Flogging Molly

Years ago in one of my tutorials, the group Flogging Molly was mentioned constantly--I can still hear Erin saying "I love Flogging Molly." Now I had never heard of them before that year, but I mentally lumped them in with Toad the Wet Sprocket and Harry and the Potters as a dull college band and I never bothered to find out who they actually were. A couple of weeks ago, Amazon's MP3 Download of the day was Flogging Molly's album Drunken Lullabies.

(Insert commercial announcement: If you don't know about Amazon's Download of the day, you should immediately start looking at it. Every day, Amazon offers an MP3 album at a steep discount--usually $2.99 for the whole album--they change the album every day, and there is no way anyone would want every single album they feature, but if you look often enough, you are sure to find a ready supply of cheap music.)

So, for $2.99 I figured I might as well listen to a band I once heard mentioned all the time.

Wow! It is a truly great album. I listen to it all the time now--of course my kids all hate it (Oh, Dad, Not that Irish music again...) But, since you, the Hypothetical Reader, obviously have better taste than my Children, here you go.

Speaking of albums (by the way, Clara seems to be under the impression that using the word "album" signifies that one is quite old--I tried to explain to her that the term still applies even to an MP3 downloaded song list, but she didn't buy it), Janet also got me a great album for Christmas: Rodrigo y Gabriela's 11:11; it's a pair of guitarists and what they can do on guitars is utterly amazing. But you don't have to take my word for it: Have a listen. Then buy the album. It's all that good.

As long as I am reviewing recently acquired albums of note: Trans-Siberian Orchestra's Night Castle is good. Not their best album, but it is still pretty good. I also bought Savatage's Dead Winter Dead for Emma for Christmas--Savatage is the band from which TSO sprung--they are basically redoing a lot of Savatage songs with an orchestral back-up. The orchestra makes a big difference, and so the TSO versions of songs are much better.