I think Christy Moore got it right with his biog. He wrote all the songs and told about his life through the songs and what they meant to him. Ralph Mctells biog is also pretty good - but Iiked the second volume better than the first - that was about the time he got his first guitar and so on - whereas the first volume is about his childhood and early adolesence.

I have got the old Clancy Bros Song Book and that is really lovely. there are so many songs in there Liam and the lads obviously felt some deep committment to and it gave them the brilliant theatricality of their act.

did anybody ever see that video where they declaimed a poem about booze and then sung carrickfergus. I had never really understood that song before - the image of the marble stones as black as ink is as intense as anything out of Robert Jonhson. I had been used to Val Doonican's version - which had conveyed none of the pathos of becalmed boozehound who cannot cross over.

a thoughtful and exciting presentation of a song.