Shelf-reading has two purposes: one, to make sure everything is in its right place; and two, to discover works you would not necessarily have though to look for, left to your own researching devices.<\/p>\n
I decided to take purpose #2 and apply it to Bandcamp\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s tagging system, generally, and the Irish music section, specifically, partially because I can and because why not, and partially because I had been ruminating on net-grumbling I had seen related to popular (trans: American) understanding of “Irish music” as being rock (U2, The Cranberries), traditional folk (the Clancy Brothers, the Dubliners, etc) or folk-rock hybrids (The Pogues, Black 47, Flogging Molly) with no in-between or other options.<\/p>\n
I then decided to use the counties of Ireland (North and South), arranged alphabetically, as a framing device for the experiment.<\/p>\n
I started this a year and a half ago (!) with County Antrim<\/a> and then I guess I got sidetracked.<\/p>\n I’m back at it now, though, and today we’re visiting the County Armagh section.<\/p>\n The first thing I learned is that there is not a lot of music tagged “County Armagh” and also Bandcamp’s search function might be a little bit wonky and\/or broad because what did come back didn’t seem to have any obvious connection to Armagh.<\/p>\n So I switched to just searching for “Armagh” which brought back more options, though some of them were still not quite right.<\/p>\n In any case, here is what I found that I liked. Note: the connections to Armagh might still be a little bit loose or non-existent, but they are all at least from Northern Ireland.<\/p>\n Waylander, Once Upon an Era<\/i><\/a>, “Born to the Fight” (demos, 1994) from the Irish-Metal Archive<\/a>.<\/p>\n My reactions, in order: 1) there’s an Irish Metal Archive??!! and 2) did this song cause ceilidhs to break out in the pit? I bet it did. Also some classic ogre-roar vocals in there.<\/p>\n