Archive News
Rock band past helps Ronan heal musicians
Date Published: {J}
Music and medicine have been so central to the life of Dr Ronan Kavanagh that it seemed to be a logical move for the consultant rheumatologist to open up the first clinic in the country to cater exclusively for musicians last year.
The Musicians’ Clinic, dealing with the pains and strains which come with playing an instrument for hours on end, has proved a huge hit with enthusiasts from all around the country who warm to Ronan because of his own history as a keyboard player in a rock band.
Once a month or so, Dr Kavanagh gives over his private practice at the Galway Clinic exclusively to musicians. Talking about his own love of playing helps patients to relax. Ronan was the keyboard player with rock band The Stunning for two and a half years in the late 1980s, but left to concentrate on his medical studies.
When they reached number one in the charts with Brewing Up a Storm in 1990, or headlined in front of a 30,000 crowd at the Féile festival in Thurles, he had the occasional pang of regret. But a time came when he just could not combine life on the road with his course in Medicine at UCG (now NUI Galway).
Ronan learned the piano as a youngster growing up in Taylor’s Hill. He studied music, alone, as a boarder at Castleknock College in Dublin and was delighted when Steve and Joe Wall invited him to be part of their new band in 1987.
“I was lucky enough to play in The Stunning with really, really gifted musicians,” he says. “I learned loads off them. I loved playing and touring. When you are in your early 20s you have loads of energy. But a time came when I had to leave. I was getting closer and closer to my finals, and the lads were getting busier and busier, demanding more of my time.
“I don’t think I agonised over leaving the band. I loved the fun, the ‘craic’ of doing it. Of course I envied them, seeing them play at Féile and those things. But I still got a chance to play with them on the odd tour. Deep down, I kind of knew that I wasn’t really going to crack it as a professional musician. Maybe I wasn’t willing to make the sacrifices.”
His medical studies brought Ronan to Belfast, before he spent six years specialising in rheumatology in Cambridge and Norwich in the UK. He met his future wife, Liz, in Cambridge and now looks back on his time in England as a wonderful experience. He does not see temporary emigration as a bad thing.
“Whereas you feel terribly sorry for people who are older or people who have no choice about emigrating, for a person in their early 20s the opportunity to go off to Australia or Canada or the States for a couple of years is fantastic,” he says.
“It’s nice to know you have a chance of coming back, but when I went off in the early 1990s I kind of assumed that I might have to stay in the UK. I wasn’t thinking about it as a hardship. I got to see a very nice part of England and experience things that I might not necessarily have here, given the smaller population of Ireland.”
Dr Kavanagh was one of the first to open up a private practice at the Galway Clinic, after moving back to his native city in late 1998. His father, Des, had set up a private orthodontic practice at The Crescent in the early 1970s and mother, Mary, was a physiotherapist, so medical care was clearly in the blood.
For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.
People’s living conditions less than 100 years ago were frightening. We have come a long way. We talk about water charges today, but back then the local District Councils were erecting pumps for local communities and the lovely town of Mountbellew, according to Council minutes, had open sewers,” says Galway County Council archivist Patria McWalter.
Patria believes we “need to take pride in our history, and we should take the same pride in our historical records as we do in our built heritage”. When you see the wealth of material in her care, this belief makes sense.
She is in charge of caring for the rich collection of administrative records owned by Galway County Council and says “these records are as much part of our history as the Rock of Cashel is. They document our lives and our ancestors’ lives. And nobody can plan for the future unless you learn from the past, what worked and what didn’t”.
Archivists and librarians are often unfairly regarded as being dry, academic types, but that’s certainly not true of Patria. Her enthusiasm is infectious as she turns the pages of several minute books from Galway’s Rural District Councils, all of them at least 100 years old.
Part of her role involved cataloguing all the records of the Councils – Ballinasloe, Clifden, Galway, Gort, Loughrea, Mountbellew, Portumna and Tuam. These records mostly consisted of minutes of various meetings.
When she was cataloguing them she realised their worth to local historians and researchers, so she decided to compile a guide to their content. The result is For the Record: The Archives of Galway’s Rural District Councils, which will be a valuable asset to anybody with an interest in history.
Many representatives on these Councils were local personalities and several were arrested during the political upheaval of the era, she explains.
And, ushering in a new era in history, women were allowed to sit on these Rural District Councils – at the time they were not allowed to sit on County Councils.
All of this information is included in Patria’s introductory essay to the attractively produced A4 size guide, which gives a glimpse into how these Rural Councils operated and the way political thinking changed in Ireland during a short 26-year period. In the early 1900s, these Councils supported Home Rule, but by 1920, they were calling for full independence and refusing to recognise the British administration.
“I love the tone,” says Patria of the minutes from meetings. “The language was very emotive.”
That was certainly true of the Gort Rural District Council. At a meeting in 1907, following riots in Dublin at the premiere of JM Synge’s play, The Playboy of the Western World the councillors’ response was vehement. They recorded their decision to “protest most emphatically against the libellous comedy, The Playboy of the Western World, that was belched forth during the past week in the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, under the fostering care of Lady Gregory and Mr Yeats. We congratulate the good people of Dublin in howling down the gross buffoonery and immoral suggestions that are scattered throughout this scandalous performance.
For more from the archives see this week’s Tribunes here
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
SLIGO 0-9
GALWAY 1-4
FRANK FARRAGHER IN ENNISCRONE
GALWAY’S first serious examination of the 2013 season rather disturbingly ended with a rating well below the 40% pass mark at the idyllic, if rather Siberian, seaside setting of Enniscrone on Sunday last.
The defeat cost Galway a place in the FBD League Final against Leitrim and also put a fair dent on their confidence shield for the bigger tests that lie ahead in February.
There was no fluke element in this success by an understrength Sligo side and by the time Leitrim referee, Frank Flynn, sounded the final whistle, there wasn’t a perished soul in the crowd of about 500 who could question the justice of the outcome.
It is only pre-season and last Sunday’s blast of dry polar winds did remind everyone that this is far from summer football, but make no mistake about it, the match did lay down some very worrying markers for Galway following a couple of victories over below par third level college teams.
Galway did start the game quite positively, leading by four points at the end of a first quarter when they missed as much more, but when Sligo stepped up the tempo of the game in the 10 minutes before half-time, the maroon resistance crumbled with frightening rapidity.
Some of the statistics of the match make for grim perusal. Over the course of the hour, Galway only scored two points from play and they went through a 52 minute period of the match, without raising a white flag – admittedly a late rally did bring them close to a draw but that would have been very rough justice on Sligo.
Sligo were backable at 9/4 coming into this match, the odds being stretched with the ‘missing list’ on Kevin Walsh’s team sheet – Adrian Marren, Stephen Coen, Tony Taylor, Ross Donovan, David Kelly, David Maye, Johnny Davey and Eamon O’Hara, were all marked absent for a variety of reasons.
Walsh has his Sligo side well schooled in the high intensity, close quarters type of football, and the harder Galway tried to go through the short game channels, the more the home side bottled them up.
Galway badly needed to find some variety in their attacking strategy and maybe there is a lot to be said for the traditional Meath style of giving long, quick ball to a full forward line with a big target man on the edge of the square – given Paul Conroy’s prowess close to goal last season, maybe it is time to ‘settle’ on a few basics.
Defensively, Galway were reasonably solid with Gary Sice at centre back probably their best player – he was one of the few men in maroon to deliver decent long ball deep into the attacking zone – while Finian Hanley, Conor Costello and Gary O’Donnell also kept things tight.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
images/files/images/x3_Courthouse.jpg
Families queue up for school’s offer of free house
West has lower cancer survival rates than rest
Galway minors continue to lay waste to all opponents
Gardaí and IFA issue a joint appeal on summer road safety
Marathon Man plans to call a halt – but not before he hits 160 races
