Reading these essays by an Irish folk musician, you are drawn in and transported, and it begins to seem that you can hear the fiddles and bodhrans, and you can almost smell the Guinness. Ciaran Carson, who has published several books of poetry, spent many years playing traditional Irish music in pubs with sawdust on the floor, and he evokes both scene and sound brilliantly in prose. We're lucky that the talented Mr. Carson takes time to put down his flute and pick up the pen. Anyone who appreciates folk music, or anyone who just likes fine writing, will enjoy this wondrously quirky little book. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

In this collection of 31 interconnected essays, poet and musician Carson takes the reader into the heart of Irish folk music's culture and ritual. The fine art of the Irish fried egg, the wonders of poteen (homemade Irish whiskey), and Chicago's former police chief Francis O'Neill are just a few of the wide-ranging essay topics, but Carson's impressionistic prose links them all to his experiences as a participant in the traditional Irish music scene. The musicians Carson writes about play on buses and in smoky pubs, learning and passing tunes on by ear and adding their own signature to the ever-evolving music each time a piece is played. Readable and enjoyable, this is nonetheless a book for purists. Those expecting to read about Enya, Altan, or the other recent stars of Celtic music will be disappointed, and general readers may find Carson's earlier Pocket Guide to Irish Traditional Music (Appletree, 1986) more useful. Still, this is well recommended for larger public libraries and for ethnomusicology collections.?Lloyd Jansen, Stockton-San Joaquin Cty. P.L., Cal.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: North Point Press (March 17, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0865475318
• ISBN-13: 978-0865475311
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.5 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #264,692 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An experience not to be missed, April 30, 1998

By 

P. Lozar "plozar" (Santa Fe, NM USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Last Night's Fun: A Book About Irish Traditional Music (Paperback)

I've been a Celtic music fan for many years, long before it began to turn up on the New Age charts. While I don't mean to knock that genre (which has given some splendid traditional musicians -- e.g., the O'Domhnaills of Nightnoise and Alasdair Fraser of Skyedance -- the wider listenership they deserve), traditional Celtic music is an altogether grittier, funkier breed.
Ciaran Carson brings a poet's sensibility to the performer's-eye perspective of Irish music, from last night's fun to the next morning's rude awakening. Irish music isn't simply the tunes themselves; it's the old-timers who performed them, the instruments they played, the pints of Guinness, the choking smoke in the bar and the pouring rain outside, and Carson conveys the whole experience admirably. It's almost as good as being there.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The night before the morning after, January 30, 2000

By 

"s_campbell" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Last Night's Fun: A Book About Irish Traditional Music (Paperback)

Carson takes the reader on a journey deep into the very heart of Irish Music - the musician at his most timelessness. Don't pick this up expecting a scholarly approach to Irish music. This is an amazing insight into the music and the soul of the music as performed by an Irish musician. Carson even shows the little quirks of daily living that help to give birth to such a personable music. I love Irish music, but am a jazz pianist by musical trade. I highly recommend this to any and all musicians who are searching for their soul in music, especially those in jazz. It is a very moving and thought provoking work.

18 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Delvings of the deep diddly diddly, September 11, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Last Night's Fun: In and Out of Time With Irish Music (Hardcover)

Belfast writer, fluter, raconteur and unreliable witness takes us into the subterranean world of craic agus chaos as he attempts to surf the web of the perfect session experience. Part nostalgic interrogtation of his own relationship with traditional music, part exploration of the Ulster breakfast: this book is a close as it gets to the cameraderie and catharsis of an all night music bash. A work of astute fiction that might never be true but is always believable.

At the end we are left wondering was this one large joke or simply a witty Northern oxymoron? A book to be revisited when the frost keeps us away from session, pub or our inner fiddler.

Excellent is too narrow a word to describe the sweep of the narrative.

Sean Laffey Irish Music Magazine Dublin