“Let me tell you a story, I’ll be quick as I can
Terrible news from the Holy Land
Pictures of children etched in my mind
Buried in the rubble, on the firing line.”
— Christy Moore, “Palestine”
Christy Moore played a sold-out concert at the Keadeen Hotel in Droichead Nua on August 30.
Eighty-one-year-old Christy opened the show with “City of Chicago” and “Viva la Quinta Brigada”. Christy explained that Frank Conroy from Kilcullen, named in the final verse of “Viva la Quinta Brigada”, died in Spain in 1936. Fifteen years later, when he was at school in Newbridge, there was no mention of Frank Conroy. He said “a group of people held a memorial in Kilcullen recently, keeping the memory of (Communist) Frank Conroy alive”.
Christy delivered an electrifying performance with “Ordinary Man”, “The Voyage”, “Ride On”, “Back Home in Derry”, and “Lisdoonvarna”. You could hear a pin drop when he sang “Palestine” by Jim Page, who wrote “Hiroshima Nagasaki Russian Roulette” for Christy and “Moving Hearts”. The great night of music ended with an encore of “Joxer Goes to Stuttgart”; the audience gave a standing ovation.
They came to stand beside the Spanish people
To try and stem the rising fascist tide
Franco’s allies were the powerful and wealthy
Frank Ryan’s men came from the other side.
— Christy Moore, 1984
