Search - Dubliners :: Milestones

Very early and very late material get together as one...

Eamon Hanley | Southern Sweden | 03/26/2003

(4 out of 5 stars)

""Milestones", I believe, would not be called your average Dubliners compilation album. I've noticed that there are many compilations containing only material recorded in the 60s, and others containing only 70s recordings. Yet "Milestones" is quite significant in that it contains tracks from the first three albums ("The Dubliners", "In Concert", and "Finnegan Wakes") likewise from the three latest albums ("25 Years Celebration", "Dubliners' Dublin", and "30 Years A-Greying"), plus one track from the 1985 "Live In Carré".Here, listeners can enjoy hearing the original takes of "Home Boys Home", "The Rocky Road To Dublin", "Roddy McCorley", "Preab San Ól", "The Mason's Apron", "The Leaving Of Liverpool", and "Monto", as well as later material like "The Irish Rover", "Marino Waltz", "Cooleys/The Dawn/Mullingar Races", "The Sick Note", "I'm A Man You Don't Meet Every Day", "I'm Asking You Sergeant Where's Mine", featuring Billy Connolly on vocals, and a duet between Ronnie Drew and Rory Gallagher in the blues-oriented "Barley And Grape Rag", plus re-recordings of old 60s classics "Seven Drunken Nights", "The Zoological Gardens", and "Whiskey In The Jar" (with The Pogues) and 70s standards "Raglan Road" and "The Spanish Lady". And one should not miss out on Luke Kelly's introduction to an exclusive live version of "The Auld Triangle" recorded in Amsterdam a few months prior to his death.This is a quite significant achievement as to how you might notice how much The Dubliners have changed through the years. It's quite obvious that they'll never be the same again without either Luke Kelly or Ciarán Bourke (one of very few duets between them where they sing both English and Irish is featured here"), but still there's Barney McKenna and John Sheahan, who have served as the driving force in many of their instrumentals, and the legendary Ronnie Drew, who left in late 1995 to be replaced by Paddy Reilly, did manage to keep the group's potential stable up until then. With the addition of Seán Cannon and Eamonn Campbell, The Dubliners have enjoyed a fresh revival and are still continuing to tour and drink to their hearts' content. The "new" Dubliners have proved to match up to the status of the "old" Dubliners, and yet have quite a long way to go to accomplish that feat. And "Milestones", in the meantime, is itself a milestone which marks the past and present times of their careers and comparing and contrasting the songs of those times helps to understand their incredible potential. Nice work, me lads! Keep on rollin'!"