6 March 2008
Christy Dignam, who has died just a few days before I write this, didn’t have an Irish number one single with his band Aslan. However, as a credited member of A Band of Bowsies, the collective noun for the plethora of Irish singers appearing here, this is the third time we’ve seen him at the top of our hit parade – the previous two were with another band of bowsies, namely the Irish World Cup squad, in 1994 and 2002. (Aslan’s considerable popularity and success can be measured with other metrics: album sales, ticket sales, public affection.)
‘The Ballad Of Ronnie Drew’ was a charity tribute to the titular Dubliner, then seriously ill with a variant of the same accursed disease—cancer—that also afflicted Dignam. Drew died a few months after this record was released, and the parallels between the two men suggest themselves. Both were widely loved and hugely respected, both had their own unique place in Irish popular culture (I find it impossible to read the name Ronnie Drew without also saying it to myself in a caricatured Ronnie Drew accent) and both embodied a proud, heartfelt, distinctive life story of their native Dublin.
Whatever its merits as a chart-topping single, you can’t say ‘The Ballad Of Ronnie Drew’ wasn’t made with genuine affection for the man from his peers; a Ballad Of Christy Dignam would surely embody the same feelings. That, and their most famous songs are now as much part of the shared Irish experience as the Toy Show and jokes about the immersion: sounds more like ‘made it’ than ‘blew it’ to me.
