Say what you will-- the album is overproduced, in bad taste, Flatley is too fat and too rich… still, I wish I could play like Mike. His tone is perfect, his timing is exquisite, the tempo is restrained and lovely. He is a consumate player. And by the way, he plays an old Rudall.
His version of Ms. McCloud’s is gorgeous… once you get past the synthesizer and electronic stuff. I hope the rest of the new CD is not overproduced.
Mike Rafferty, The Great One, likes Flatley very much. Listen to the cut one more time and try to hear what he is doing on the flute. Then tell me you wouldn’t want to play like that.
Yes, the guy is a great flute player. Seamus Tansey regards him highly.
Are they good stereo tracks ? Maby we could cut the trash out ?
I wis I could play like Mike too. That remids me of that old saying (well not that old) Like Mike you states people know. 
It’s a shame he’s wasting his talent like that. He’s already made a boatload, it’s not like he has to sell out now to survive. He’d lose nothing by doing a nice pure drop album.
Corin
Kindred spirits
Corin
I guess he’s not fat anymore; he says that at 46 he’s now in the best shape he’s ever been in his life and has lost a ton of weight, gone on a diet and hired a personal trainer. I guess it got to him when people started calling him Lard of the Dance.
I remember hearing him play and seeing him dance in the late 1970s in Chicago in a concert with Liz Carroll, and I was blown away.
OOOOOOOOOK, you’re right, but STILL. A good slagfest is so much fun, especially when the target is so rich and famous … it’s all I’ve got to keep me warm thru my endless cold nights of pathetic non-entity-ness.
Speaking of ripping flute playing, BTW, has anyone heard Frankie Gavin on “Fierce Traditional”? Yes, Frankie Gavin, on the flute … there’s a man I really wouldn’t mind playing like. In fact, he & Flatley kind of have a similar tone …
It was only a matter of time before someone started this thread.
I would love to have MF’s abilities (a goal to work toward indeed), but in reference to the resurrected “Michael Flatley” CD, no, I wouldn’t really want to play like that. Seriously. Especially the airs. He’s a fabulous technician at reels, still and all. I listened well to his rendering of Miss McLeod’s and thought it was something worth learning from. He shifted to the key of A after all, too. Probably no big shakes for any player better than I, and I trust they are many.
Cathy, you’re so right about Frankie. (he used to use a Patent Head Rudall)
He’s got two albums out with his flute playing.
I got to play with him …actually right next to him…a couple years ago when he was here. That was fun. Our styles are quite different, but it was a blast (same as with Linda Hickman just recently, in fact!).
Anyway, Frankie is a terrific professional who pays incredible attention to tone on the flute. He’s very much into airs now, as well as researching the sources and history of what he’s playing.
If you’ve never seen him in person, he is truly a great entertainer who will have you laughing so hard you pee in your pants. A wonderful man for sure.
dm
In my experience, Flatley and Frankie have more in common than their styles of playing flute.
Chris
He is outrageously talented, during the rehearsals of Lord of the D’ he danced and played amazingly, but I also remember him turning up in not one but 3 supercars (two driven by assistants) once they were all parked up for us to admire he sent his bodyguard (Six foot four blond and CIA trained, oh, and female and georgeous.) over to tell us not to get paint on them. After three weeks we all, cast and crew were not at all fond of him, we were however very fond of the money he paid us… no wait sec now I remember the money. He’s a great guy I take it all back. Oh and all the critics should remember he is also a pro standard boxer!
I haven’t been able to listen to these latest Flatley clips, so I can’t really comment on them. But for those of you who have heard them, I’m wondering. Has Flatley solved the problem he used to have of playing flat in the upper register? I remember seeing comments from him years ago that yes, he knew it was a problem, but try as he would he was not able to find a way around it. I’m not slagging his playing here, as it’s purely a matter of taste, so just let me say that for a Golden Gloves boxer and champion stepdancer, he’s not a bad flute player. Obviously he was able to keep his lip intact during his boxing days, and that’s no small accomplishment!
If this thread is meant to restore a balance that was needed after the more critical thread, I really can’t see the point of it. I didn’t read all of that thread carefully, it wasn’t that kind of thread, but I didn’t notice people claiming that Flatley is untalented. What I noticed was people complaining that someone that talented should waste his talent on projects so obviously in bad taste. To the best of our knowledge he doesn’t need the money. So, what’s up?
The situation reminds me of Elvis Presley. He didn’t need the money, the colonel didn’t need the money, but out came the product. One movie sound track clocked in at about 13 minutes. RCA charged the faithful punters full price of course.
With Presley it wasn’t cynicism on his part. His best performances and the early tracks he chose to cover and how he chose to cover them all tesitfy to his having extraordinary ability and good taste. So it was easy to see the later schlock as a product of manipulation. We now know that was wrong. Elvis loved schlock all along. He wanted to be an ‘all round’ entertainer which, in his day, meant appealing to people who know absolutely nothing about music. As far as taste goes, he just seems to have been schizoid. In the same heart and mind, the great taste and the schlock coexisted and often, when the chips were down, he preferred the latter. And the chips are usually down in Vegas.
I think a lot of us see something like this at work in Michael Flatley and I don’t see why anybody should be accused of sour grapes for saying so. If you didn’t regard bloated Elvis in jump suit doing karate kicks for Vegas matrons as sad for a man of his talent you would be demented. Or, to put it more kindly, I’d wonder if you had noticed what talent the man really had if you didn’t lament the fact that he so often chose not to use it.
Don’t worry, Wombat. I’m used to that rather shallow and desparate accusation. If you display a bit of knowledge about enduring styles and question what seems like a feed fest on ‘the well’ were people are equal parts quaffing from it and pissing in it then you do tend to rattle little cages.
It’s simply not ‘all good’ if you treat the musical traditions as an enduring art form and with all the respect that they deserve. I know the people from whom Flatley got his music personally, and I know the spirit in which he was helped with it so I do have reasons for feeling involved. When South Sligo flute music and pop music ‘sensibilities’ collide there will always be friction. As you can hear (I hope), the South Sligo flute portion of the equation isn’t holding up the best at all. That needs to be recognised and discussed (and condemned if you are so inclined) otherwise we really are groping in the darkness. Flatley can and will do what he wants of course, and I can like it or lump it or tactically ignore it (reserving the right to trash it when it is just pulp). Such is the nature of the inclusive tradition: accepting others while never buying into anything 100 per cent (some would like to dictate likewise though as we know) and never getting too carried away with yourself… (“And Then Came Who?”)
There is not enough critical commentary on ITM of course. Not enough good, informed and passionate commentary that is. In any other style of music crap like what was posted would be listened to, identified and soundly exposed as exactly what it is in some respected, quality publication. Where is Brendan Breathnach when you need him?
Regards,
Harry.
Beautiful, Harry!
Oh my God I’m going to defend Flatley… I can’t believe I’m going to do this.
ITM folks are not who this stuff is aimed at. It’s aimed at his LOTD/ Riverdance audience IE middle of the road undemanding folk. They wouldn’t get a pure trad CD. It’s Trad lite, they will lap it up and it will make him a shed load of money no doubt. I expect his garden has quite a row of sheds by now.
Well -shudder- that’s over with.
Rob
treeshark,
You can look at the practicalities of the buisness side (as you just have), or you can look at it from a musican’s artistic point of view or some mixture of the two.
You are defending MF’s right to make money. No problem, until that is when he starts making a balls of his talents and possibly, by extension, a very rich but fairly precariously placed strand of tradition that was never denied him.
I think a fairly severe imbalance which favours the ‘practical’ point of view is evident in the said piece, and popular Irish music in general.
Regards,
Harry.
Harry, I agree he prostitutes his art for money, but from my dealings with him he is so vainglorious that any fine feelings for tradition would I suspect pass him by. People who have become famous are like heroin addicts they get desperate for a fix, hence these sad celebrity programs. I don’t think Flatley is any threat to any traditions though, they are far tougher than that!! Of his own talents however, I agree, what a sad sad waste of ability and learning. Still his own audience loves what he does and who am I to scorn their pleasure!
Rob