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... Continue Reading →
A HOUSE: LOCAL HOUSING AUTHORITY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJO6-oaPEsY There were a few of them, back in the dark ages, that you’d think twice about looking crooked at. Declan Jones from Blue In Heaven, all seven foot odd of him in his leather keks and his Chelsea boots, was one. Half of Whipping Boy, a couple of The Gorehounds, Dave Lavelle from The... Continue Reading →
TOASTED SPECIAL
https://youtu.be/7BxIvxUvfIE During the late 1980s and early 1990s, some of the smartest and freshest new bands in Ireland emerged far from the Dublin archdiocese and, in many cases, in direct defiance of it’s strictures. Zesty acts like Therapy ?, The Frank And Walters, The Cranberries, Engine Alley, They Do It With Mirrors, The I.R.S. and The Sultans Of... Continue Reading →
IN THE ROCK GARDEN
I worked for a couple of years with my friend, Jeff Brennan, in The Rock Garden, the live music venue and sometime restaurant that opened in Crown Alley, in Temple Bar, Dublin, almost 25 years ago. It was the late Aiden Lambert, Blink’s manager, who brokered that job for me and I’ve written about our... Continue Reading →
FIVE GUYS NAMED MOE: FROM CANADA, WITH LOVE.
Like the small handful of others around these parts, it was during their U.K. and Ireland tour supporting Martin Stephenson and The Daintees in 1990 that I encountered Five Guys Named Moe for the first and only time. Between one thing and another, they went to ground pretty much immediately thereafter and, even now, not... Continue Reading →
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