HINTERLAND

Hinterland [noun]: The back of beyond, the middle of nowhere, the backwoods, the wilds, the bush, remote areas, a backwater. If nothing else, they certainly choose the name well. Twenty-six years after the release of their excellent album, ‘Kissing The Roof Of Heaven’, you’ll struggle to find Hinterland mentioned in even the grass verges of contemporary Irish music... 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 →

A HOUSE: THE GREATEST

  Dublin band A House played it’s last ever live show in Dublin’s Olympia Theatre on Friday, February 28th, 1997. I wrote about that night - it was far more than just another show, I felt - in my Sunday Tribune column the following weekend, on Sunday, March 2nd and, as was customary for me at... Continue Reading →

U2, LIVE IN CROKE PARK, 1985

‘Well, the Jacks are back. And what an All-Ireland we have for you tonight’. As opening gambits go, Bono’s introduction to the partisan hordes at Croke Park just after 8.30 p.m. on a sticky June evening in 1985 had a familiar peel. Eight years previously, Phil Lynott had marked Dublin’s All-Ireland football semi-final victory over Kerry with... Continue Reading →

STARGAZING, 1997.

Stargazing In the Sunday Tribune, of December 29th, 1996, I looked ahead to the year in rock and pop music and, in a side-bar column, made a series of predictions. We’ll post up the body of the piece shortly – which basically pitched U2’s then still gestating ‘Pop' album against all-comers - but, in the... Continue Reading →

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