Re: Banish Misfortune -- hackneyed?

I've got the tune on a couple of albums but I only heard it played live
once, by a young lady who played bluegrass and was busking and touting a gig
she and her banjo playing buddy had that week. We talked a bit about fiddles
and I mentioned that I played Irish music. She did a nice rendition of
Banish Misfortune and that is the only time I heard it live.

It is a nice tune and someday I will learn it. In the mean while, there are
a hundred tunes that they play in local sessions that I still don't know, so
it is pretty far down my list.

Pete

in article [EMAIL PROTECTED], Ptbrady at
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote on 9/11/03 2:25 PM:

> I seem to have led a charmed life.  Because, despite my modest collection of
> recordings of around 1,000 Irish tunes and several books containing even more
> than 1,000 tunes, I have never heard of "Banish Misfortune."
> That is, until the April 2003 issue of Strings magazine published an article
> just on that tune, from which I quote: "Banish Misfortune is to Irish music
> what "Lady of Spain" is to the accordian, and what "Fur Elise" is to the
> piano.
> In short, it is the clear front-runner for the title of Most Overplayed Irish
> Fiddle Tune in the United States... It is one of the most loathed and
> disparaged pieces of music around."
> With the article is sheet music, but it is for a complex version for two
> fiddles and it is a little difficult to extract the plain tune from it.
> Nevertheless, I tried, and after several times through, I feel I really
> haven't
> gotten the swing of it.  But I also do not recognize it.
> It is really that hackneyed?  I know musicians that refuse to play the Irish
> Washerwoman (which I like, by the way, especially the way Johnny and Mickey
> Doherty play it) because it is so trite, but what have I missed in my musical
> background that has deprived me of this gem?  Does everyone really know it and
> loath it?  If I learn it will I also be loathed and disparaged?
> Pete Brady