For a few days now I've been driving to- and fro- Marathon Beach with only one CD in the car: my homemade 2015 summer holiday compilation. It usually takes me an hour to cover the distance of 40+km: I begin with dense traffic from the busy Athens centre and, as soon as I'm out of the city, I have to follow a narrow road full of curves that climbs up and then descends a mountain. This route, incidentally, is known as the Athens Classic Marathon, and people actually run it on purpose every year. It was initiated during the first (modern) Olympic Games in 1896, to commemorate ancient runner Phidippides, who ran the same distance to deliver news of Athens' victory over the Persian invaders. The story of the Marathon battle is very exciting and worth reading about. One thrilling account of it can be found in Tom Holland's "Persian Fire", while a wildly inaccurate version of it was presented in the film "300: Rise of an Empire". It's surreal to think that the sandy beach with the calm waters where we now swim and chill on the sunbeds drinking ice-cold cafe frappe, was the site of an epic bloodshed that probably determined the shape of the modern world as well as the ancient one. Anyway, here's what I was getting at: listening to the same CD every day on the way can be quite boring. Radio is no option, as the reception on the mountain is really bad. So yesterday I made a detour along the way, stopped at the Athens Mall and picked up a few CD's from the special offers section. The Tossers' "One Fine Evening" was one of them. Hadn't heard of the band before, but I saw they played Celtic punk and I was in the mood for something along those lines. An internet search revealed that the Tossers have actually been around for quite some time - longer than the more famous bands of the genre like the Dropkick Murphys and Flogging Molly. They come from Chicago, not Ireland, but they carry the Irish tradition proudly. They rely on traditional instruments like mandolin, violin and tin whistle, so the "punk" prefix is justified only by the speed and ferocity of their playing. Opener "Katie at the Races" is case in point, a raucous punk rocker if I've heard one, but a traditional Irish melody and instrumentation nevertheless. On "Teehans" and "The Unfamous Paula Spencer" they come accross a bit like the poor man's Pogues, the singer making a fairly good Shane McGowan impression but lacking his soul & passion. That said, I actually enjoyed listening to them. Great violin work by Becca Manthe, too! "The Rocky Road to Dublin" is a 19th Century nugget that's been previously recorded by The Dubliners, Pogues and even the Chieftains with The Rolling Stones. So it's interesting to see how the Tossers fare with it, and indeed they pass the mark by playing it straight instead of punking it up like the Dropkick Murphys did. "Whiskey Makes Me Crazy", on the other hand, is a celtic-punk dynamite played at full speed. "St. Stephen's Day" is a drunken ballad (again The Pogues come to mind) and "221B/The Sneaky Pries (The Gloria Scott)" is a two part instrumental consisting of a whiny violin intro and a fast Irish jig - the most traditional tune until now. "Terry Obradaigh", "Breandan O Beachain" and "Get Back" are fast and punky while "A Fine Lass You Are" is a very loud and noisy ballad - if that's not a contradiction in terms. These songs all sound very drunk and rowdy and make me wonder if they're supposed to be sung and heard in a state of alcoholic intoxication and whether there's some true in the stereotype of constantly drunk Irishmen expressing themselves by singing loudly and sentimentally - how the English must scoff! "The Humors of Glandart/Ingenish/On the Fly" is the second -very well played- instrumental and "Hunger Strike/Harmony" a boring, over-long ballad. "Mercy" is a sympathetic short acapella song that closes the album on a fine note. Overall this wasn't such an impressive album, but it makes the car ride to the beach more pleasant, and my girlfriend likes it - so I'll give it 3 stars!
**** for Katie at the Races
*** for Teehans, The Unfamous Paula Spencer, The Rocky Road to Dublin, Whiskey Makes Me Crazy, A Fine Lass You Are, 221B/The Sneaky Pries (The Gloria Scott), Breandan O Beachain, The Humors of Glandart/Ingenish/On the Fly, Mercy
** for St. Stephen's Day, Terry Obradaigh, Get Back, Hunger Strike/Harmony
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