ANDY ROURKE: THE BASS GUITAR 

Thirty-nine years ago today, The Smiths fetched up in Cork for the first time and played a storming, head-bending set at the old Savoy complex on Patrick Street. The band’s history with the city, and the impact of that show, are covered in detail elsewhere on this site. So its especially disconcerting that this weekend…

OUR FAVOURITE SHOPS

Joe Healy and Ciarán Ó Tuama are important documentarians who have now become regular go-tos for anoraks, buffs and collectors. In dipping into the collection of stills and Super 8 videos they took around the streets of Cork city from the late 1970s onwards, and publishing digitized versions of that work on-line, they’re doing God’s…

KEN O’DUFFY: SING THE SONGS

From his work with Light A Big Fire in the 1980s to the three excellent elpees he made with Saville the following decade, Ken O’Duffy has long been a favourite writer and performer of ours. As he prepares to launch another solo album, we’ve asked him to pen a piece about the record, ‘Sing The…

DAVID GRAY: FOR THE BIRDS

On the afternoon of the second of his two recent live shows at the National Concert Hall in Dublin, David Gray encountered a couple of long-time fans who’d travelled up from the sticks for the occasion. Despite its billing as a full performance of his most recent elpee, ‘Skellig’, the pair had a request of…

SHOW SOME CONCERN

Brian Reddin’s recent television documentary, ‘How Ireland Rocked the ‘80s’, was a fond, archive-driven spin through the decade in which emerging new groups could be routinely found in every townland and village of the country. For the record, I commissioned ‘How Ireland Rocked the ‘80s’ for RTÉ and was the editorial representative across it. This…

THE PRODUCERS

Recent books by the U2 singer, Bono, and the influential British producer, Trevor Horn, use the same framework and are built to the same basic specification. And like their authors, they both hark back to an era in the creation of popular music that might well be passing, or that may have already sailed by.…

HOW IRELAND ROCKED THE 80s.

The report of the McNamee Commission, a body that looked at how the GAA conducted its affairs and outlined a possible future for the association, was published in December, 1971. At the GAA’s annual Congress eight years later, Director General Seán Ó Síocháin, told delegates that ‘the McNamee Commission had crystallised much of the new…

KENNY LEE: THE KING OF CLUBS

Anyone who claims to have come of age in Cork during the 1980s and 1990s will have at least one story about Kenny Lee, the businessman, promoter and impresario whose death at the age of 84 was announced earlier this week.

BONO – SURRENDER: 40 SONGS, ONE STORY

‘Surrender’ opens with Bono on a gurney in an up-market American medical facility in 2016, eye-balling the physician who’s about to crack open his chest. ‘I have an eccentric heart’, the singer writes wryly, one he spends the guts of a fine, meaty autobiography trying to define. Busy with detail and as rich with candid…

KAUGHT AT THE KAMPUS

With a terrific sense of timing, Reekus Records has issued a very limited, ultra-rare, buffed-up version of the seminal EP, ‘Kaught at the Kampus’, which was originally released in 1980. The label asked Colm to write some notes to accompany it, and we’re delighted to host his piece here.

THE COURIER: NOT TONIGHT, JOE SAVINO

The 1988 Irish film ‘The Courier’, written and directed by Frank Deasy and shot on location in Dublin, hasn’t aged at all well. But that being said it still is an interesting, independently made piece of work that’s worthy of your consideration.

CHRISTY DIGNAM AND ASLAN: THE SOUND OF THE SUBURBS

Following the recent cancellation of a planned live show by Aslan at Dublin’s Point Depot, a number of on-line clips re-surfaced in which Christy Dignam – the band’s frontman and spiritual leader – performs with and for other patients as he waits for treatment in a Dublin hospital. Christy has battled ill-health for many years…

CORMAC AND LINDY: GOLDEN GOALS.

In this guest post, Cormac Ó Caoimh, a singer/songwriter from Cork, explains the delicate art of writing songs and reveals how his latest single, ‘Didn’t We’, co-written with Lindy Morrison of The Go-Betweens, came about. I have been playing the song writing game a long time now, although most people reading this might not be…

SOMETHING HAPPENS: HOW THE WEST WAS WON #2

Many of the summers I put down as a child were spent in the small village of Union Hall, then a bendy ninety minute drive from my home in the city and into the belly of the beast in West Cork. It’s a tradition that’s proudly preserved in my family to this day and we’re…

LISS ARD @ 25: HOW THE WEST WAS WON

25 years ago this month, an incredible international line-up performed to a small, festival crowd at a country estate outside of Skibbereen, in County Cork. In this guest post, the Cork-born director and film-maker, Tony McCarthy recalls his involvement with the festivals at Liss Ard. On 31 August 1997, a car crash claimed the life…

THE WEMBLEY WAY: COLDPLAY, LIVE IN LONDON. 12 AUGUST, 2022.

Anthony O’Connor travelled to London recently to see Coldplay perform live. We’re delighted to host his first guest post for us, a review of a band he’s proud to reel in the decades with and claim as his own. On Friday evening, 12 August last, I saw Coldplay bring their Music of the Spheres tour…

CATHAL

The GOO is a recently launched event and gig guide, edited by John Brereton, that’s available in Dublin. Colm was asked to write a piece about the late Cathal Coughlan for the magazine’s first edition, which was published in June. We’re re-producing that piece here. When Microdisney briefly reformed in 2018, it was on unfamiliar…

TRINNERS FOR WINNERS: CROWDED HOUSE, LIVE IN DUBLIN. 29 JUNE, 2022. 

Back in 2019, Donald Fagen introduced a Steely Dan live show at The Point in Dublin’s docklands by claiming he was delighted to be back in London. Twenty years earlier, the late American crooner, Perry Como, was rolled out onto stage at the same venue, stared out into the deep and told the crowd how…

PADDY McALOON AT 65

Colm was on RTÉ Radio One’s ‘Arena’ last night speaking about Paddy McAloon in the week that Paddy turned 65. The audio can be listened to here Below is the transcript of his piece. And so Paddy McAloon of Prefab Sprout reaches the grand old age of 65. The man we might call ‘the songwriter’s…

CATHAL COUGHLAN: THE LAST WORD

My late mother never met Cathal Coughlan but he might as well have been one of her own sons. She saw in him a talented singer and musician who, by making his way with his group, Microdisney, during the dank, repressed years in the 1980s, was flying the flag on the international stage for two…

STEVIE-TIME: CLASSIC ALBUMS AND STEVIE WONDER

We are delighted to host another guest post by David Heffernan. From Dublin, David is a vastly experienced and much-decorated music producer and director. His credits include international films on The Velvet Underground, Van Morrison, Stevie Wonder and Fleetwood Mac. ‘Shut up ?’ weren’t the first words I expected to hear from one of the most celebrated…

OCCASION, OCCASION: CASTLEBAR, 1981

In July, 1981, The Mayo News carried a small advert publicising an upcoming novelty football game in Castlebar. The Jimmy Magee All-Stars, a Gaelic football team assembled from the ranks of Ireland’s light entertainment royalty, were billed to take on a selection of former inter-county players from Connacht with the aim of raising money for…

SACK: THE GENERATION GAME

Sack’s excellent second album, ‘Butterfly Effect’, is the latest in a line of fine local releases from the 1990s to receive the big birthday treatment. Or, if you prefer, up-dated declarations of affection from dreary old-timers like myself, accompanied by ageless live shows in Cork, Dublin and Listowel. In marking the issue of a record…

BAWL: LEST WE FORGET

The Frank and Walters, Into Paradise, Serengeti Long Walk, Kooky, Blink, We Cut Corners and Bawl: just some of the numerous Irish groups I’ve spent far too much time obsessing about over the many decades I’ve put in as a hanger-on. In the great, untouchable traditions of popular culture, they’ve all triggered my brain enough…

MEAT LOAF AND IRELAND

On Friday afternoon, 2nd August 2, 1990, Pat Scannell loaded four of us into his old beater and faced it for Thurles. Not, as would have been the norm, to see Munster championship hurling but, rather, to take in the opening night fare at the first ever live music weekend to take place at Semple Stadium. As we set…

HOW IRELAND ROCKED THE ‘70s

On Tuesday, December 28th next, on RTÉ One at 6.30, Brian Reddin’s documentary, ‘How Ireland Rocked the ‘70s’ looks at the evolution of the festival circuit in Ireland during that decade. A decade in which rock music – national and international – began to take real root in Ireland. Against a back-drop of political instability…

HOTHOUSE FLOWERS: PEOPLE IN GLASSHOUSES

‘The one band that has kept Irish rock alive internationally in 1988’, roared Dave Fanning from the scaffolded stage at the RDS on Saturday, September 3rd, 1988, as he welcomed The Hothouse Flowers out onto the boards. A year, it should be said, after the release of U2’s ‘The Joshua Tree’ album and a matter…

THE WORMHOLES: TILTING AT TRANSCENDENCE

We’re delighted to host this piece by Niall Crumlish, which is included in the booklet that accompanies ‘You Never See the Stars When It Rains’, the recently-released anthology by Dublin band, The Wormholes. Niall is a psychiatrist and music writer from Dublin. He has written extensively for Hot Press and State Magazine and now posts…

NANCI GRIFFITH: FROM A DISTANCE

We are delighted to host another guest post by David Heffernan. From Dublin, David is a vastly experienced and much-decorated music producer and director. His credits include international films on The Velvet Underground, Van Morrison, Stevie Wonder and Fleetwood Mac. On a hot and humid Spring morning in 1990, I drove on Interstate 65 from Nashville…

LOU REED AND THE MAKING OF CURIOUS

Delighted to host this guest post by David Heffernan. From Dublin, David is a vastly experienced and much-decorated music producer and director. Apart from ‘Curious … The Velvet Underground in Europe’, his credits also include international films on Van Morrison, Stevie Wonder and Fleetwood Mac. The interior walls of a former factory building on New…

STEVE STRANGE: 1968 – 2021

Lambo, Uaneen, Byrner and Strangey: names to conjure with for those of us who studied at The Rock Garden in Dublin, and graduated with dishonour, during its brief but colourful existence in the early 1990s. Just some of a wide-ranging cast of regulars, all of them lost over-board far too early, who sprinkled the magic…

WHIPPING BOY: HEARTWORM

I was flattered and a little awed when I was asked to contribute a few words to accompany the re-issue of Whipping Boy’s magnificent 1995 album, ‘Heartworm’. I never intended the sleeve notes to take off like they did and I’m not sure if the band or the staff at Needle Mythology, the record label…

THE SOUND OF THE UNDERGROUND

The Underground Bar on Dublin’s Dame Street was a lap dancing club the last time I passed it by but, in its pomp, the downstairs dive was a centre of excellence for some of the best new bands to emerge in Ireland from the mid-1980s to the early 1990s. Sack, Power of Dreams and Into…

SEÁN LUCEY of THE DIXIES: 1936-2021

On March 1st, 1980, the music writer Paul Morley fetched up in Cork on an assignment for the London-based music paper, New Musical Express. Accompanied by a young photographer, David Corio, Morley was on the road with an emerging group from Dublin, U2; his piece gave the band its first NME cover story when it…

THE FLOORS: GET INTO THE GROOVES

I first met David Donohue, the Carlow-born all-rounder who records and writes infrequently as The Floors, in the early 1990s and, ever since, he’s fitfully turned up in my life and stolen all of the scenes we’ve played together. I last bumped into him maybe ten years ago, days before Christmas, on the footpath outside…

BOB DYLAN: CHARGING OF THE GUARDS

The American singer-songwriter, Bob Dylan, who turns 80 years old today, is no stranger to Ireland and to Irish popular culture. So we’ll begin with an obvious reference to the Clancy Brothers, from Tipperary, and Armagh’s Tommy Makem who, in Greenwich Village’s clubs and coffee houses, played re-imagined Irish folk songs that so influenced him…

JOHNNY ROGAN: 1953 – 2021

The writer and biographer, Johnny Rogan, died on January 21st, 2021. His death was announced on February 12th. Seán Aylward remembers his good friend. The noted music biographer, Johnny Rogan, who died recently in London, was born in 1953 and grew up in England. He was the son of 1940s emigrants from Waterford. He was…

PUBLIC ENEMY – REVISITED

In 1988 Public Enemy played Trinity College, Dublin. Kieran Cunningham, Chief Sports Writer with the Irish Daily Star, and someone who once had musical notions of his own, wrote an excellent guest post for us back in 2018 about the gig. Since then, some old photographs [courtesy of Trevor Butterworth] have emerged and Kieran’s memory…

CHRISTY MOORE AND THE STARDUST TRAGEDY

Forty years ago, next month, a fire that broke out during a Valentine’s weekend disco at The Stardust nightclub in Artane, on the northside of Dublin, resulted in the deaths of 48 young women and men. As Kathy Sheridan reminded Irish Times readers in a 2006 feature piece, ‘of the 48 who died, half were aged 18…

EMPEROR OF ICECREAM: HAIL TO THE CHIEF

One of the few positive aspects to the last six months has been the melding of the creative arts and music with science, technology and opportunity. I’m not equipped to capture this in a mathematical formula but, were it not for the spaces and gaps opened by the lockdown, and the ready availability of personal…

THE SAWDOCTORS: ACTING THE SHAM

Ah, revisionism and nostalgia: you’d want to be careful when that pair collide. Last Monday, the Irish Times newspaper carried a fine, first person memoir by Conor Pope to mark the thirtieth anniversary of the release of The Sawdoctors’ second single, ‘I Useta Lover’, one of the more distinctive Irish pop songs of the 1990s…

THERE’S ONLY TWO DANNY WILSONS

I was twenty-one years old when I spent the second half of 1989 on a JI visa in New England. I’d fetched up in a small city ninety miles outside of Boston looking to do as many shifts as I could in a local restaurant and trying to squirrel away a few bob, and I…

SELF ANALYSIS

The ‘Self Aid’ live concert that took place in Dublin’s Royal Dublin Society showgrounds on May 17, 1986, is unprecedented in the history of popular entertainment in Ireland. Never has such a high-profile, high-end indigenous line-up been assembled on the same bill: ‘Self Aid’ was headlined by U2 and also featured short live sets by…

POWER OF DREAMS and NORMAL PEOPLE

Word that a new Power of Dreams album is on its way comes as a nice surprise to long-time fans and nostalgics who hopped the bus with them as far back as 1988. I’m not sure if anyone, least of all the band itself, expects this fresh body of work to shake the world or…

BRENDAN BOWYER: 1938 – 2020.

Brendan Bowyer, who has died in Las Vegas at the age of eighty-one, was Ireland’s first pop music superstar and is easily one of the most influential figures in the entire history of Irish entertainment. As lead singer with The Royal Showband, and subsequently The Big 8, the Waterford-born singer and musician was a formidable…

JOHN PRINE AND THE ELDORADO EVENING

The decorated American singer-songwriter, John Prine, died last month at the age of 73. In this guest post, the television producer, writer and presenter, David Heffernan – who worked closely with John – remembers the magic of the man and his music. The English translation of the Spanish word Eldorado is ‘gilded one’. The Cadillac…

SIAMSA COIS LAOÍ

An earthy Breton harpist, Alan Stivell, topped the bill at the first Siamsa Cois Laoí, a day-long festival of folk and traditional music that took place at Páirc Uí Chaoimh in Cork on July 17th, 1978. Then in his mid-30s, Stivell was a prominent figure in the electrification of Celtic music and was already a…

‘ANYONE FOR THE PAUL WELLER HEADBANDS ?’

‘Anyone for the Paul Weller headbands ?’ was an in-joke that often popped the air at the twin desks in RTÉ Cork that once constituted the No Disco production office. I heard this question put one night by a hawker outside The City Hall in Cork and, juveniles that we were, would deflect to it whenever we…

ON AN EVENING IN ROMA: SERENGETI LONG WALK AND HOW AN OLD BAND CAME GOOD

Guest post by Mick Duggan, keyboard player, Serengeti Long Walk  Every band, large or small, famous or otherwise, has its own geography, a little network of places in which they came to be, that is theirs and theirs alone, for the rest of time.   This occurred to me recently when I was reading Nileism, Allan…

CITIZENS OF BOOMTOWN: THE RATS v IRELAND’S SHOWBANDS

Billy McGrath’s excellent film about The Boomtown Rats, ‘Citizens Of Boomtown’, premiered recently at the Dublin International Film Festival and was broadcast subsequently on RTÉ Television in two parts. Its dedicated to the memory of Nigel Grainge, the London-born A and R man with the golden touch who, in 1977, signed the South Dublin outfit…

ST PATRICKS DAY – CURATED IRISH PLAYLIST

On St Patricks Day we put a call out on our Twitter asking folk to share their favourite Irish Track. The response, to put it mildly, was fantastic. Most stuck to the brief, as tough as it was, of the one song – some offered up more than one track [one indecisive person offered us…

AN EMOTIONAL FISH: A STRANGE KIND OF GLORY

Has any Irish band announced itself as spectacularly as An Emotional Fish ? The Dublin four-piece were, I’d argue, the last of the great major label indulgences in emerging Irish music, the poster child’s poster children for that mad, unprecedented decade from 1985 onwards. Rarely has so much coin been invested in any Irish band for so little commercial…

A SHORT MESSAGE FROM THE BLACKPOOL SENTINEL

The observant and nosy among you will have noticed that The Blackpool Sentinel has been decorated by those who run the Cork Person Of The Year Award. ‘This is all about the ‘Soundtrack of our Life’, the singers, musicians and music that influenced us over the years, and I thank Colm and Martin for preserving…

A SONG FOR CORK

So, ‘After All’ by The Frank And Walters is Cork’s favourite song, as voted by those who took part in an on-line campaign organised recently by the Cork City Library, in association with Creative Ireland. Popular polls like these aren’t intended to be taken in any way seriously and there are far more pressing issues…

DELORENTOS AND THE LURE OF WHELANS

I’ve been attending live shows at Whelan’s, on Camden Street in Dublin, for decades. During which time the physical lay-out of the building has changed in line with the development of the street on which it is located and, indeed, the thinning of my hairline. The fabled old venue is now a far broader, more…

LARRY

It was inevitable, I suppose, that so many of today’s tributes to Larry Gogan would eventually lead back to the rogue answers he was given for decades on ‘The Sixty Second Quiz’, one of the recurring features of his long-running radio career. In one respect, that quiz – routinely stuffed with as many bizarre questions…

BRIAN O’DONNELL AND THE ORDERS OF THE HIBERNIAN

I don’t envy whoever is charged with delivering Brian O’Donnell’s eulogy before he’s sent on his way next week. His formidable reputation preceded him, and everyone who ever set foot inside the bar he ran, The Hi-B, on the corner of Oliver Plunkett Street and Winthrop Street in the middle of Cork city, will have…

RORY AND HERMAN

I’ve written at length about my old school, The North Monastery which, on many levels, dominated my upbringing on the northside of Cork city during the 1970s and 1980s. For a number of us, The Mon provided a structure and an order during a period when much of the area around us was just dilapidated…

FINN’S CORNER

The summer of 1994 is still primarily recalled by many of us for that year’s World Cup football finals in America, and especially for The Republic of Ireland’s unlikely victory over Italy in The Giants’ Stadium in New York. A game in which Paul McGrath put in an imperious defensive shift that, apart from helping…

ENGINE ALLEY : COOL FOR CATS

‘How would you characterise a city’s sound ?’, asks Karl Whitney, in his excellent second book, ‘Hit Factories : A Journey Through The Industrial Cities of British Pop’. In which the writer and academic, Tallaght-reared and based now in Sunderland, explores provincial Britain by train, bus and on foot as he attempts to uncover ‘the…

OPERATION TRANSFORMATION

De Lacy House, with its multiple floors, was an often-unheralded venue in the cardo of Cork city during those glory years from the mid-1980s onwards. But under the management of Don Forde – the original Dapper Don – it eventually became one of the more important and lucrative stop-offs on the national live circuit. De…

DAVE COUSE, A HOUSE AND THE POINT OF EVERYTHING

I’m regularly struck jealous by the capacity of some of my colleagues, friends and peers to devour so much material so quickly and to be so consistently boned up on the latest albums, books, on-line posts, international drama serials and edgy films. I honestly couldn’t tell you where my own time goes, by comparison. It…

SQUAT IF? BRIAN AND SETANTA RECORDS

Whatever about the balming and transcendent powers of music, maybe best felt in my own case by the magic of Prefab Sprout, Van Morrison and The Blue Nile, I owe a long-time debt to one Irish songwriter and musician who physically rescued me from the havoc and harm of the other side. During the early…

GIDDY-UP

Within the distinctive history of popular music in Cork, it’s far too easy – and maybe even stipulated by order of The Knights Of Cool – to over-look the achievements of the most outwardly successful of all those local bands who entered the fray during the 1990s: Rubyhorse. An easy-to-read, un-fussy pop band who blazed…

HAS THE LOSS OF SIR HENRY’S BROKEN THE LINK WITH THE PAST?

Our latest guest post is from Kilian McCann. Kilian is a sociology and history undergrad from Cork city. This year, he finished a research project analysing the Cork music scene. One of the major aspects of the study was the disconnect that young people have with past artists in the scene. The post below is…

THE LONG FELLA

My mother died almost one year ago and my family will mark that first anniversary as she’d have wanted: a quiet mass for the handful, a decent feed afterwards and then a long trade of general tittle-tattle during which we’ll remind ourselves of the quirks that set her apart and the exacting standards she set…

PAUL SIMON’S ‘ HEARTS AND BONES’.

Paul Simon’s 1983 album, ‘Hearts And Bones’, is easily one of my favourite elpees even if it took me many years to realise just how magnificent it is. Released in the same year as R.E.M.’s ‘Murmur’, ‘War’ by U2 and New Order’s ‘Power, Corruption And Lies’, it was certainly lost in the hail of political…

CATCHERS: CALL THE MIDWIFE

One of the more interesting, eloquent and barely referenced bands to have emerged from Northern Ireland during the 1990s are Catchers, who first took shape within the Portrush-Coleraine-Portstewart triangle on the Derry coastline and rode in the Setanta Records colours, for whom they made two fine but often over-looked elpees. And in many respects their…

STEELY DAN AND THE GHOST OF PERRY COMO

Having wondered if I’d ever see one of my favourite bands perform live, I’ve now been rendered dumbstruck by Steely Dan twice in sixteen months. And they’ve been every bit as magnificent on the live stage as I long imagined they might be even if, truth be told, I’d probably arrived at that conclusion well…

MICRODISNEY: THE END

If anything, they’re probably the best accidental band of our time, a haphazard and unlikely collision – or collusion ? – of reference, diffidence and influence that in theory, and maybe every other way too, never stood a chance. Like the central character in their opening number on this week’s farewell dates, ‘Mrs. Simpson’, they…

THE GO-BETWEENS – A LOVE LETTER

We are delighted to post this wonderful love letter to the Go-Betweens from Breda Corish. Breda lives in north London and works in the scientific & healthcare information sector. While London has been her much loved home for over 30 years since emigrating in 1987, she stays connected to Ireland as “home home” through volunteering…

LOST IN MUSIK

Our recent post about Roddy Frame took me down into a rabbit hole that led, eventually to Tony Mansfield, the songwriter and producer who played a small and largely forgotten role in the Aztec Camera story. But about whom details are a bit scant. I first came across Tony because of his band, New Musik,…

THE RETURN OF THE ROD SQUAD

The going could be rough enough down in Cork during the mid 1980s, but whenever you wanted to feel thoroughly out of your depth, you’d just remind yourself that Roddy Frame wrote and recorded the first, magical Aztec Camera album, ‘High Land, Hard Rain’ when he was still a teenager. Whatever about the power and…

THE HITCHERS

After the premature death of Dolores O’Riordan in London last January, many of the reflective pieces written in the immediate aftermath – the one posted here included – referenced the scarcely believable formative days of the band she led, The Cranberries, and the terrific local scene in Limerick from which they emerged during the first flushes…

MÍCHEÁL Ó SÚILLEABHÁIN: 1950 – 2018

  It was only right and fitting that news of Micheál Ó Súilleabháin’s death lead the early morning bulletins on national radio earlier today. Even if, by any stretch, his premature passing at the age of 67, still comes as a shock to those long captivated by his distinctive brand of sorcery. His music and…

RORY’S STORIES

Although like Michael D., Bertie, Miriam, Gay and Daniel he’s often referred to in Ireland by his first name only, the implied familiarity here is well out of line with the broader picture: little of substance is really known about the guitarist and songwriter, Rory Gallagher. By a distance the biggest and most influential figure…

DAVID GRAY AND NO DISCO

The story of David Gray’s first decade as a recording artist is a terrific one, irrespective of what you think of him or his music. It’s also probably the single most enduring legacy of the lo-fi music television series, ‘No Disco’, which was first broadcast twenty-five years ago this week on what was then Ireland’s…

ALWAYS THE QUIET ONE

One of the more pleasing aspects to The Trashcan Sinatras’ recent live appearance in Dublin’s Workman’s Club was the size of the crowd. Although the show was a fully seated one and the space in the room curtailed as a result, it was still sold out well in advance of the band’s return to a…

OUR FRIEND, RICHIE FLYNN: 1969 – 2018

They’re taking them down from our own shelf now. Every now and again, because neither of us are clearly not busy enough, Martin, who runs The Blackpool Sentinel, and myself might discuss what we do here and why we do it. The answer is always the same. In theory, at least, all we’re at is…

WHY WE MADE ‘THE GAME’.

Something a little different in this post from Colm, one especially for those who like the GAA references running through many of his pieces. This is a piece he wrote for the RTE website on The Game – The Story of Hurling – which started on Monday, July 30th, at 9:35pm on RTE One, and…

JOHNNY MARR AND THE LONG SHADOWS

  Johnny Marr’s kept his Into Paradise hang-ups very quiet, hasn’t he ? The Dublin band, who endured for the guts of a decade from the mid-1980s, were one of the first acts signed to Keith Cullen’s then-fledgling Setanta Records imprint and paved a path on many levels for a far better known slew who…

A SONG FOR MY MOTHER

On her birth cert and on her death cert, my mother is referred to by her actual name, Margaret, even though she was known all of her life as Joan. This kind of carry-on wasn’t entirely uncommon during the country’s formative years – she was born as the Irish Free State became The Republic of Ireland –…

PUBLIC ENEMY 30 YEARS ON

Thirty years ago this weekend, Public Enemy played Trinity College, Dublin. Kieran Cunningham, Chief Sports Writer with the Irish Daily Star, and someone who once had musical notions of his own, has written this excellent guest post for us.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_Jeyif7bB4 Joe Brolly was lying on his back on the cobblestones. Staring at the stars, wired…

THE TRIUMPH OF FÉILE, 1990

Almost 60,000 spectators fetched up at Semple Stadium in Thurles on September 2nd, 1984, for that year’s All-Ireland hurling final between Cork and Offaly. It was the first time since 1909 that the decider had been played outside of what has long been the sport’s traditional home, Croke Park in Dublin, marking the centenary of the founding of the Gaelic…

THE ROLLING STONES VERSUS IRELAND’S SHOWBANDS, 1965

The Rolling Stones bring their ‘No Filter’ tour to Croke Park on May 17th next for what might well be the band’s final ever bumper pay day in Ireland. The group has been visiting this country in various iterations and to various effect for over fifty years and one can confidently claim that the nation…

THE THRILLS

To my mind, far too much contemporary music writing – and indeed arts coverage in general – has become identity politics by another name. Show me your Amazon, Spotify and Twitter history and I’ll tell you who you are, what you’re thinking and who I think you should be, basically. Maybe it’s always been thus and the growth…

‘AFTER ALL’ AND THE YOUNG OFFENDERS

  I’ve written previously and at no little length about The Frank And Walters, to my mind the best pound-for-pound pop band the country has ever produced. It’s a story I know as well as anyone: I have a long and proud association with the group, especially with Paul and Ashley, that dates back to…

MUSIC IN THE SNOW, SNOW IN THE MUSIC

Regular subscribers to The Blackpool Sentinel – one of the advantages of digital media means that we have identified someone in West Cork and possibly another in Eastern Europe – will need no introduction to the magnificent Scottish band, Trashcan Sinatras, and their seductive, smart and soothing pop songs. They are in part the patron…

LLOYD COLE

One of the most complete and impressive live guitar performances I’ve seen during my decades spent going slowly deaf in large rooms was on the wide stage at The City Hall in Cork on November 2nd, 1987. Neil Clark lined-up to Lloyd Cole’s right that night, stage left as I looked on from half-way down…

MORRISSEY IN DUBLIN

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5ojwffp8r8 Next week I’ll take the long walk down the quay to see Morrissey perform live for the umpteenth time. It’s more of a duty than anything else at this stage, I think: like my annual subscription to the Resident’s Association here, none of whom I really know, whose purpose I don’t really understand and…

PADDY McALOON at 60 [GOING ON 61]

From the gawkily posed photographs that have survived the decades, its clear they stood steadfastly out of step with their peers and, you’d think, knew that much best themselves. But although Prefab Sprout’s shape and style has evolved out of all recognition in the years since 1977, it’s that same sense of mis-match – the uneasy…

DOLORES O’RIORDAN: 1971 – 2018.

During the first series of the RTÉ music show, ‘No Disco’, the presenter, Donal Dineen and myself travelled west to Limerick on a couple of occasions to pick up long interviews that we’d use to populate what was, in essence, a niche video clip show. And because the show didn’t have a bob in its…

MARIAH CAREY AND THE HICKEYS OF CORK

https://youtu.be/yXQViqx6GMY As popular seasonal songs go, Mariah Carey’s high-octane body-shaker, ‘All I Want For Christmas Is You’, is certainly among the more memorable of the recent cluster even if, in thought, word and deed, its also one of the more obvious. Nodding at Wizzard’s meaty glam-stomp, ‘I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday’, Mariah’s multi-layered pop whopper, first released…

TALES OF THE TAPE

    The delicate art of just being there can be tricky enough to manage at the best of times, especially to those of us long gone from the streets that raised us, in exile. But just because we’re out of sight, keeping our eyes on the ball and one foot ahead of the other, doesn’t…

THE MIX TAPE 2017

To accompany Tales of the Tape – I thought it might be interesting for Colm to make up a mix tape. This ‘mix-tape’ was created Sunday 26 November. As is the nature of these things if I had asked today, it may have been a completely different selection of tunes… Enjoy (Martin O’Connor) 1] The…

R.E.M. AND THE LOST LETTER

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCMy6kq5ZA0 You’d miss R.E.M. all the same, wouldn’t you ? Easily one of the best, certainly one of the most prolific and without doubt one of the most subversive of them all stepped off of the travellator for the last time in  2011, thirty-one years after they’d assembled in Athens, Georgia, from where they launched some of…

STEELY DAN: LIVE AT THE 3 ARENA, DUBLIN. OCTOBER 28th, 2017. 

It was because of Mark Cagney’s perenially classy late night radio show on Radio 2, ‘The Night Train’, that I was first alerted to the wonder of Donald Fagen and, as a consequence, Steely Dan, the band – in the loosest of terms possible – that Fagen first roughly sketched out with Walter Becker in…

CYPRESS, MINE !: TRASH TALK

Jim McCarthy’s photograph on the front of ‘Exit Trashtown’ could have been taken in Cork at any point during the 1980s. In that snap, a lorry’s fog-lights pop the mist as it passes an abandoned fishing boat that’s run aground on the banks of The River Lee. Take your pick of the metaphors: you’re spoilt…

VINCENT HANLEY’S ABSOLUTE FABULOUSNESS

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bptlyJeItOA Broadcasters Donal Dineen and the late Vincent Hanley never met and, on the surface, have little in common bar the radio. One revelled in the glare, came alive in front of an audience and was widely known by his nickname, Fab Vinny. The other has long been uneasy in the spotlight and only really…

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