Neck

Neck are a six-piece London-Irish Celtic punk band from the North London neighborhood of Holloway whose frontman was a member of Shane MacGowan and the Popes. The band takes their lead from two other London bands: The Clash and The Pogues, blending Punk rock with traditional Irish music to play a London-Irish style known as 'Psycho-Ceilídh'. History The band toured throughout the US, Europe, UK, and Ireland, playing international festivals. Such festivals include: Tantsy festival in Moscow Hermitage Garden; Dublin Irish Festival, Ohio – the second-largest Irish festival in the US; SXSW in Texas & their good friends' Flogging Molly's Salty Dog cruise out of Miami, also in the US; Paas Pop in Holland; The West Belfast Féile an Phobail in The North and The Waterford Spraoi in The Republic in Ireland; Berlin's Punk & Disorderly festival four times, as well as With Full Force in Germany; while, in the UK, they have played their largest festival, Glastonbury, six times, as well as The Levellers own festival Beautiful Days four, Solfest three, Boomtown Fair twice and the Rebellion Festival, ten times. Their music reflects the life experience of the emigrant and second-generation Irish diaspora, with their frontman's voice and song-writing being considered both faithful to the form, and in direct lineage from his former band-leader and mentor, Shane MacGowan. Neck have released four albums to date, with their third album, Sod 'Em & Begorrah!, being picked out for particularly high praise by being judged, variously, the second and third greatest Celtic punk album of all time, the former above, and the latter behind only The Pogues and Flogging Molly. They have also appeared on numerous compilation albums, and their natural London inclusiveness and punk sensibilities came well to the fore on their Joe Strummer-inspired anti-racism / pro-inclusiveness anthem "Everybody's Welcome to the Hooley!", which charted in the UK Indie Chart in 2006. Famously, the song was written as an immediate reaction to Far-right Skinheads violently disrupting an ostensibly 'No Politics' festival they were playing at in Belgium. Their frontman, incensed by how wrong these people were about punk rock, and inspired by the incendiary memory of seeing The Clash live in 1977, wrote the song in five minutes, taught it to the band before they went onstage, and played it at the far-right skinheads, invoking the whole crowd to chant Joe Strummer, prior to doing so.