seamus dubhghaill

Promoting Irish Culture and History from Little Rock, Arkansas, USA

Tag Archives: Eurovision Song Contest


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Birth of Neil Hannon, Northern Irish Singer & Songwriter

Edward Neil Anthony Hannon, Northern Irish singer and songwriter, is born in Derry, County Londonderry, on November 7, 1970. He is the creator and front man of the chamber pop group The Divine Comedy, and is the band’s sole constant member. He is the writer of the theme tunes for the television sitcoms Father Ted and The IT Crowd.

Hannon is the son of Brian Hannon, a Church of Ireland minister in the Diocese of Derry and Raphoe and later Bishop of Clogher. He spends some of his youth in Fivemiletown, County Tyrone, before moving with his family to Enniskillen, County Fermanagh, in 1982. While there he attends Portora Royal School.

Hannon enjoys synthesizer-based music as a youngster. He identifies The Human League and Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (OMD) as “the first music that really excited [him].” In the late 1980s he develops a fondness of the electric guitar, becoming an “indie kid.”

Hannon is founder and mainstay of The Divine Comedy, a band which achieves their biggest commercial success in the last half of the 1990s with the albums Casanova (1996), A Short Album About Love (1997), and Fin de Siècle (1998). He continues to release albums under The Divine Comedy name, the most recent being Office Politics (2019). In 2000 he and Joby Talbot contribute four tracks for Ute Lemper‘s collaboration album, Punishing Kiss.

In 2004 Hannon plays alongside the Ulster Orchestra for the opening event of the Belfast Festival at Queen’s University Belfast. In 2005, he contributes vocals to his long-time collaborator Joby Talbot’s soundtrack for the movie version of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

In 2006 it is announced that Hannon is to lend his vocal ability to the Doctor Who soundtrack CD release, recording two songs – “Love Don’t Roam” for the 2006 Christmas special, “The Runaway Bride“, and a new version of “Song For Ten”, originally used in 2005’s “The Christmas Invasion.” On January 12, 2007, The Guardian website’s “Media Monkey” diary column reports that Doctor Who fans from the discussion forum on the fan website Outpost Gallifrey are attempting to organise mass downloads of the Hannon-sung “Love Don’t Roam,” which is available as a single release on the UK iTunes Store. This is in order to attempt to exploit the new UK Singles Chart download rules, and get the song featured in the Top 40 releases.

The same year Hannon adds his writing and vocal talents to the Air album Pocket Symphony, released in the United States on March 6, 2007. He is featured on the track “Somewhere Between Waking and Sleeping,” for which he writes the lyrics. This song had been originally written for and sung by Charlotte Gainsbourg on her album, 5:55. Though it is not included in its 2006 European release, it is added as a bonus track for its American release on April 24, 2007.

Hannon wins the 2007 Choice Music Prize for his 2006 album, Victory for the Comic Muse. He wins the 2015 Legend Award from the Oh Yeah organisation in Belfast.

Hannon is credited with composing the theme music for the sitcoms Father Ted and The IT Crowd, the former theme composed for the show and later reworked into “Songs of Love,” a track on The Divine Comedy’s breakthrough album Casanova. Both shows are created or co-created by Graham Linehan. A new Divine Comedy album, Bang Goes the Knighthood, is released in May 2010.

Hannon has collaborated with Thomas Walsh, from the Irish band Pugwash, to create a cricket-themed pop album under the name The Duckworth Lewis Method. The first single, “The Age of Revolution,” is released in June 2009, and a full-length album is released the following week. The group’s second album, Sticky Wickets, comes out in 2013.

Hannon contributes to a musical version of Swallows and Amazons, writing the music while Helen Edmundson writes the book and lyrics, which premiers in December 2010 at the Bristol Old Vic.

In April 2012 Hannon’s first opera commission, Sevastopol, is performed by the Royal Opera House. It is part of a program called OperaShots, which invites musicians not typically working within the opera medium to create an opera. Sevastopol is based upon Leo Tolstoy‘s Sevastopol Sketches. Hannon’s second opera for which he writes music, In May, premiers in May 2013 in Lancaster and is shown in 2014 with overwhelming success.

The world premiere of “To Our Fathers in Distress,” a piece for organ, is performed on March 22, 2014, in London, at the Royal Festival Hall. It is inspired by Hannon’s father, Rt. Revz. Brian Hannon, who suffers from Alzheimer’s disease.

Hannon’s partner is Irish musician Cathy Davey. The couple live in the Dublin area. He is previously married to Orla Little, with whom he has a daughter, Willow Hannon. With Davey, Hannon is a patron of the Irish animal charity My Lovely Horse Rescue, named after the Father Ted Eurovision song for which he wrote the music.

Politically, Hannon describes himself as being “a thoroughly leftie, Guardian-reading chap, but of the champagne socialist variety.”


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Birth of Johnny Logan, Two-time Eurovision Song Contest Winner

Seán Patrick Michael Sherrard, Irish singer and composer better known by his stage name Johnny Logan, is born in the Melbourne suburb of Frankston, Victoria, Australia on May 13, 1954. He is known as being the only performer to have won the Eurovision Song Contest twice, in 1980 and 1987. He also composes the winning song in 1992.

Logan is born while his father, Charles Alphonsus Sherrard, is a Derry-born Irish tenor known by the artistic name Patrick O’Hagan, is touring Australia. The family moves back to Ireland when he is three years old. He learns the guitar and begins composing his own songs by the age of thirteen. On leaving school he apprentices as an electrician, while performing in pubs and cabaret. His earliest claim to fame is starring as “Adam” in the 1977 Irish musical Adam and Eve and “Joseph” in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.

Logan adopts the stage name Johnny Logan after the main character of the film Johnny Guitar and releases his first single in 1978. He first attempts to participate in the Eurovision Song Contest in 1979, when he places third in the Irish National Final with the song “Angie.” Readers of The Connaught Telegraph in Ireland vote him as “Best New Male Artist.”

In 1980, Logan again enters the Irish National selection for the Eurovision Song Contest with the Shay Healy song “What’s Another Year,” winning the Irish final on March 9 in Dublin. Representing Ireland in the Netherlands, he wins the Eurovision Song Contest on April 19. The song becomes a hit all over Europe and reaches number one in the UK.

In 1987, Logan makes another attempt at Eurovision and with his self-penned song, “Hold Me Now,” representing Ireland at the Eurovision Song Contest in Belgium. The song wins the contest and he becomes the first person to win the contest twice.

Having composed the Irish Eurovision Song Contest 1984 entry for Linda Martin, “Terminal 3” (which finishes in second place), Logan repeats the collaboration in 1992 when he gives Martin another of his songs, “Why Me?” The song becomes the Irish entry at the finals in Sweden. The song takes the title and cements Logan as the most successful artist in Eurovision history with three wins.

Logan continues to perform and write songs. He is sometimes referred to as “Mister Eurovision” by fans of the contest and the media at large. He has continued his love of participating in musical theatre, having toured Norway with Which Witch, an opera-musical originating in that country. He continues to have success, particularly in the Scandinavian countries. His 2007 album, The Irish Connection, goes platinum in Denmark, twice platinum in Norway and gold in Sweden. He performs in the Celtic rock opera Excalibur from 2009 to 2011.

On May 16, 2020, Logan appears in Eurovision: Europe Shine a Light which is commissioned to replace the 65th Eurovison Song Contest due to its postponement until 2021 as a result of the Coronavirus Pandemic, singing his 1980 winning song “What’s Another Year.”

Logan and his family live in Ashbourne, County Meath. He rarely gives media interviews, claiming to have been frequently misquoted.


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Birth of Brendan Bowyer, Royal Showband Frontman

Brendan Bowyer, Irish singer best known for fronting the Royal Showband and The Big Eight and who had five number one hits in Ireland, is born in Waterford, County Waterford on October 12, 1938.

Bowyer is also renowned for having The Beatles open for the Royal Showband at a concert on April 2, 1962 at the Pavilion Theatre, Liverpool, England, some six months before the release of The Beatles debut single “Love Me Do” in October 1962. He is regarded as one of the first headlining Elvis impersonators. Elvis Presley himself is a big fan of Bowyer’s performances and often attends his concerts in the Stardust Resort and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada during the 1970s.

Bowyer begins his career with the Royal Showband in 1957. His ability to tailor American rock and roll music to the tastes of Irish audiences, and his athletic, spirited on-stage performances make him a popular vocalist of the 1960s Irish showband era. On September 6, 1963, he and the Royal Showband become the first Irish artists to top the Irish Singles Chart, with the hit “Kiss Me Quick,” which stays at the number one position for seven weeks. They return to the top position later that year with “No More,” and repeat the feat in 1964 with “Bless You.”

Bowyer takes part in the 1965 Irish National Song Contest for a chance to represent Ireland at the Eurovision Song Contest in Naples with the song “Suddenly in Love,” but can only manage fifth place. The Royal Showband’s greatest success is to come in 1965 with “The Hucklebuck,” which spends a further seven weeks at the top of the Irish Singles Chart, and is a hit in Australia, but fails to appear in the UK Singles Chart. “Don’t Lose Your Hucklebuck Shoes” returns the band to the number one position later in 1965.

In the summer of 1971 Bowyer, along with singer Tom Dunphy, leave the Royal Showband and form the Big Eight Showband. The band spends the summers playing the ballroom circuit in Ireland but also spends six months of the year in Las Vegas. Within a short time, the band makes the decision to relocate to Las Vegas permanently. He is based in Las Vegas from then on, though he makes frequent trips back to Ireland. In 1977 he makes a brief return to the Irish charts with his tribute, “Thank You Elvis.”

Having enjoyed a semi-retirement phase, Bowyer returns to the spotlight, touring Ireland each year, some for months on end, with his daughter Aisling Bowyer, and a six piece band. They perform his showband era hits, dance numbers, nationalist songs, modern contemporary songs and concert hits.

A covers album, Follow On, is released in 2001, where Bowyer performs some of the most popular Irish songs, such as “Summer in Dublin,” “What’s Another Year,” “Past the Point of Rescue,” and “I Don’t Like Mondays.”

In 2005, Bowyer and Aisling headline the entertainment list for the Tall Ships Festival in Waterford, performing in the open air to an estimated crowd of 12,000. In 2015, Bowyer is the star of the “Ireland’s Showbands – Do You Come Here Often?” concert series.

Bowyer dies at the age of 81 in Las Vegas, Nevada on May 28, 2020.


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Death of Showband Icon Butch Moore

butch-mooreButch Moore, born James Augustine Moore, Irish singer and showband icon during the 1960s, dies in Massachusetts on April 3, 2001. He is born in Dublin on January 10, 1938.

Moore plays with a number of bands before securing his big break with the Capitol Showband in 1958. Its lineup includes band leader, Des Kelly, and Paddy Cole, who is still involved in the entertainment business, and an early songwriter for the band is Phil Coulter. The Capitol achieves a considerable degree of success in the early 1960s attracting huge crowds in the State’s many ballrooms. It tours the United States in 1961, and two years later becomes the first showband to appear on the new RTÉ Television service. The Capitol plays in the London Palladium in 1964 on a night when the lineup includes Roy Orbison.

Moore marries Norah Sheridan in 1962. They have three children – Karen, Grainne and Gary.

Moore achieves celebrity status as Ireland’s first contestant in the Eurovision Song Contest in 1965. At the height of his success, he wins the National Song Contest to represent Ireland in the Eurovision Song Contest 1965, in Naples, singing Walking the Streets in the Rain. The song reaches number one on the Irish Singles Chart, but fails to chart in the United Kingdom.

As the lead singer with the Capitol Showband, he rivals the Royal Showband’s Brendan Bowyer as Ireland’s most popular showband vocalist. His marriage to Norah breaks down in 1969 and his career begins to decline. He emigrates to the United States in 1970, where he spends the last 31 years of his life.

Moore marries Irish ballad singer Maeve Mulvany in 1972 in the United States. They form a very successful group known as “Butch N Maeve” with a mixture of ballads and pop. They also own a pub in Massachusetts named after one of their songs, The Parting Glass. They have three children, Rory, Tara and Thomas.

Although suffering from cancer of the esophagus, Butch Moore dies of a heart attack on April 3, 2001. His body is returned to Dublin and a funeral Mass is celebrated at St. Canice’s Church in Finglas. After his death, Maeve makes plans to move back to Ireland where she has bought a house in Cormeen, County Cavan, but she dies on February 14, 2004.


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Bill Whelan Receives IMRO Lifetime Achievement Award

bill-whelanTaoiseach Bertie Ahern presents Irish composer and musician Bill Whelan with the IMRO Lifetime Achievement Award at Dublin Castle on March 2, 2001. Such big names as The Corrs, Brian Kennedy, Jean Butler, Jim Sheridan, Paul McGuinness and Moya Doherty join him to celebrate the award.

Whelan is best known for composing a piece for the interval of the 1994 Eurovision Song Contest. The result, Riverdance, is a seven-minute display of traditional Irish dancing that becomes a full-length stage production and spawns a worldwide craze for Irish dancing and Celtic music and also wins him a Grammy Award. It is released as a single in the United Kingdom in 1994, credited to “Bill Whelan and Anúna featuring the RTÉ Concert Orchestra.” It reaches number 9 and stays in the charts for 16 weeks. The album of the same title reaches number 31 in the album charts in 1995. He also composes a symphonic suite version of Riverdance, with its premiere performed by the Ulster Orchestra on BBC Radio 3 in August 2014.

Whelan is a native of Limerick and is educated at Crescent College, University College Dublin and the King’s Inns. While he is best known for his Riverdance composition, he has been involved in many ground-breaking projects in Ireland since the 1970s. As a producer he has worked with U2 (on their War album), Van Morrison, Kate Bush, The Dubliners, Planxty, Andy Irvine & Davy Spillane, Patrick Street, Stockton’s Wing and fellow Limerickman Richard Harris.

In theatre, Whelan receives a Laurence Olivier Award nomination for his adaption of Gilbert and Sullivan‘s H.M.S. Pinafore. He writes original music for fifteen of William Butler Yeats‘s plays for Dublin‘s Abbey Theatre and his film credits include, Dancing at Lughnasa (starring Meryl Streep), Some Mother’s Son, Lamb (starring Liam Neeson) and the award-winning At The Cinema Palace.


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Birth of Irish Dancer & Choreographer Michael Ryan Flatley

michael-flatleyMichael Ryan Flatley, Irish American dancer, choreographer, and musician, is born to Irish parents in Chicago, Illinois on July 16, 1958. He becomes internationally known for Irish dance shows Riverdance, Lord of the Dance, Feet of Flames, and Celtic Tiger.

Flatley begins dancing lessons at age 11 and, at age 17, is the first American to secure a World Irish Dance title at the World Irish Dance Championships, the Oireachtas Rince na Cruinne. He is also an accomplished flautist, having won twice in the All-Ireland Fleadh Cheoil Concert Flute competitions from 1975-1976.

Flatley is taught dance by Dennis Dennehy at the Dennehy School of Irish Dance in Chicago. After graduating from Brother Rice High School, on Chicago’s Southwest Side, he opens a dance school but later closes it to focus on performing.

In 1978 and 1979 Flatley tours with Green Fields of America and then with The Chieftains in the 1980s. In May 1989, Flatley sets a Guinness Book world record for tapping speed at 28 taps per second, and subsequently breaks his own record in 1998 with 35 taps per second.

Flatley creates and choreographs the original Riverdance and leads the show to great success as the intermission act in the Eurovision Song Contest staged in Ireland on April 30, 1994. Flatley abruptly leaves the show over creative control disputes in October 1995.

Shortly after the Riverdance split, Flatley creates Lord of the Dance, which plays mostly in arenas and stadiums instead of stage theaters. He also puts together a dance production called Feet of Flames in 1998. Flately’s Irish dance show Celtic Tiger opens in July 2005. The show explores the history of the Irish people and Irish emigration to the United States, fusing a wide range of dance styles, including jazz.

Flatley returns to the stage in 2009 for a limited run of the “Hyde Park” version of Feet of Flames in Taiwan. His return is met with multiple standing ovations and the run of shows has to be extended to meet the demand for tickets.

Flatley premiers Lord of the Dance: Dangerous Games at the celebrated Palladium Theatre on London’s West End in 2014 and moves to the Dominion Theatre in 2015 where he makes his final appearance on the West End stage before revisiting another sold out Wembley Arena for his final performance in the United Kingdom.

Flatley embarks on his final tour on February 19, 2016 and performs on stage for the last time at The Colosseum at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas, NV, on March 17, 2016. He continues as the show’s creator, producer, and choreographer.


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Founding of the Dublin Society for Improving Husbandry

royal-dublin-society-logoThe Dublin Society for Improving Husbandry (Cumann Ríoga Bhaile Átha Cliath) is founded on June 25, 1731 “to promote and develop agriculture, arts, industry, and science in Ireland.” On June 25, 1820, the name is changed to Royal Dublin Society (RDS) and is commonly known as the “Dublin Society.”

The society is originally founded by members of the Dublin Philosophical Society, chiefly Thomas Prior and Samuel Madden, as the “Dublin Society for improving Husbandry, Manufactures and other Useful Arts.” On July 8, 1731, a couple of weeks after initial foundation, the designation “and Sciences” is added to the end of its name.

The stated aim of the “Dublin Society” is therefore to promote the development of arts, agriculture, industry, and science in Ireland. In 1792 the Society purchases the Leskean Cabinet to further this ambition. The “Royal” prefix is adopted in 1820 when George IV becomes Society patron.

The society purchases Leinster House, home of the Duke of Leinster, in 1815 and founds a natural history museum there. The society acquires its current premises at Ballsbridge in 1879, and has since increased from the original fifteen acre site to forty acres. The premises consist of a number of exhibition halls, a stadium, meeting rooms, bars, restaurants, and a multi purpose venue named RDS Simmonscourt Pavilion.

The RDS Main Hall is a major centre for exhibitions, concerts, and other cultural events in Dublin. It hosts, for example, the Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition each January.

The Simmonscourt Pavilion has a capacity of approximately 7,000, and hosted the Meteor Music Awards in February 2008, as well as a number of concerts including The Smashing Pumpkins and My Chemical Romance, and two Eurovision Song Contests, in 1981 and 1988. Simmonscourt is where the show jumping horses are stabled during Dublin Horse Show week.


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“Riverdance” Performed for the First Time

riverdance-1994Riverdance, a theatrical show consisting of traditional Irish music and dance and featuring Irish dancing champions Jean Butler and Michael Flatley and a score composed by Limerick native Bill Whelan, is performed for the first time on April 30, 1994, as an interval performance act during the 1994 Eurovision Song Contest at the Point Theatre in Dublin.

Riverdance is rooted in a three-part suite of baroque-influenced traditional music called Timedance composed, recorded, and performed for the 1981 Eurovision Song Contest, which is hosted by Ireland. At the time, Bill Whelan and Dónal Lunny compose the music, augmenting the Irish folk band Planxty with a rock rhythm section of electric bass and drums and a four-piece horn section. The piece is performed, with accompanying ballet dancers, during the interval of the contest, and later released as a Planxty single. Whelan has previously produced EastWind, an album by Planxty member Andy Irvine with Davy Spillane whose cross between Irish and Southeastern European folk music proves an influence on Riverdance. Thirteen years later, Bill Whelan is invited to do the intermission piece for another Eurovision Song Contest in Dublin, and composes Riverdance. In the book The Humours of Planxty by Leagues O’Toole, Whelan says, “It was no mistake of mine to call it Riverdance because it connected absolutely to Timedance.”

The 1994 performance earns a standing ovation from the packed theatre of 3,000 people. As a result of this success, Riverdance is invited to perform at the prestigious Royal Variety Performance at Dominion Theatre, London, in the presence of Prince Charles on November 28, 1994.

At Congratulations: 50 Years of the Eurovision Song Contest and Eurovision Song Contest’s Greatest Hits events, the seven-minute performance is named as one of the most popular interval acts in the history of the contest.

An audio recording of Riverdance enters the Irish Singles Chart at number one on May 5, 1994, and remains there throughout the summer, eventually totalling a record eighteen weeks at #1. In response to the Rwandan genocide of May/June 1994, a video of the Eurovision interval performance is released by the Irish broadcaster Raidió Teilifís Éireann under the title Riverdance for Rwanda with all proceeds going to the Rwanda Appeal Disasters Joint Appeal Committee.

The success of the Eurovision performance leads husband and wife production team John McColgan and Moya Doherty to consider how to develop the piece. They decide to produce and direct a stage show, expanding the Eurovision piece and Bill Whelan’s composition. In November 1994, tickets are sold in Dublin for the first full-length performance of Riverdance, which opens at the Point Theatre on February 9, 1995. The show runs for five weeks and is a sell out with over 120,000 tickets sold. It stars the original lead dancers from the Eurovision performance as well as many from the dance troupe featured in the Eurovision performance.

Riverdance continues to be performed all over the world, in a diminished format and in smaller venues. Current productions are geared towards smaller theatres, whereas past productions have been performed in large theatres and arenas. Sets have been simplified and some numbers contain fewer performers than in past productions.