By Ray O’Hanlon
Black 47 front man Larry Kirwan is as happy as his first name this week after the group’s successful homecoming to the Bronx last weekend.
Black ’47 played before an appreciative crowd on City Island in a gig that was divorced at the last minute from the local Maritime Festival because of allegations by a Chamber of Commerce member that Black 47 fans would “end up pissing and puking all over the place.”
But from Kirwan’s vantage point there was none of that on the day.
“There was not one pisser or puker,” Kirwan told the Echo. “It all went off very well. The only odd thing was that the police told some people that the show had been canceled.
“But I think it ended up well in the end for everyone and we hope to be doing it again [on City Island] is September during an oyster festival there,” Kirwan said.
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Keveny returns to the Bronx
Fr. Martin Keveny, one of the first immigrant chaplains sent to New York in the late 1980s by the Catholic Church in Ireland, is to make a return visit to his former neighborhood this weekend.
Fr. Keveny, who worked with Project Irish Outreach from 1988 to ’94, is to celebrate a special fund-raising Mass at St. Philip Neri Church, 3025 Grand Concourse at 5:30 p.m., Saturday, June 13. The Mass will be followed by a reception.
St. Philip Neri was burned down in a fire two years ago and extensive fund-raising has been carried out to pay for its rebuilding. Fr. Keveny is currently working at a mission in Brazil.
Reps. ask Clinton to intervene
The congressional Ad Hoc Committee for Irish Affairs has urged President Clinton to raise the issue of the British military presence in South Armagh and to ask the British to reduce it.
Residents of the South Armagh area, long described by British security forces as “bandit country,” have complained repeatedly that the British army has stepped up its presence even after the IRA cease-fire and peace talks.
“There is no evidence that there is sufficient security danger to warrant a military presence of this magnitude. The people of South Armagh are subjected to a greater military occupation now than they were prior to the IRA cease-fire. This is morally wrong and politically counterproductive,” said Rep. Peter King, a co-chair of the Ad Hoc group.
King, together with fellow co-chairs Tom Manton, Ben Gilman and Richard Neal, had written a letter to Clinton urging his intervention.