This is my first confession
and these are my sins ....
I'll just start with one, and you, my fellow penitents can add one of yours
I confess I have, more than once, entered a session, a strange session, in a foreign town, full of gentle souls dedicated to the careful playing of traditional Irish music in the correct way, when I have been too p!ssed to play, and insisted on playing anyway ... the shame!
Forgive me, Father, for I have noodled on a tune I knew not half as well as I ought. I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee, and I detest all my sins because of Thy just punishments.
I confess I once told a guy at my session who was telling bad jokes in a
fake Irish accent to knock it off. Thanks Big Guy Upstairs for letting me
get away with it.
I have nothing to confess. But here's a short excerpt from Frank O'Connor's "First Confession," the funniest confession ever:
A slide was slammed back; a little light entered the box, and a man's voice said "Who's there?"
"Tis me, father," I said for fear he mightn't see me and go away again. I couldn't see him at all. The place the voice came from was under the moulding, about level with my knees, so I took a good grip of the moulding and swung myself down till I saw the astonished face of a young priest looking up at me. He had to put his head on one side to see me, and I had to put mine on one side to see him, so we were more or less talking to one another upside-down. It struck me as a queer way of hearing confessions, but I didn't feel it my place to criticise.
"Bless me, father, for I have sinned; this is my first confession" I rattled off all in one breath, and swung myself down the least shade more to make it easier for him.
"What are you doing up there?" he shouted in an angry voice, and the strain the politeness was putting on my hold of the moulding, and the shock of being addressed in such an uncivil tone, were too much for me. I lost my grip, tumbled, and hit the door an unmerciful wallop before I found myself flat on my back in the middle of the aisle.
I brought our session to a complete halt once. I spent all week learning a reel in D that I thought was Geese In The Bog and when I called it at the session and began to play, that's when I learned about alternate tune names, as everyone else played the real Geese In The Bog (jig in C/Aminor)
Trouble with confession was that it encouraged desperate lying from an early age. Quick, what can I tell him this week? Not impure thoughts again, he'll think I'm a sex maniac and tell my mother. Plotting to blow up the Houses of Parliament? Been done. Coveting my neighbour's ox? My neighbour is 92 and lives in a second floor flat. His axe, maybe? Nope, he plays the nose flute etc. etc. Those priests have a lot to answer for in the field of fantasy.
I have a confession that will probably result in my excision from this board and my exclusion from all sessions attended by those who read it: About 8 or 9 years ago (Was it *only* that long ago? That makes it even worse!), during the Willie Clancy Week, I went out of town to The Crosses of Annagh, to escape the throngs. There was great music being played there, so I went in with my mandolin and found a seat (perhaps I was offered one - I can't remember). I was still quite a novice at the time, and didn't know any of the tunes. But the desire to participate was too overwhelming and - it still makes me cringe to think of it - I deadened the strings of my mandolin and strummed it like a washboard. I myself could hardly hear it - the satisfaction I gained from it was of a more tactile than auditory kind. But it is a peculiarity of mandolins that they are often more audible from the other side of the room than they are if you are right next to them. So I blithely strummed away, chuffed at my facility for rhythmic nuance - until one of the musicians shot me an utterly disgusted glare.
A couple of years later, I was at a post Willie Week session in Milltown. I knew one or two people there, but there was one musician - a familiar face from festivals, but not one I could place - who looked particularly unfriendly and made me feel quite unwelcome. Still, as the evening went on, there was good music and good craic, and I made a little conversation with the said musician, who seemed to warm to me a little. So I put their perceived unfriendliness down, perhaps, to shyness, or my paranoia, or perhaps just one of those deceptive faces. I met them on several occasions in subsequent years and found them quite amiable.
It was only several years later that I made the connection - this was the same person that had shot me the glance at the Crosses that night. When I walked into that session in Milltown with my mandolin, they were probably expecting me to start playing it like a washboard, which would explain the sour face. The incident has never been mentioned.
The above serves to remind me how close I still am to being a clueless novice. I *feel* as if I've come a long way since then, but 9 years ago I felt as if I'd come a long way since two years previously. Yet I still hadn't figured that you *don't* strum your mandolin like a washboard if you don't know the tune - or even if you *do* know the tune.
Are you for the Willie week again this year ragaman? I met you there one year, and you certainly weren't playing your mandolin like a washboard down in the secret session!
All the best,
Ron
In my line of work I get large blocks of time off. What with the low price of gas and all, I have been taking road trips to the sessions of the people who are frequent posters on this site. I found what I expected to find -- that sessions in the U.S. are mostly crap, and there are an awful lot of people who post on this site like they know what they are talking about who clearly don't, based on their (in)abaility to play this music. Those of you in Ireland either suspected this all along, or would be shocked by the reality. I highly recommend such a tour.
I went along to a session for a few months -I made almost every Tuesday, got along well with the crowd there, they seemed to like my playing,and the music was fantastic.
After about five months, the guitarist - who didn't play very much, mainly the slower tunes and accompanying the occasional song - approached me and asked me to take turns with him. He didn't play along with a bodhran playing.
So - did he like my playing a lot, or was he just too shy to say anything for a while?
I won't say where it was, because the guitarist is very well known and highly respected, as I discovered afterwards, and so is the session.
Forgive me, brethren, for I have smiled at the cute spoons player, encouraged my sister to learn bodhran, and fouled many a session with banjo music...
Bren - You were obviously pottering along the lanes of Aberdeen or wherever you are, and dropped your kebab down a boggle hole.
Following the skein of meat downward in your anxiety to retrieve its succulent promise, you tumbled into pitch darkness and landed on King Arthur and the Knights Of The Round Table, peacefully slumbering in a great mound of dirt. You failed to blow the horn so Thomas the Rhymer hastily took you away, to the fairy session which its blast would have terminated rudely and for ever.
This is why they humoured you.
They are more afraid of you than you are of them. But I'd think twice about going back.
I feel like the priest listening to innocent young kids desperately inventing sins.
or, apart from ragaman's wonderfully brave confession (for which he has truly atoned - go in peace my son) , a would-be employer reading a CV from someone who lists "perfectionist" and "inability to tolerate fools" under his/her "faults"
come on, some real transgressions people!
by the way nicholas, when I even think about going back, my ears go red! But without a certain amount of brass-neckery, life would be so much poorer
Then there was the banjo player who went to confession.
"Father, after last weeks ceilidh I went with a girl"
"That is a dreadful sin my son. Who was the girl?"
"Oh I couldn't bring shame on her name father"
"Was it Theresa Boyle?"
"No father."
"Mary O'Neill?"
"No father."
"Bridget Casey?"
"No father, I'm not sayin."
Well in that case you'll have to say six Hail Marys rather than three."
Going outside his mates asked "What did you get?"
Six Hail Marys and three good leads for next week."
I have made many mistakes over the years.
For example, many years ago, just after I had bought my electric bass guitar, I took it to a local Blues Jam and asked if I could play it. They were dumb enough to say yes and I did just fine until the singer who was leading the band decided to perform a song which started in C major. Since it was a typical three-chord blues song, that meant the other two chords were F major and G major.
I put my hand in the wrong position on the guitar neck and played the whole song one half-step (C# major, F# major, and G# major) above the rest of the band. The audience was too drunk to notice but the rest of the band noticed and I was told to leave the stage after the song was over.
After this experience, I took one year of lessons from a semi-retired professional bass player who worked at a local music store before I tried to play bass in public again.
Session confession
Session confession
In this +Semana Santa+, I must say ...
...peccavi
This is my first confession
and these are my sins ....
I'll just start with one, and you, my fellow penitents can add one of yours
I confess I have, more than once, entered a session, a strange session, in a foreign town, full of gentle souls dedicated to the careful playing of traditional Irish music in the correct way, when I have been too p!ssed to play, and insisted on playing anyway ... the shame!
... your turn
# Posted on March 31st 2009 by Bren
Re: Session confession
I confess I've NEVER done that.
# Posted on March 31st 2009 by Bredna
Re: Session confession
That's not a confession. Be off with you and don't come back until your soul is soiled!
# Posted on March 31st 2009 by Bren
Re: Session confession
I've let people play bodhrans and said nothing. I could do a Pastor Niemoller at this point. sh*t. It's out.
# Posted on April 1st 2009 by Steve Shaw
Re: Session confession
I kissed the Quaker's wife.
# Posted on April 1st 2009 by Pat Mustard
Re: Session confession
Rather coy lot aren't you?
# Posted on April 1st 2009 by Bren
Re: Session confession
Forgive me, Father, for I have noodled on a tune I knew not half as well as I ought. I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee, and I detest all my sins because of Thy just punishments.
# Posted on April 1st 2009 by fidkid
Re: Session confession
I committed the sin of drone-envy.
# Posted on April 1st 2009 by Atahualpa Quigley
Re: Session confession
I confess I once told a guy at my session who was telling bad jokes in a
fake Irish accent to knock it off. Thanks Big Guy Upstairs for letting me
get away with it.
# Posted on April 1st 2009 by Hup
Re: Session confession
Father, it is 47 years since my last confession.......
# Posted on April 1st 2009 by Guernsey Pete
Re: Session confession
More than once, I have started a tune much too fast, and the music has suffered. For this I am most sincerely sorry.
Now I will go (to sessions) and sin no more.
# Posted on April 1st 2009 by John Galt
Re: Session confession
I have nothing to confess. But here's a short excerpt from Frank O'Connor's "First Confession," the funniest confession ever:
A slide was slammed back; a little light entered the box, and a man's voice said "Who's there?"
"Tis me, father," I said for fear he mightn't see me and go away again. I couldn't see him at all. The place the voice came from was under the moulding, about level with my knees, so I took a good grip of the moulding and swung myself down till I saw the astonished face of a young priest looking up at me. He had to put his head on one side to see me, and I had to put mine on one side to see him, so we were more or less talking to one another upside-down. It struck me as a queer way of hearing confessions, but I didn't feel it my place to criticise.
"Bless me, father, for I have sinned; this is my first confession" I rattled off all in one breath, and swung myself down the least shade more to make it easier for him.
"What are you doing up there?" he shouted in an angry voice, and the strain the politeness was putting on my hold of the moulding, and the shock of being addressed in such an uncivil tone, were too much for me. I lost my grip, tumbled, and hit the door an unmerciful wallop before I found myself flat on my back in the middle of the aisle.
# Posted on April 1st 2009 by NEW Pure Drop® Ear Canal Oil
Re: Session confession
Hie lay ree oos
# Posted on April 1st 2009 by NEW Pure Drop® Ear Canal Oil
Re: Session confession
12 steps....has nothing to do with 12/8
# Posted on April 1st 2009 by zippydw
Re: Session confession
I brought our session to a complete halt once. I spent all week learning a reel in D that I thought was Geese In The Bog and when I called it at the session and began to play, that's when I learned about alternate tune names, as everyone else played the real Geese In The Bog (jig in C/Aminor)
# Posted on April 1st 2009 by Greg the Piano Tuner
Re: Session confession
Trouble with confession was that it encouraged desperate lying from an early age. Quick, what can I tell him this week? Not impure thoughts again, he'll think I'm a sex maniac and tell my mother. Plotting to blow up the Houses of Parliament? Been done. Coveting my neighbour's ox? My neighbour is 92 and lives in a second floor flat. His axe, maybe? Nope, he plays the nose flute etc. etc. Those priests have a lot to answer for in the field of fantasy.
# Posted on April 1st 2009 by Here Lyeth
Re: Session confession
I've coveted my neighbor's pipes.
# Posted on April 1st 2009 by DrSilverSpear
Re: Session confession
Was he particularly well endowed or just a smoker?
# Posted on April 1st 2009 by Here Lyeth
Re: Session confession
Aye.
# Posted on April 1st 2009 by DrSilverSpear
Re: Session confession
For your penance play 3 Roaring Marys and a Father O'Flynn.
# Posted on April 1st 2009 by Here Lyeth
Re: Session confession
I have a confession that will probably result in my excision from this board and my exclusion from all sessions attended by those who read it: About 8 or 9 years ago (Was it *only* that long ago? That makes it even worse!), during the Willie Clancy Week, I went out of town to The Crosses of Annagh, to escape the throngs. There was great music being played there, so I went in with my mandolin and found a seat (perhaps I was offered one - I can't remember). I was still quite a novice at the time, and didn't know any of the tunes. But the desire to participate was too overwhelming and - it still makes me cringe to think of it - I deadened the strings of my mandolin and strummed it like a washboard. I myself could hardly hear it - the satisfaction I gained from it was of a more tactile than auditory kind. But it is a peculiarity of mandolins that they are often more audible from the other side of the room than they are if you are right next to them. So I blithely strummed away, chuffed at my facility for rhythmic nuance - until one of the musicians shot me an utterly disgusted glare.
A couple of years later, I was at a post Willie Week session in Milltown. I knew one or two people there, but there was one musician - a familiar face from festivals, but not one I could place - who looked particularly unfriendly and made me feel quite unwelcome. Still, as the evening went on, there was good music and good craic, and I made a little conversation with the said musician, who seemed to warm to me a little. So I put their perceived unfriendliness down, perhaps, to shyness, or my paranoia, or perhaps just one of those deceptive faces. I met them on several occasions in subsequent years and found them quite amiable.
It was only several years later that I made the connection - this was the same person that had shot me the glance at the Crosses that night. When I walked into that session in Milltown with my mandolin, they were probably expecting me to start playing it like a washboard, which would explain the sour face. The incident has never been mentioned.
# Posted on April 1st 2009 by CreadurMawnOrganig
Re: Session confession
The above serves to remind me how close I still am to being a clueless novice. I *feel* as if I've come a long way since then, but 9 years ago I felt as if I'd come a long way since two years previously. Yet I still hadn't figured that you *don't* strum your mandolin like a washboard if you don't know the tune - or even if you *do* know the tune.
# Posted on April 1st 2009 by CreadurMawnOrganig
Re: Session confession
Are you for the Willie week again this year ragaman? I met you there one year, and you certainly weren't playing your mandolin like a washboard down in the secret session!
All the best,
Ron
# Posted on April 1st 2009 by On Sabbatical
Re: Session confession
I confess that I cannot stand bass drones on a set of pipes!
# Posted on April 1st 2009 by jlocky
Re: Session confession
You are obviously insane
# Posted on April 1st 2009 by bogman
Re: Session confession
My confession:
In my line of work I get large blocks of time off. What with the low price of gas and all, I have been taking road trips to the sessions of the people who are frequent posters on this site. I found what I expected to find -- that sessions in the U.S. are mostly crap, and there are an awful lot of people who post on this site like they know what they are talking about who clearly don't, based on their (in)abaility to play this music. Those of you in Ireland either suspected this all along, or would be shocked by the reality. I highly recommend such a tour.
# Posted on April 1st 2009 by Chrishty
Re: Session confession
I went along to a session for a few months -I made almost every Tuesday, got along well with the crowd there, they seemed to like my playing,and the music was fantastic.
After about five months, the guitarist - who didn't play very much, mainly the slower tunes and accompanying the occasional song - approached me and asked me to take turns with him. He didn't play along with a bodhran playing.
So - did he like my playing a lot, or was he just too shy to say anything for a while?
I won't say where it was, because the guitarist is very well known and highly respected, as I discovered afterwards, and so is the session.
# Posted on April 1st 2009 by RockyRoader
Re: Session confession
Forgive me, brethren, for I have smiled at the cute spoons player, encouraged my sister to learn bodhran, and fouled many a session with banjo music...
# Posted on April 1st 2009 by Reverend
Re: Session confession
Bren - You were obviously pottering along the lanes of Aberdeen or wherever you are, and dropped your kebab down a boggle hole.
Following the skein of meat downward in your anxiety to retrieve its succulent promise, you tumbled into pitch darkness and landed on King Arthur and the Knights Of The Round Table, peacefully slumbering in a great mound of dirt. You failed to blow the horn so Thomas the Rhymer hastily took you away, to the fairy session which its blast would have terminated rudely and for ever.
This is why they humoured you.
They are more afraid of you than you are of them. But I'd think twice about going back.
# Posted on April 1st 2009 by nicholas
Re: Session confession
I have another confession to make.... I like the Kesh Jig.
# Posted on April 1st 2009 by DrSilverSpear
Re: Session confession
I have played immense sets of polkas with sheer glee.
# Posted on April 1st 2009 by SWFL Fiddler
Re: Session confession
That's not a confession SWFL, that's something to be proud of. Polkas are the king of tunes.
# Posted on April 1st 2009 by bogman
Re: Session confession
Ah bogman, if only we all felt like that.
# Posted on April 1st 2009 by SWFL Fiddler
Re: Session confession
What about this then?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTstKph-psQ
# Posted on April 1st 2009 by bogman
Re: Session confession
I too have played some crackin' sets of polkas.
# Posted on April 1st 2009 by DrSilverSpear
Re: Session confession
'Stool of Repentance' for all of ye.
# Posted on April 1st 2009 by Here Lyeth
Re: Session confession
Nice polkas Bogman! Well played too.
# Posted on April 1st 2009 by SWFL Fiddler
Re: Session confession
I feel like the priest listening to innocent young kids desperately inventing sins.
or, apart from ragaman's wonderfully brave confession (for which he has truly atoned - go in peace my son) , a would-be employer reading a CV from someone who lists "perfectionist" and "inability to tolerate fools" under his/her "faults"
come on, some real transgressions people!
by the way nicholas, when I even think about going back, my ears go red! But without a certain amount of brass-neckery, life would be so much poorer
# Posted on April 1st 2009 by Bren
Re: Session confession
I play with my sister at sessions
# Posted on April 1st 2009 by pavlf
Re: Session confession
One day when I grow up I shall play sets of immense polkas with glee, on an accordion forty feet high.
This ambition keeps me alive.
# Posted on April 1st 2009 by nicholas
Re: Session confession
Now now, I meant the sets were immense. Long, seemingly never ending sets of polkas that go on and on and on...
"JAYZUS! Are we ever gonna play some reels?!?"
"Oh, sorry..."
# Posted on April 1st 2009 by SWFL Fiddler
Re: Session confession
Then there was the banjo player who went to confession.
"Father, after last weeks ceilidh I went with a girl"
"That is a dreadful sin my son. Who was the girl?"
"Oh I couldn't bring shame on her name father"
"Was it Theresa Boyle?"
"No father."
"Mary O'Neill?"
"No father."
"Bridget Casey?"
"No father, I'm not sayin."
Well in that case you'll have to say six Hail Marys rather than three."
Going outside his mates asked "What did you get?"
Six Hail Marys and three good leads for next week."
# Posted on April 1st 2009 by deeor
Re: Session confession
I confess I like playing the butterfly.
# Posted on April 1st 2009 by Bredna
Re: Session confession
More details Chrishty - where'd ja go? What about you? I'm sure
you are a fine player yourself. What instrument?
# Posted on April 2nd 2009 by Hup
Re: Session confession
"Are you for the Willie week again this year ragaman?"
Alas no, Ron. I've decided to inflict my sessional ineptitude on Ardara this year.
# Posted on April 2nd 2009 by CreadurMawnOrganig
Re: Session confession
Hup -
That post was only in jest. Do you have April Fool's Day down under?
# Posted on April 2nd 2009 by Chrishty
Re: Session confession
I have made many mistakes over the years.
For example, many years ago, just after I had bought my electric bass guitar, I took it to a local Blues Jam and asked if I could play it. They were dumb enough to say yes and I did just fine until the singer who was leading the band decided to perform a song which started in C major. Since it was a typical three-chord blues song, that meant the other two chords were F major and G major.
I put my hand in the wrong position on the guitar neck and played the whole song one half-step (C# major, F# major, and G# major) above the rest of the band. The audience was too drunk to notice but the rest of the band noticed and I was told to leave the stage after the song was over.
After this experience, I took one year of lessons from a semi-retired professional bass player who worked at a local music store before I tried to play bass in public again.
# Posted on April 2nd 2009 by fauxcelt
Re: Session confession
I have stayed just long enough to get my song in, then split.
# Posted on April 7th 2009 by flutix
Re: Session confession
I have a very strong urge to take a dump in anyone's loud banjo pot. Any loud banjo is annoying.
# Posted on April 13th 2009 by Leendah