Did I Tell You About Maria? (Music Monday)

The glory of Black 47 on a Wednesday night in the 90's

For St. Patrick's Day, I'm flashing back to the early 90s, when five bucks would get you a Wednesday night show that would blow your mind.

Remember Paddy Reilly's? The real one.. Black 47 packed that place to the rafters on weeknights when nobody knew who they were yet. I was in my 20s, probably on Guinness number six, packed in with fellow Irish-Americans pretending we were more Irish than we actually were, to the point one of my Irish-Irish friends called me Poser Irish.

The air in that place was something else. A sweltering, glorious, sticky-floored pub with the smell of Guinness permeating everything.

If you never made a show, play the version of Three Little Birds I embedded right now…just the intro….as singer Larry Kirwan describes it…..

“A pint of Guiness on one hand, a beautiful Irish girl in the other…”

Let the track play. Half-ass vocals. Barely-OK-enough musicians. Off-key crowd singalong. The sweet spot.

Those Black 47 shows had an electricity that's hard to describe to people now. When they'd launch into Funky Ceili (their not-quite “hit”) and the place would erupt. Pure joy. Then there was the call-and-response during Maria’s Wedding where Larry would shout that he'd even get a job, and the whole crowd would chant "NO!" in unison.

We’d sorta kinda learn about Irish History through songs like James Connolly. We’d do an unofficial singalong to the wordless The Reels.

Between songs, you'd hear these intense debates among the audience - "I'm telling you, that guy on sax was in Dexy's Midnight Runners" or the whispers about "The Cop" - did he really leave the NYPD to play pipes in this band? WHY???? (Chris Byrne actually did!)

Someone in our group heard a rumor Larry was 42, while I argued he couldn't be older than 28. Team 42 was right, which seemed ancient to us at the time. Funny to think I'm well past that age now.

Larry was never Bono, but his particular style just worked. And when “The Cop” sang his one song you found you missed Larry on vocals REAL QUICK.

Later in my career at SiriusXM, I'd end up working with Larry, well near Larry, which was one of those weird/cool/weird career moments. Here's this guy whose sweat had literally dripped on me in a packed bar, and now we're walking past each other in the hallway at work.

The undercurrent to these nights, of course, was the dream that maybe we'd meet some nice Irish nanny to date. The city was full of them back then - Irish girls working as nannies on the Upper East Side (or Sunnyside) who'd come downtown to blow off steam. This almost never worked out for us, but hope springs eternal when you're young and there's a live band playing and you’ve had a few pints. In my mind the nights were the AI generated image at the top of the post, but in reality add a few points and subtract the nanny. Oh well, we took our shots.

What I wouldn't give to go back for just one of those nights. To feel that energy again, to have that sense that anything could happen, to be young enough that staying out until 2am on a Wednesday seemed like a perfectly reasonable life choice.

The New York of Black 47's heyday is gone now. . We've all moved on. But man, for a brief shining moment in the early 90s, Second Avenue was the center of a very specific universe. If you knew me in the 1990s I 100% made you come to Paddy Reilly’s to see Black 47.

Happy St. Patrick's Day to all. May your memories be as good as your pints. And Maria, I’m sorry I wrecked your wedding. Actually, no I’m not.