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The name for the band was chosen with the rationality that all of the great bands' names began with "THE." (see what I did with my column headers) :)

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Interesting enough, even though there were some similarities, choices were made to include different songs in the movie than were discussed in the book. Below are just a few of the songs that were either in the book, the movie, or both. All soul... All Good!

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Jimmy Rabbite - manager
Steven "James" Clifford – Pianist
Imelda Quirke – Backing vocalist
Natalie Murphy – Backing vocalist
Mickah Wallace – Bouncer/2nd drummer
Bernie McGloughin – Backing vocalist
Dean Fay – Saxophonist
Liam "Outspan" Foster – Guitarist
Billy Mooney – 1st drummer (quit because he couldn't stand Deco)
Joey "The Lips" Fagan – Trumpet
Derek Scully – BassistDeclan "Deco" Cuffe – Lead Vocalist

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Dublin, Ireland
1980s

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Released in 1991
Awarded Golden Globe for best comedy in 1992
Nominated for an Oscar for editing

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Opened in London in 2013
Award Winning
Includes over 20 classic songs
Still playing...

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Jimmy Ruffin - What Becomes of the Brokenhearted (HQ)

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Aretha Franklin - I Never Loved A Man (The Way I Love You)

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While the members of the band were just out for fame, their manager had a real connection to the music. His expectations about what music moved people turned out to work for the group until its members began to refocus on their expectations of success in the music industry.

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The book is intended to be a comedy and is quite humorous at times. I see the banter between the band members as funny, but I can also see underlying "laugh" at the way that people think bands are put together, the expectation of musical fame, and the band's demise because of the discord.

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The book is written in dialogue format in a way that I have never seen before. There are not quotations or "saids" for each character. It is a stream of statements preceded with dashes. This was difficult to follow who was saying what and when.

Furthermore, there are no chapters, but rather it is like a divided journal type read, broken into sections of practice and performance.

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If the manuscript were to be run through a corpus database program, the most frequent word used is a form of "fuck."  Perhaps effective a time or two, but rather distracting seeing it fifty times on each page. Ok, so maybe an exaggeration, but is this really necessary? Critics say YES. That the true-to-Irish profanity adds a realistic component to Doyle's writing.

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The reader not only sees the description of each practice and performance, but the son lyrics of whatever they are singing is included in the text. The words are in all caps to differentiate where the songs begin and end; however it is still hard to follow with the stretchedout words and scatting included.

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The band members wanted what they thought was fame and fortune of a successful band; however, when problems hit them, they could not all handle it.  Life was already stressful for these young people.  Most of them were unemployed or the only income for their families.  It was tough to justify spending all of their time preparing for performances.

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"Born in Dublin in 1958, Roddy Doyle was educated by the Christian Brothers and at Trinity College, Dublin, where he read English and Geography.

He became a teacher in Dublin in 1980, before leaving to write full-time in 1993. His first three novels, The Commitments (1987), The Snapper (1990), and The Van (1991), narrate the adventures of the Rabbitte family, residents of Barrytown, a poor housing estate in north Dublin." (britishcouncil.org)

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Award-Winning Writer on... Writing and Books

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Award-Winning Writer on... Writing and Books

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RTÉ - IRELAND’S NATIONAL PUBLIC SERVICE MEDIA

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²⁰¹³

Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book Awards (Novel of the Year)

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French Literary Award ("Prix Littéraire des Jeunes Européens")

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Irish Book of the Decade (Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book Awards)

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Irish PEN Award

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Dublin Airport Authority Irish Children's Book of the Year

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Booker Prize for Fiction

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BAFTA Award (Best Adapted Screenplay) for The Commitments

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Fiction:
The Snapper
The Van
Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha
The Woman Who Walked Into Doors
A Star Called Henry
Oh, Play That Thing
Paula Spencer
The Dead Repbulic
Bullfighting
Two Pints
The Guts

Non-Fiction:
Rory & Ita

Plays:
Brownbread
War
Guess Who's Coming for the Dinner
The Woman Who Walked Into Doors
The Government Inspector (translation)

For Children:
The Giggler Treatment
Rover Saves Christmas
The Meanwhile Adventures
Wilderness
Her Mother's Face
A Greyhound of a Girl

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Since the book actually reads more like a screenplay, complete with slang and dialect, the movie was easier to follow. This is not saying that they movie was stellar as something to just sit and watch without background knowledge and research to go with it, but the basic storyline is good. Personally, I think this would be best as a musical stage play, which exists butI have not experienced.

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The Creation of Bands:
The reader encounters a less than expected way for a band to join together. Jimmy hold auditions at his house and seeks out people he knows to pull together a group of people who are not necessarily music fans or particularly talented. He sells his vision, they buy in, and somehow it begins to pay off.

What Fans Want:
Again, Doyle shows what can happen if you think outside the box of the popular trend in music. When The Commitments begin playing soul on the Dublin music scene, it is not what anyone else is doing. In fact, this music genre was popular in America and decades before his time.  But.. it works.

Fame and Fortune in the Music Industry:
The road to success is a tough one, but fans do not see that side of things.  They expect that life is full of luxury and excitement. Even when the band members began talking about what their future held, they talked of women throwing themselves at their feet.

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Doyle, Roddy. The Commitments. London, Vintage Books, 1987.

IMDb.com. The Commitments (1991).https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101605/

Murphy, Sandra. “The 10 best quotes from The Commitments on its 25th anniversary.” Evoke.ie,  09 Nov. 2016, https://evoke.ie/2016/
09/11/extra/list/the-commitments-movie-turns-25-on-september-2016

“Roddy Doyle.” British Council: Literature. https://literature.britishcouncil.org/writer/roddy-doyle.

The Commitments. Directed by Alan Parker, performances by Robert Arkins, Michael Aherne, and Angeline Ball. Beacon Communications, 1991.

“The Commitments.” Publisher Weekly. https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-679-72174-1

“The Commitments.”  The Commitments on Tour. http://thecommitmentsontour.co.uk/the-show/

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This was all about soul music. Rock-and-roll is subpar according to the manager, Jimmy, even though his dad says "Elvis is god." Jimmy was an expert on everything music related, but his passion was soul music as influenced by artists such as James Brown.

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A band is formed by a manger with a vision to bring "Dublin soul" to the people. He gets a group of young people together even though they have little experience or talent to speak of. He sees their potential and finds soul music to be the most powerful. When they get it together and learn to play/sing together, the band begins to thrive. They play several venues, all the while dealing with the strife of life as young people of poor status and the odd mix of personalities in the band itself. Ultimately, their success is cut short when they disband and go their separate ways. It was not the fault of any one member nor the manager, but it was a collective and mutual situation.

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The dialect and word choice of Doyle was probably very true to the time and place which the book was intended to portray, but it makes it a struggle of a read and perhaps narrows down the universal, connecting experience through music. Since music is the focus of the book, I would question this strategy... even though Doyle is critically praised by academics and other authors for his ability to put this language on the page. So, I have to place a meme here that is appropriate for my struggle reading the book.

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"soul is lifting yourself up, soul is dusting yourself off'"

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"when a ma-han loves a wo-man . . . he'll even bring her to stupid places like the zoo-oo-''

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"That's fuckin' blasphemy. Elvis wasn't a Cajun."