Live For Ireland



Live For Ireland
by Various Artists

Label: MCA
Catalog Number: MCD06027 / DMCG6027
Year Released: 1987

Total Playing Time: 67:49

Tracks:

  1. Maggies Farm – U2
  2. Seven Into The Sea – In Tua Nua
  3. Many Rivers To Cross – Elvis Costello And The Attractions
  4. Dirty Old Town – The Pogues
  5. Don't Pay The Ferryman – Chris de Burgh
  6. Harry's Game – Clannad
  7. The Bridge – Cactus World News
  8. Looking After No. 1 – The Boomtown Rats
  9. Here Comes The Knight – Van Morrison
  10. Don't Believe A Word – Thin Lizzy
  11. Steel River – Chris Rea
  12. Make It Work – Christy Moore And Paul Doran
  13. The Lark – Moving Hearts
  14. The Island – Paul Brady
  15. Feel It Now – The Fountainhead
  16. Exiles – Auto Da Fe

Comments: Over the last twenty years, there has been a surge of new and exciting talent in rock and contemporary music in Ireland; witness the artists on this album. Their influence and the influence of many other emerging Irish bands is set to make an even greater impact on the music scene in the years to come than heretofore.
This live album is a record and a recording of an extraordinary day in Irish social history – May 17th 1986. On that day, thirty Irish bands stormed their way through a fourteen hour concert which gathered the biggest ever television audience in Ireland.
The concert was called "Self-Aid” and the purpose of this celebration of Irish contemporary music was to highlight and help the chronic unemployment problem in Ireland. In May of 1986 there were nearly a quarter of a million people unemployed in Ireland – this in a country of just three and a half million people.
The concert itself was the largest ever staged in Ireland. The musicians taking part in Self-Aid gave their talents and time free of charge, not only for the concert but also for this album, the profits of which will go to the Self-Aid Trust to further the work begun in May 1986.
This album is a tribute to those musicians who took part in Self-Aid and to all those artists we wish to say "Thank You” for your talent and selfless generosity.
Niall Mathews – Tony Boland