Performer: Robert Plant
Songwriters: Chris Blackwell, Doug Boyle, Kevin MacMichael,
Robert Plant
Original Release: Fate of Nations
Year: 1993
Definitive Version: none
When Fate of Nations came
out, I fell in love with this song immediately. The thing that really drew me
in was the ethereal wordless background vocals of Maire Brennan. I was
surprised and pleased to see her name on the credits. She was the lead singer
of Clannad, one of my favorite nonrock bands. If you’re not familiar with them,
they play what might best be described as Gaelic new age folk.
Like a lot of people in this
country, I discovered Clannad through a Volkswagen commercial in 1992. I had
seen the commercial for a while, but I didn’t know from whence the angelic
music came until I went to Chicago to help Jin move into her solo apartment in
November.
The commercial came on late
at night, and I woke Jin up, calling her out to the living room to tell me who
did the music. Clannad, she said, thoroughly disgusted with me (and rightfully
so) before slamming the door and going back to blissful sleep.
Well, last fall, things came
full circle. The weekend after Laurie and I got home from Italy, we saw Clannad
at Park West. When I bought the tickets in the summer, I read that it was
Clannad’s first tour of the States in 30 years, so I wanted to go even though I
really hadn’t listened to them much in the past decade and a half. In fact,
they pretty much had been dormant since the calendar rolled over, and I moved
on to Loreena McKennitt, who more or less plays Welsh new age folk.
When we went to see Clannad,
still giddy from our Italian holiday, we got there early to make sure we got a
good seat. While in line, some guy asked me the scores to the Notre
Dame-Brigham Young game—ND won—and the Northwestern-Nebraska game—NW lost.
Aside from my duties as a
scoreboard, there was no need to get there, well, before Clannad started. A
hundred people might have been at Park West—not counting waitstaff or the
band—certainly no more than 200. Park West isn’t huge, but it was by far the
most empty I’ve ever seen a concert venue. In fact, I was surprised the show
wasn’t cancelled due to lack of sales.
But Clannad played and put
their hearts into it. It was a fantastic performance: haunting and magical.
Time had done nothing to their voices, and the music, also being timeless, held
up well.
Laurie was stunned. She had
heard of Clannad only through me and couldn’t believe how much she liked them.
I already knew how much I liked them at one time, and the concert was a nice
reminder of that time, a time when I had this song on my tape player a lot.
That same summer, 1993,
Clannad released their first new album since I had become a fan of theirs. I
found this out by accident. At MESS that year, Doug let me use the hotel room
in which he and his family stayed that weekend in Traverse City to change in
between softball games and going out for a drink.
Doug said he had a CD player
in his room, and I could play whatever I found. Doug had brought several new
CDs for the trip, and one was Banba. Hello, what’s this? A brand-new album by
Clannad? That was the only thing I played as I showered and changed out of my
grimy softball duds into my street clothes. It was the best part of what was
otherwise a desultory weekend, but that’s a story for another time.
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