250 years ago, Arthur Guinness signed a 9,000-year lease at £45 a year to rent St James’s Gate brewery in Dublin. Tomorrow, September 24th, has been designated as Arthur’s Day and will feature celebrations all around the world. Unsurprisingly, the biggest party will take place in Dublin as dozens of bands will converge on Ireland’s capital city to raise a toast to Arthur. The day begins at 17:59 with an invite-only concert at St James’s Gate itself featuring Tom Jones, Kasabian and Estelle. Four Dublin venues (Vicar St, the Academy, Tripod and Whelan’s) will put on gigs that will include Richard Hawley, Lisa Hannigan, David Gray and the Undertones. And Live at the Local sees Noah & the Whale, Mick Flannery and dozens of other acts perform at 28 Dublin pubs throughout the night. Sounds like it’s going to be a busy day. For those of you who’d like to celebrate Arthur’s Day early or in the confines of your own home, here are a few drinking songs to accompany the creamy pints of stout
Song’s For Arthur’s Day
01 Alcoholiday – Teenage Fanclub
03 Let’s Get Falling Down – The Revenants
04 The Drinking Side of Me – The Revenants
05 Sally MacLennae (Peel Session) – The Pogues
06 Barley and Grape Rag – Rory Gallagher & Ronnie Drew
07 Drunkard`s Special – Coley Jones
08 Give us a Stout – Connemara Stone Company
09 Pints of Guinness Make You Strong – Against Me!
10 Red Bull & Guinness (Remix) – Delly Ranks
11 Another Irish Drinking Song – Da Vinci’s Notebook
12 The Pull of the Pint – Bill Coleman
13 Drinking Song – Jenny Owen Youngs
15 My Alcoholic Friends – The Dresden Dolls
16 Don’t Come Home A-Drinkin’ (With Lovin’ On Your Mind) – Loretta Lynn
17 I’ll Come Home A’Drinkin’ – Sonny Wright
18 Here Comes a Regular – The Replacements
19 Delirium Tremens – Christy Moore
20 The Piano Has Been Drinking (Not Me) – Tom Waits
And here’s an appropriately entitled instrumental from a man who’s fond of a pint of two of the black stuff:
[...] year, I wrote a post about about the 250th anniversary of Arthur Guinness’s decision to lease out the St. [...]
[...] given a pint bottle of Guinness free of charge after donating blood. This bottle was provided by Guinness, but their parent company, Diageo, announced this week that they have decided to stop this [...]
how serendipitous! I referenced Guinness in a post today and now find out it’s Guinness day–I’m ready to down a pint or two.
I’m sure ye’ll celebrate it in style, Erin. I was thinking about the time we drank pints of Guinness at 8.00 in the morning when we went to watch the World Cup! And it was only at the end that I discovered they had draught cider ;-) Good times
Love all the posts, Pat, but I particularly enjoyed this one! Tommy and I were just talking about how we’re going to celebrate Arthur’s Day tomorrow.