Singer/guitarist Larry Kirwan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Kirwan) will be putting his long-running agit-pop band Black 47 into mothballs as of November 15 after an extended farewell tour with one last show tomorrow,Friday November 14 at Mahoney’s Irish Pub in Poughkeepsie NY. A native of Wexford, Ireland, Turner’s first notable American outfit was Turner and Kirwan of Wexford (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOaN-6-R8PI) who were effectively the houseband at Malachy McCourt’s Bells of Hell in Greenwich Village which was where all the notable of NYC’s occult scene gathered to let their hair down in the 70’s as detailed in accounts like Simon’s “Dead Names” and James Wasserman’s “In The Center of The Fire.” So this duo enterained an eclectic crowd of Wiccans, OTO members, Golden Dawn devotees and assorted free-range occultists including Simon, editor of the Necronomicon. The duo were eventually banned from CBGBs by Hilly Kristal for being “too demonic” (as detailed in Kirwan’s interview in Behutet magazine). In 1980 they recorded and released musical arrangements of passages from Liber Al vel Legis under the name “Heretix,” a line-up including Simon.
The duo went on to be the creative nucleus of Major Thinkers (http://lostbands.blogspot.com/2004/11/major-thinkers-avenue-b.html) and released an album on Portrait/Epic Records.
Black 47 were formed in 1989 and by their accounts have played some 2000 shows and released over a dozen albums over the years. Kirwan will be going through the history of Black 47 on his Sirius XM radio show Celtic Crush this Saturday November 15.
http://www.black47.com/
