Talk:The Saw Doctors

stub

Is this article really a stub? I can't imagine a printed encyclopedia including more information on a band than this. I reckon the article is pretty much as complete as it needs to be. Bandraoi 19:04, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

NPOV

will try to edit this when I have the chance, the starting is completely biased. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 83.70.238.182 (talk) 01:24, 9 March 2007 (UTC).

The following section has been removed. It is totally unsourced, non-neutral in tone, and to have any chance of being retained needs to be extensively sourced and re-written.

===Musical style===

The band is often compared with American singer-songwriter Bruce Springsteen due to their frequent invocation of local atmosphere, haunts, and characters, and their penchant for singing about ordinary people's lives in economically difficult times. Some Saw Doctors songs take autobiographical youthful memories—of an attractive schoolgirl from the local Catholic boarding school ("Presentation Boarder"), of a missed opportunity to score a goal in a gaelic football game ("Broke My Heart"), of driving with a father while he points out local landmarks ("Galway and Mayo"), of first love ("Red Cortina"), of clumsy teenage seduction ("D'ya Wanna Hear My Guitar?"), of dreary Irish summers ("Will it Ever Stop Raining?"), or of farmers' harvest banter ("Hay Wrap") -- and weave them into wry but often touching portraits of rural Irish life. Other songs, written from more mature, serious perspectives, explore themes such as depression and desperation ("Same Oul' Town," "Sing a Powerful Song," "To Win Just Once"); emigrant longings for home ("N17", "The Green and Red of Mayo," "Midnight Express," "Going Home"); and cravings for adult love, acceptance, and togetherness ("Share the Darkness," "Clare Island," "Wake up Sleeping").

Davy Carton has explained the blend of sadness and exuberance in many Saw Doctors' songs, saying "There has to be a dark side because there's a dark side to life. We see that, but we're kind of cynical optimists, I suppose. I look at myself that way. You always like to see the bright things. That's the uplift in it."

The Saw Doctors' have often been controversially anti-clerical, as when they appeared on the 1991 IRMA Awards (broadcast on live television) with Carton dressed as a priest and the remaining band members dressed as altar boys. Sparkling with mischief and sexual frisson, the band's songs often portray the clergy as priggish killjoys or sanctimonious hypocrites. "Tommy K" commemorates the late Tuam DJ Tommy Kavanagh (former breakfast DJ on Galway's "Super Pirate" County Sound Radio in the 1980s), whom a bishop condemned publicly for holding a disco during Lent, a time when Catholics were traditionally forbidden from attending parties and dances. "I Useta Lover" roguishly rhymes "mass" with "ass" as the kneeling singer admires his prospective paramour from behind as she goes up to receive holy communion. "Bless Me, Father" parodies Catholic confession with its saucy lyric "Bless me, Father, for I have sinned / She had big brown eyes and silky skin / Bless me, Father, I couldn't resist / Oh, Father, you have no idea what you've missed." And "Howya Julia" pillories disgraced former Bishop of Galway Eamon Casey, a staunch defender of priestly celibacy who in 1992 was discovered to have fathered a child some eighteen years previously with American divorcée Annie Murphy. The song's chorus ("Oh, mighty, mighty Lord almighty / It's off with the collar and off with the nightie / Jesus, Mary, and holy Saint Joseph / The beads are rattling now") combines cutting criticism with the Saw Doctors' typically effervescent humour.

On recent albums Villains and The Cure, the Saw Doctors' longstanding affection for the landscape and local history of western Ireland led them to criticize the country's Celtic Tiger economic boom. Commenting on how the many new roads and houses throughout the Irish countryside disrespect land and ancestry, "Out for a Smoke" features the lyrics "The bones of our ancestors / Are buried in the field behind the shed / They could be lying there oblivious / Underneath cement before I'm dead." Having chronicled an era of economic depression, poverty, and emigration, the Saw Doctors find themselves in the ironic position of being unable to approve of how an economic boom had changed their country's social and cultural fabric.

The band often takes swipes at Irish popular culture. Their single "I’m Never Gonna Go on Bebo Again" is a comical critique of the social networking website Bebo, which is extremely popular in Ireland. Ironically, several members of the band maintain well-trafficked Bebo sites.

Derek R Bullamore (talk) 18:54, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

References

Biggest selling single

isn't 'whole lot of loving' by six ireland's biggest seller, goggle searching either song shows claims for both, although the saw doctors mainly seem to have come up from an article about them winning the meteor lifetime achievement award, which this page is almost entirely plagiarised from. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.45.91.0 (talk) 11:42, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

By very nature

"drummers Padraig Stevens, John Donnelly (drummer), Jimi Higgins, and Fran Breen." John Donnelly is a drummer so he does not need drummer after his name? 20:35, 14 December 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.40.208.160 (talk)