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Glad you enjoyed the videos. I posted the names in the links in the same order, left to right, as the musicians appear on stage.

Through thirty years, Planxty seems to have always maintained the same arrangement. Donal Lunny at left on bouzouki and Andy Irvine on mandolin, next to each other to facilitate the the incredible interplay of their contrapuntal melodies, Liam O'Flynn on uilleann pipes, and Christy Moore playing guitar at the right.

Donal Lunny seems to take a back seat on stage yet when the music takes an energetic turn it is usually Donal who is driving the tempo. He has played with so many others and taken a hand in producing the recordings of so many that he may be described as the backbone of Irish traditional music for this generation.

I saw him at the Hollywood Bowl in a spotlight role along with Paul Brady, Altan, Eileen Ivers, and Danú. He stood in with Altan for a tune and stayed respectfully restrained through the first half of the song, allowing Ciarán Curran to play his rightful role as bouzouki player for the band and then, the two exchanged glances and Lunny grabbed the tempo in an instant and drove it hard, infusing a new level of energy into the tune, much to the delight of all on stage and throughout the crowd.

Watching the Bothy Band video of Pretty Peg I remember seeing piper Paddy Keenan playing at McCabe's Guitar Shop in Santa Monica. He was accompanied by Junji Shirota, a guitarist from Japan who remarked that the first time he heard a Celtic band, he was walking past a club and stopped to listen. He was struck immediately by the thought, as he expressed it, "Ahhh, origin of brue grass." You can really hear the kinship of Celtic and bluegrass music in this tune as they charge from Pretty Peg into Craig's Pipes.

The Bothy Band recorded perhaps the greatest single example of high energy, Celtic music with Rip the Calico. If you haven't heard it you must find it. Merry Christmas right back at you.

Ooops, I realized ... in the middle of the night ... I had made a mistake saying Donal Lunny on pipes when it was the one and only Liam O'Flynn. He gives a true and plaintive voice to the pipes, but words do not suffice ....

Okay, going to read the rest of your post and reply later.

Paul Brady ... he did a good job of "Arthur McBride" as well as some other tunes.

I saw De Dannan a couple of times at McCabe's, including their first tour to America, when they had Charlie Piggott on banjo with them.

Then, when I went to Ireland they had added Frankie Gavin on fiddle. He is quite good and branched out on his own, I think.

"Origin of brue grass"... funny.