What can i say, only that im delighted, if thay had come 2nd or 3rd from last it would have beeen terrible! a bit of honour coming completely last! Dont know how they managed to get involved in the whole shenanigan anyway?? i remember playing in “sheelagh na gig"s openin night with all the cavan crew and the macaoidhs, and alan roberts and the sligo lads! I wonder did they do the whole thing for the pisstaake? cos if they didnt , then it wont be a case of “sheelagh na gig”, it will be a case of"sheelagh NO gigs”!
for them that dont know, sheelagh na gigs pub is the pub in sligo that dervish own.
I did watch this, just to see how it would turn out. Crap song - nothing to be done with it. Why did they do it ? How many traditional bands get the chance to perform in front of an audience of 100 million ? Hopefully now they’ll go back to doing what they do best. Good luck to them.
And maybe they should call their next recording, “Thank You, Albania” 
Well they recently headed “Rock in Rio” in front of an estimate audience of two hundred and forty thousand people, so they were quite used to big crowds!
! It was a spectacularly bad song, wasn’t it? Although I must I admit thinking if anyone could breathe life into it, it would them, but alas … the patient was dead on arrival.
Excruciating! A shite song, it was at the wrong end of her voice range, and she still managed to sing it so badly as to make it even worse.
When it started off too low, I was waiting for the statutory Eurovision key-change to save her, but it never happened.
The Albanian dimension just added to the bizarreness of the whole thing.
The only positive cast that I can put on it is that the Irish economy is now doing so well that all the Irish have moved back home, so (unlike the Turks) we no longer have a diaspora to vote for us from abroad no matter how bad the song is.
Sadly, there is absolutely no glory in coming last, unless one manages to do it by getting 0 points. I had great hopes for the Awful British entry doing that, but in a particularly vindictive move, the Irish gave us some points! 
I felt for Dervish. What could they do? Pass up the opportunity for a tradish band to get exposure or play that dreadful piece of carp…
You know, it was dire but why are you all acting like someone brought it on to Dervish like they had nothing to do with it? The best song and the one best suited to the singer’s vocal range was picked for them out of the bunch on offer (which tells you something about the other songs as well I suppose).
The first time I ever saw and heard Dervish was on the Late Late show on the tellie and they were doing Cher’s ‘Gipsies Tramps and Thieves’ which was wholly their own doing and in my recollection even worse than their Euro vision. And I have since see them do stuff like that on other occasions. In fact it is the only type stuff I have ever heard them do. Maybe they just enjoy playing that sort contemporary material, even while your one hasn’t really the vocal dexterity to tackle it?
Oooh, DINGDINGDING! Didn’t know they got to pick. 
Well, I’ll chalk that episode on the “Gypsies, Tramps & Thieves” side of the scoreboard (I’ve heard them do that too!), but shall continue to enjoy them warts, missteps and all.
It just adds to their humanity. 
Really, though, I still have more fun listening to them than any “mod trad” band (naturally, the Bothy Band is in a class of its own). No real idea why, but they seem to be having a marvelous time whenever I see them live (I’m up to, like, 4 concerts now); I also really like Cathy Jordan’s singing as well as their inventive sets and arrangements (their “Peata Beag”, which blends song with tune (The Humors of Ennistymon) is brilliant in my book).
So it’s OK. They picked the totally wrong dress for the prom. I still love 'em.
In fact, I can love 'em for you, too, Peter.
The lads graced our local with a visit for a pint and a tune a couple of days before the competition. It seems that they participated because they were asked to. They had just returned home from a tour in Finland and got a call asking them to represent Ireland. At first they thought that Olli, our Finnish promotor, was playing a joke on them but realising that it was for real, they decided to go for it.
BTW, there was an open competition to write the representing song for Dervish. Our band’s esteemed boxplayer Matti wrote a song that made it to the final four in the qualification. To see and hear Dervish play his song entry song, click http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8VzduB4wGw…
Personally, I did like They can’t stop the spring as well. But the fact that this type of music should be played live was strongly emphasized by the lads’ rather silly-looking miming on their instruments.
Including using a low whistle to mime a soprano. Maybe they thought that nobody who would spot the difference would be watching, so they could get away with it.
Of all the Irish trad band singers, Cathy Jordan was probably best placed to make a go of it, but she would have needed a song that allowed her to project her usual stage persona as well as her voice.
I thought the song was shite.And , whatever posessed Dervish to partake in such rubbish is completely beyond me. Cathy Jordan would have been better off doing a dervish song. her voice was totally unsuitable for that excuse for a song. As a dervish fan who has seen the band on a few occasions, i couldn’t understand the prancing round the stage as if some pompous producer had told them to look like they were enjoying themselves.Thats for teen bands.Dervish are an excellent trad band and shouldn’t have lowered themselves to this embarassment.
well – the pub is closed,; they never owned it and the lease was up.
and the Sligo live festival was postponed from june bank holiday to good knows then,–
they seem to go through a bit of a rough patch.