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Ryan Shirlow

@ryanshirlow.bsky.social

5.4K followers 4.4K following 8.4K posts

Irish 🇮🇪 in Yorkshire 🏵️ Fortean Times writer & PhD student, study folk music 🪕 & folklore 🧚 Also ❤️old 🚙 cars & homebrew 🍺 Dad to 2 wee girls Music on Woodford Halse and Fenny Compton https://ryanshirlow.bandcamp.com/

ryanshirlow.bandcamp.com

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Ryan Shirlow @ryanshirlow.bsky.social · 6d

The shitter it all gets, the more I’m going to post about mandolins and fairies.

That’s it, that’s the plan.

Two old Irishmen, one with a flute and one with a banjo mandolin. “John McKenna and Michael Gaffney”

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Ryan Shirlow @ryanshirlow.bsky.social · 1h

They come up briefly in a couple of books I have on the history of traditional (Irish) music, before widespread electricity you’d have these huge banjo orchestras to make enough noise for rural folk to dance to. Also enormous banjo basses (I made one by gluing a cello neck to a bodhran!)

Ryan Shirlow @ryanshirlow.bsky.social · 5h

yes I have a 1923 Vega and it cost about £300 - about a tenth of what a wooden mandolin from that period could cost

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Ryan Shirlow @ryanshirlow.bsky.social · 15h

@showerabsolute.bsky.social oh hello I remember you from Twitter - you had an extraordinary pair of trousers

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Ryan Shirlow @ryanshirlow.bsky.social · 15h

Food delivered by specially trained cats that are allowed to go outside

Ryan Shirlow @ryanshirlow.bsky.social · 18h

his greatest work

Ryan Shirlow @ryanshirlow.bsky.social · 23h

even the great Robin Williams had a deeply weird accent in Mrs Doubtfire, sort of Scottish, I think they made a joke of it in the movie itself though

Reposted by Ryan Shirlow

Sean Carroll @seanedmund.bsky.social · 23h

You mean he killed a man in Moscow just to watch him die?

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Ryan Shirlow @ryanshirlow.bsky.social · 23h

I was going to say didn’t he do two but then remembered that was the almost as cool Jack Klugman

Ryan Shirlow @ryanshirlow.bsky.social · 23h

that’s a good story, but it needs some more work, say Johnny Cash killed Stalin himself, maybe thwacked him with a bit of railroad track, in a fight over a bottle of vodka

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Ryan Shirlow @ryanshirlow.bsky.social · 23h

this might be your greatest ever post

Reposted by Ryan Shirlow

Twlldun @twlldun.bsky.social · 1d

The speed and booze addicted dressed in black playing raw live shows in prisons with a voice like god almighty himself guy is “deeply uncool”? What

The Wall Street Journal @wsj.com · 1d

Compared to Dylan and Springsteen, country-music legend Johnny Cash can seem deeply uncool. It took time for me to appreciate his profound, plainspoken strength, writes Jon Fasman.

Essay | Can We Finally Give Johnny Cash His Due?

Compared to Dylan and Springsteen, the country-music legend can seem deeply uncool. It took time for me to appreciate his profound, plainspoken strength.

on.wsj.com

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Ryan Shirlow @ryanshirlow.bsky.social · 23h

my golden nose blows electrified snot

Uncle Duke @uncleduke1969.bsky.social · 1d

some say it’s art, some say it’s not

Golden lamp in the shape of a nose with a bulb hanging from the right nostril.

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Ryan Shirlow @ryanshirlow.bsky.social · 1d

remember when they used to show videos and superimpose annoying factoid balloons with a loud “bloop” sound over the top? for me, that was my first and therefore definitive version of Losing My Religion

always sounds wrong without the bloops

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Ryan Shirlow @ryanshirlow.bsky.social · 1d

Surprised by the news MTV is closing in the UK, not least because I haven’t watched it, thought about it, or had any awareness it still existed since 1998.

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Ryan Shirlow @ryanshirlow.bsky.social · 1d

Always chuckle at people struggling with grosvenor

Ryan Shirlow @ryanshirlow.bsky.social · 1d

It was a different beast in the Dimbleby era.

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Ryan Shirlow @ryanshirlow.bsky.social · 1d

Great stuff, and I’ll engage with SF when they - in the same spirit - engage with their crimes, and drop the ridiculous dance of denial that some senior members were not also commanders in the armed terrorist movement. Nice chat.

Ryan Shirlow @ryanshirlow.bsky.social · 1d

fair, but I doubt you’d be voting any time soon for a rejigged “peaceful” version of the NSDAP, especially if they never adequately apologised for or acknowledged their history

Ryan Shirlow @ryanshirlow.bsky.social · 1d

as a child my dad couldn’t play with me because his lungs were full of the dust from his exploded office, so their redemptive arc falls flat with me I’m afraid