Skip Traces

To the capital [Dublin] then. In the late 1970s and early 80s, the interior English trend of venues decked out in marble and mirrors floated across the Irish sea. On Dublin’s Leeson Street, the idea of a cocktail-fuelled nightclub experience became the hot social option, as the quietly closing city ballrooms that hosted the jiving rituals of the Sixtieswere seen as outdated meeting spots.  The image of the nightclub as an otherworldly Xanadu was a frequent scene in the flash urban narratives seen in the new trend of the mainly American videos that were rented countrywide.  As the recession settled, the communal ritual of the ballroom appeared passé, almost pre-electric. The need to socialise, with the day-to-day put firmly to bed and forgotten about, circled the city’s subconscious.

Click here for audio for Tamango’s mixed soundtrack, 1980s.

Zhivago’s on Baggot Street glittered, as did the Afrospot on Fleet Street and Lord John’s on Sackville Place. These snazzy cabaret joints soundtracked modern mating rituals with a slick pop radio selection delivered by a chatty waistcoated music host on the mic.  Often an unwieldy black telephone stood in for headphones and the disc-cueing DJ appeared to whisper sweet nothings to the dancefloor from a spangled pulpit. He was a grinning prop, a servant a notch below the bow-tied barmen and the Farrah Fawcetted waitresses in the general scheme of the place.

The guys who went here were now released from the archaic dance rituals of the jive and standing against the wall in lines for courting.  Instead, they circled the bar and splashed out on exotic drinks for ladies at their leisure.  Before, people seemed to stumble awkwardly through a process; now modernism had finally arrived — people now… mingled.  In this, men mimicked perhaps the suave behavior of J.R Ewing, Larry Hagman’s glamorous portrayal of the cowboy as cute hoor.  The man, in theory, of the land, yet who was at ease in cosmopolitan Dallas nightspots, J.R was a potent role model for an up-from-the-country Irishman’s tentative steps onto a city dancefloor.

Confidence in shaky times. City folk themselves liked the bit where J.R. (vote Fianna Fáil) wound down, whiskey in hand in some fancy joint, usually after throwing rival Cliff Barnes (Vote Fine Gael) out of his gleaming corporate office. The décor and rhythms of the new cabaret spots channeled the potency of shows such as Dallas and Dynasty, which held huge ratings in a late Eighties Ireland still scratching their post “De Valera —Europe?” heads.

Aspirational characters of the like of our own squire Haughey also gave the impression of operating in this teleplay, cut glass tumbler in hand, holding court after a

day of reassuring the country of his determination to banish the grey economic mists that blanketed everything beyond the Pale. A photo from those times, later
published in The Sunday Times and surfacing after Haughey’s death, shows a poolside scene.  He is relaxing with mistress Terry Keane in Hinde postcard color.   Confident and smiling, the couple’s holiday snap is taken at a surely unintentional nearly exact replica of the Southfork ranch pool.

Top of the piled carpet of the then glamorous hierarchy in the capital was the Pink Elephant, off Nassau Street. This was the Shamrock Studio 54 of its day, an essential place to be seen in should you swing in media and entertainment circles.  Dance music as played there was derived from the popular radio sources of the time and operated, dancefloor and all, close to background noise. The environment in these churches reflected a congregation who in parts, as Waters commented in his book, “regarded themselves as the social and intellectual elite of modern Ireland, but who ideally would have liked to have been born somewhere else.

Over the following years, under the direction of Paul Webb and other DJs, the Pink absorbed contemporary dance sounds and became known as a dance club rather than a Sunday World social page, after the underground scene became too prominent to ignore.

 

In the general populace, emigration was cutting deep and for those left at home the act of socialising with a few bob was a serious business.  £3 for a bottle of Ritz definitely focused the courtship ritual in these chrome and mirrored joints. Music was often seen as secondary to the swishness of the venue and in that paradigm too, it was very English.  In a concession to the rest of Ireland and its crumbling dancehall rituals, the all-important last slow set took place even in Dublin 4’s gilded palaces.  Couples shuffling to the strains of Eric Clapton’s “Wonderful Tonight” was a ritual as weary and sacrosanct as the national anthem as last song of the night.  The crossfaded tone that hung between the national anthem’s beginning and the ringing end chord of Clapton surely is the ultimate Pavlovian bell for a generation now in their forties, its responsible toll ringing as the lights come on, stripping the artifice from Xanadu for another night.

 

Downtown in the then dilapidated city centre area of Temple Bar, things represented a decidedly different social turn.  Surrounded by greasy bus lanes signalling the area’s once intended demolition for a massive transport station, it was a place not to be seen in once the sun went down.  In its current prosperous incarnation, Temple Bar offers little evidence of the role it played in the creation of contemporary Irish dance culture, when Eighties property developers had turned the city into a pockmarked pile and the depressed city centre was a lost Vegas run down with burger joints and arcades.

Creative advantages presented themselves as cheap rents and allowed artistic types to establish studios, galleries and party spaces downtown.  Standing proud in this bohemian landscape was the Hirschfeld Centre, a property that was at the time one of the established official gay and lesbian bases operating day to day in a urban centre worldwide.  Situated at 10 Fownes Street, the Hirschfeld Centre was a hangout by day and a dance venue by night that promoted a positive gay agenda.  More importantly at the time, it was a place to socialise for those of an alternative sensibility, marooned in the country in those straitlaced grey times.

 

The centre, which housed a café and cinema, was funded in part from income from the in-house nightclub Flickers and it’s here that the dynamic history of Irish club life begins. Tonie Walsh, activist and Flikkers DJ at the time, remembers the Hirchsfield as a place of resistance against a culture where the anti-gay legislation of the day paraded itself down O’Connell Street with Legion of Mary marches. “The centre was a contract with a community,” he says, echoing the organisation of New York gay clubs that took place after the Stonewall riots.

Post Stonewall, gay club music reconfigured certain music and the way this music was played (empowered female soul anthems, for example).  This affirmed within gay groups a collective identity that refused to be ghettoised.  In the light of this agenda, selected music when presented as such in the context of an exclusive party intentionally represented a statement of defiance.  The parading sons and daughters of old Ireland would be appalled at Walsh’s description of his night The Cage as a celebration of sleazy music. As the son of a freelance showband sax player, the notion of music defined as style was in Walsh’s blood. The performance with a soundtrack was theatre. The notion of music as background noise could be applied here only if you can imagine it now as an audio code for sex! And here, that needed to be LOUD.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“I Need Somebody To Love Tonight” by Sylvester was spun. “Nightclubbing” by Grace Jones and the low-slung funk of the Bar-kays and Millie Jackson came to define the off-centered confidence of the night.  Musical heroes such as the group Odyssey (whose anthemic song was “Our Lives Are Made For What We Are”) performed for these pioneering promoters.  Sylvester, the ultimate gay performer, was eventually booked to play, but he was taken by what was known then as “the gay plague,” as the comprehension of AIDS was still alien in Ireland.  The community downtown was aware more than most.  An early term for AIDS in the worldwide gay dance community at the time was “the Saint’s disease,” so called after the devastation of the gay clientele from one of New York’s dance palaces in the first wave of the epidemic.

 

For a while, these were the good times.  Walsh says the space was almost virtual in a 20th century way. “These parallel realities were an attempt to redress the imbalance felt by those involved in wider society”, says Walsh, who is adept at discussing the history in both polemical and nostalgic fashion as he assembles those memories for a book he is currently writing.  In the London of 1983, the parallel Irish actions by Walsh and his crew were described as “parties with a vengeance” by David Johnson in The Face.  In his article, he mentions the rebel dance parties that were “glorifying the individual and wrestling power back from the elders.”  Johnson was referring to the commodification of the disco after Travolta sublimated the dance for the tribal “release from the bondage of weekday work” spectacle.

As the mega-disco arrived in London, the hybrid styles of a reactionary underground scene abroad inevitably made their way back to Dublin via those who worked there for the summer.  In the Eighties, it was almost mandatory to get the boat for a few months’ work.  Once there, you had access to new sounds.  A bootleg tape from Camden Market or a set from a pirate station playing on one of those SONY Walkmans on the way back got Paddy hip for Holyhead as well.

Saturday nights down the steep stairs to the basement was the major night for the queens left in the country and the first all-night disco was held in the centre in 1981.  Fashion and dress reflected a combination of street and glamour drawn in part from the secondhand shops that surrounded the centre, again emphasising dole-fuelled creative options.  The non-alcohol restrictions of the centre’s license meant an inevitable sprinkling of acid, speed and quaaluded rebel footwork.  The association of ecstasy with clubbing had yet to provoke the tabloids and, while the gay scene had access to the odd pill courtesy of adventurous visitors from abroad, the prohibitive cost at that time was £25 a pop.
For those out and proud, the centre was the start of the anarchy of the now institutionalised Alternative Miss Ireland contest.  Superstars like Panti emerged who were Celtic cousins to Warhol’s glamorous stable of Hollywood Seventies wannabes.  As the parties became established, Temple Bar sparkled as the place in Ireland to be out.  Stories about No 4, a mid-Eighties gay shebeen at 4 McCurtain St  in Cork, which pursued the same agenda, could be slotted in here, but its non-licensed state means the historical title for influential Irish club status must go to the pioneering Hirschfeld Centre.

Politics and passions combined with post-punk and disco grooves.  A gay agenda ran the show accommodating gays and progressive straights who gravitated to the dimly-lit area around the Central Bank as word about the crazy music and unrestrained extroverts cavorting in a New York style got around.  The frisson of the wrong side of town raising its party flag drew the committed.  Evidence from these specific nights are documented by flyers and print paraphernalia held by the National Library courtesy of the National Queer Archive.  The night Senator David Norris got elected was, by all accounts, some party, his election an affirmation that this show was going to run and run.

The rare sounds for the parties were initially mixed with the indie hits of the day (referencing the above English template) by DJs like John Cronin, creating a

tribal environment for those that transgressed neat punk/goth/new romantic labelling. Manchester’s Hacienda, for all its house music glory, initially used to finish off its equivalent nights with goths and Bowie fans doing the conga to the Thunderbird’s theme. The music spectrum had to have the edgy stuff from the B52s side of the charts to emerging electronic rhythm manifestos from Europe and the States.  A commitment to forging a sound was now made by the Hirschfeld DJs, who set aside cash to fund a record pool. People came to hear the new and the new had to be found.

 

Paul Webb the DJ was then working the decks at the Pink Elephant and is emphatic about the impact of the downtown set up.  “DJs who guested at the club knew they could push the boundaries and play offbeat music, as the crowd and promoters supported the new and the innovative,” he says. “People came for obscure sounds.  I’d clear the floor uptown if I chanced a heavy Trouble Funk track. But at Flikkers, there was never a problem, as the crew running the night trusted the DJ.”  As hip travellers returned from abroad, they brought with them various records they thought would suit the scene’s agenda. Tracks such as “Love Reaction” by Divine, with its “Blue Monday” stylings, were sufficiently edgy and cutting to appeal to both indie and gay camps. Divine was the larger-than-life transvestite star of the John Waters flick Pink Flamingos and her husky singing generated a type of freaky funk for all types for outsiders to enjoy.

One song which had a huge impact was Donna Summer’s electro tranced “I Feel Love.”  This robotic soul masterpiece was immediately set upon and dismantled by European producers. Its throbbing template became the definitive gay club sound that was explicitly referenced in tracks like Patrick Cowley’s “Menenergy” in 1981.  Those relentless electronic beats needed to be spun out over a couple of hours for effect, something incomprehensible to the casual pop and rock punter who frequented uptown.  New musical journeys downtown dispensed with any trace of the slow set, jive or party performance conventions that were in place uptown to orientate the unfamiliar visitor to the experience provided by the venue.

In Temple Bar, the absence of these (nominally straight) conventions can be seen as a pledge of definition by the nascent dance community to themselves. It was a way of saying “these are our rhythms and we own them.”   Slow sets appeared on the crazy party nights where show tunes or familiar songs were aired, these sets were slow and low and once again out of reach to those out of the loop.  Traditional folk and Anglo-Irish Dubs reassured themselves that this musical aberration was just a bent soundtrack.  Big Tom’s Ireland may have found rock music just about derisible, but that quare stuff was much more acceptable to the queer stuff pumping from Temple Bar.

Check the record shops such as All City that now occupy Temple Bar and you will find remixed versions of this once derided “faggot music” currently enjoying a renaissance nearly three decades years after pumping from the Hirschfeld’s basement.  Flashbacks like The Biddu Orchestra’s “Voodoo Man” – an electro classic from 1979, for example – were gloriously resurrected a few years ago.

Tonie Walsh doesn’t register Irish pop radio impacting on the club’s music policy but emphatically points to the influence of MT-USA. Vincent Hanley hosted this pioneering independent Irish TV show which played dance-tinged glossy American pop videos each Sunday afternoon, long before MTV fashioned its own culture.  To this day, MT-USA is fondly remembered as a welcome distraction by those who were imprisoned by Inter and Leaving Cert studies at that time.

Pirate dance radio ships had yet to sail in Dublin, leaving the DJs the job of constructing the hot playlists themselves. However, the desired import records needed to fuel this mission commanded high prices. Webb points out that if you could manage to part with the cash for dance floor classics like the 12’’ mix of Roy Ayers‘s’ “Running Away” (€50 in today’s money), you took solace in the fact that there were fewer than 10 copies in the country. The thought of discerning punters clamouring to request it in the coming weeks was often the reason for hard-earned cash being handed over.

In sourcing grooves, Webb points to the influence of British DJ James Hamilton.  His weekly charts in Record Mirror magazine, combined with his yearly dance mix on BBC Radio 1, counted as essential research.  Kilkenny’s DJ Cool C from Dublin’s All City crew also remembers these charts, diligently cutting them out because they contained the BPMs of various hot tracks, thus allowing a virtual mix in the eager DJ’s head as if he had heard them himself. This charming, labour-intensive behaviour certainly merits the well-worn “pre-internet” comment.

Commercial nightclub DJs were not well-paid individuals, as they were seen as the cheaper alternative to a band by venue owners full stop.  The concept of DJs as performance artists in their own right was laughable, except for the guys from the radio RTE sometimes sent on the showband trail.  These roadshows were often based on the spectacle of a showband itself, with the likes of the late Gerry Ryan being the radio star who descends on a country town for a night to give a taste of the big city and hinting at the showbiz paradise it is.  This profiling added to the obscurity of the Temple Bar DJ’s mission.  Denied the status of a Gerry Ryan or Pat Kenny, their true job description didn’t really exist, as it was by all intents too modern in the face of the airwave-sanctioned disco at the crossroads.

The passionate spinner in the shadow of institutionalised radio had to be committed.  Webb, for example, travelled every week to the record company headquarters on the Long Mile Road to request promo records that were often just unplayable chart fodder.  “Every Friday, I used to cycle around all day to these places for nothing, but I still
did it. Every week!  Now, I get direct emailed demos and tracks from producers and groups before the record companies.”   As part of this developing scene, Hanley physically brought back the latest US disco and post punk exclusives from New York along with his recommendations. Hanley and others repped for the home scene in America by checking out what was vogueish and thus keeping Flickers progressive.  In one twisted example, the Flickers crowd worked The Weather Girls hit “It’s Raining Men’ on the floors months before the radio non-ironically delivered the concept of a downpour of accessible males to the rest of the country.   It remains a staple on the Irish hetero wedding playlist to this day.

The significance of getting down to anthems that could only be heard in specific spaces cannot be underestimated in terms of pink solidarity.  Music radios or programmed music were not an intentionally prominent feature in bars and a DJ spinning in an Irish bar is really only a decade old.  Yet a tale is told of a regular Sunday afternoon disco in one gay-friendly bar (possibly The Parliament) that was a daylight extension of the Temple Bar groove and great fun in a non religious

Sunday drinking way, by all reports.

Only Webb’s column in In Dublin magazine as well as regular reports in the Dublin Event Guide carried any dance coverage, as the capital’s other publications, notably Hot Press, adopted a conservative anti-dance stance.  A moment from this time on radio; after touring the October album in America, Adam Clayton arrived on Dave Fanning’s programme to play some records he had bought back.  U2’s bassist opened his selection with the unexpected backwards bass slurp of George Clinton’s “Atomic Dog.”  It seems this was the sound of the black clubs the blonde Afro-ed bassist was fascinated by on tour.  Of course, Webb had been playing Clinton’s song in discerning spots months previously and the rare sound of this black funk slab floating over national airwaves hosted by the U2 guy registered overall as no more than a curious artifact from an urban field trip, instead of the punchy anthem Webb made it downtown.

On the ground, the lines were clearly drawn. The idea of a congregation worshipping at a stage that was not miked for guitars and drums seemed incomprehensible for print  and radio coverage.  Webb’s disco reports eventually ceased “when the editor wanted more of a club spy angle.”  No doubt that imagined spectacle was the easier sell than a regular funky rundown on hot trends. A safe environment for congregating and dancing heightened a progressive unity between crowd and DJ as Flikkers began to push special disco megamixes acquired by Hanley and others.  New York Dance producers like Jellybean (who assisted Madonna’s rise to fame) began playing specially mixed vinyl containing many dancefloor hits on one record.  These popular edits were an alternative to tracking down all the necessary underground beats for mixing themselves, but still remained coherent dancefloor tracks in themselves.  These tools were the next step as well as the always vital new thing.  Disconet and Hot Traxx “DJ-only” 12’’ records segued electro themed American and Georgio Moroder pulsed Eurobeats, consolidating a futuristic alternative again only to be experienced downtown.

A couple of minutes from the Hirschfeld across the Liffey, Abbey Discs and the gay-run Beat Records began selling downtown sounds. These traders began pushing non-chart sounds in the rough and ready stalls in the Abbey Street Mall.   Cassette tapes began to be passed around as DJs traded beat ideas amongst themselves. By the late

Eighties, the Virgin Megastore opened on the quays and a policy of dumping excess dance vinyl into bargain bins from Virgin’s stores in London inspired many a
follower to consider a set of decks now that the content was available.  By 1991, these shops stocked the Irish scene’s tentative vinyl outings in the dance market.  One such object was a compilation called Music To Move To, Vol I on the Futuresque label. Barry Warner had by this time recorded a beat-tripped version of Bowie’s “Sound and Vision,” which didn’t get clearance, but was heard and appreciated by the Thin White Duke himself.

Two other mid-Eighties albums lost in those times but out there on a rhythm tip that may have circled Temple bar were The Protagonist 28 Nein (1986, Dossier Records) by Dublin poet/singer Stano andHyperspace (1987, Tara Records) from Sligo’s Those Nervous Animals. Stano’s effort musically twisted towards the post-punk (Cabaret Voltaire listening, William Burroughs reading) Virgin Prunes set, while Those Nervous Animals contained surprisingly deft Arthur Baker touches amongst their pop stylings.

In 1986, John Nolan and Cyril O’Brien open Sides DC at 26 Dame Lane (the “DC” stood for Dance Club). A stone’s throw from the flickering of the Hirschfeld, the opening of Sides announced that this was a scene which was more than just a necessary environment for the gay and curious.  Rather than a hedonistic hint of New York at Flikkers, you were now able to experience a full on, 100 percent dance club.
At The Cage, DJs like Liam Fitzpatrick worked alongside Webb at the still new concept of the mix.  Slow grooves building steadily would peak and drop as a theme teased through the night.  “Liam was flawless,” says Tonie Walsh. “He would stretch records with two copies taking the crowd to 130bpm, then dropping the sound before building it up again.”  In the other corner, Webb’s maverick style involved layering black civil rights speeches over James Brown instrumentals and peaking with a Kraftwerkian onslaught of Euro-electronic.  Webb recalls parties being thrown by “a Nigerian guy in Ballsbridge” who played Afrobeat sounds and introduced the DJ to Fela Kuti records. “Man, I would have so much work for that guy right now,” Webb says.

The trip was now established and the crowd demanded a night that lived up to the new template.  By the time Webb and Fitzpatrick had installed themselves as the first DJs in Sides, they owned the keys to an uncompromising sonic racecar with minimal white walls housing a purpose-built Cerwin-Vega soundsystem in Dame Lane.  The race track was theirs.  The gap between the sticks, the Leeson Street clubs and the Temple Bar movement widened.  Now the scene moved overground and there was a classy alternative that lived up to the expectation of graduating club kids.   Though Sides was never marketed exclusively as a gay club, Saturday nights had a proud pink crowd and the concept of a high profile spot in Dublin city centre where the gay night was not hosted on a Monday was read as “quite rebellious,” says Walsh.

The Sides scene was predominantly male, 50/50 gay and straight, with a healthy art college input where a passion for serious dancing was the essential attraction.  Active punters pushed the visual boundaries and began dressing themselves and the club to exacting standards.  Niall Sweeney, a designer currently based in England, was a Face and ID magazine junkie.  “I remember one shop in Rathmines where those magazines would arrive and next day at St Mary’s School in Rathfarnham, those in the know would furiously debate the hip content within.”  Like many of his peers, Sweeney’s youthful studies included devouring pop videos and late nightChannel 4 TV exotica which led him to visualise far-out theatrical sets for the interior of Sides.

In our Youtube cocoon of today, it’s important to remember that the extravagance of club fashion in music and visuals literally had to be studied in the mid Eighties through the pages of a couple of English magazines and some progressive pop programming on Channel 4 beamed to an eager audience on the east coast. This was the channel that produced an hour-long scratch video based on Talking Heads music before that group’s own Stop Making Sense premiered.  This funky audio-visual urbanity combined with the postmodern diktats of the Face united not just the Dublin kids, but those from the sticks who made it to the capital to study, particularly the visual arts.

At this time, the National College of Art and Design (NCAD) students held parties in places such as the Cathedral Club (a disused part of Christchurch Cathedral), creating another flank in the continuing battle against the doom-laden recession. Artist Nigel Rolfe, who lectured in NCAD in the mid Eighties, was known to DJ at college parties from cassettes playing uncompromising break-dance electro, referencing the contemporary collision of punk and DJ culture glimpsed in The Clash’s video for “The Magnificent Seven.” The anarchic midsummer night, Hallowe’en and New Year’s balls held in the Hirschfeld were well established mini Mardi Gras, where Sweeney and other creatives perfected crazy glitter and glue skills for the cause.

 

Sides DC, Dublin – 1994

They say the personal is political and in throwing these bashes, the collective was creating an active social agenda on their own terms and on their own budgets. The

rest of the country may have been concentrating the words of Haughey’s “tighten your belts” speech, but these teams probably spotted the ill-gotten designer cuffs poking from his mohair suit on TV and what was good enough for the goose became good enough for the gander in the creation of an identity, albeit with different budgets. The square community presided over by Haughey were born to suffer, but those downtown, in the words of the Hi-NRG song, were “Born To Be Alive.”   Sweeney and another Flikkers regular, Frank Stanley, who both went on to design Dublin’s iconic 1990s shop Makullas, gleefully began to use Sides as their deranged canvas. Things had to be different, new and exciting to mirror the dominant sound now rendering the music partially abstract.  Due to the power of the speakers, the bass warped the dancers’ moves and the visual space of the club expanded and contracted accordingly. “People wanted to get inside the bassbins, the sound had such a presence,” Webb recalls.

The DJ booth hung as an altar halfway up a wall overlooking the changing ceremonies. The club’s seats were black modules that formed new shapes each week and a sculpted fountain dispensed water beside the dance floor. Shaking his head thinking about the audacious energy of Sweeney’s men, Webb remembers half of a life-size aeroplane protruding from a wall one week. When Andy Warhol died, those who went to dance the night away in Dublin during the week of his passing did so around an elaborate altar of glass and UV light created in the middle of the club.

Other nights saw the crew truck a cherry tree onto the dancefloor and simply adorn it with a disco ball as the only décor for that night. The Alternative Miss Ireland book published last year hints at the explosion of eye candy on walls and limbs that marked Sides’s classic period. These installations were the perfect acid landscape, as again, mainstream dance-associated chemicals for personal dance visuals had yet to hit the country in force.  Sides was the first commercial place in Ireland to offer an environment that was not a bar first with dancefloor as an afterthought and those running it knew the responsibility that came with that.  The rota of DJs and designers who passed through its doors came to define a distinct visual ethos that would define Dublin physically in the 1990s.

Fergus Murphy, who as a promoter and DJ fronted the influential late 90s Velure club nights in the Gaiety, was then a UCD [University College Dublin] student drawn to the scene.   As a punter, he followed UCD’s  John Donnelly into Sides in 1989 when that DJ held down a Thursday night residency. “The grammar of record collecting by these DJs had transferred into nights where the psycho metronomic funk of a Bohannon record was now the dancefloor norm,”   Murphy enthused.   “You could get the records now, and the gap between hearing about contemporary international releases and experiencing them mixed for the dancefloor had disappeared, more or less.”

The DMC (Disco Mix Club) now known for turntablism and scratch battles, set up its Irish base on the Tuam Road in Galway and distributed promos and remixes. Dance fanzines came into being to cover the scene with Mark Kavanagh’s Remix and Dublin Funk Collective News (aka DFC News) being essential reads in the early 1990s. By now, Sides wasn’t alone. Eoin Foyle ran an electro-tinged indie night called The Motion Club in the Warwick Hotel in Galway, before defining a commercial funk and hip-hop template in the capital with Ri-Ra. Galway also hosted hugely influential pure electro nights in a spot called The Castle with a Donegal DJ called Chris Orr, who now resides in San Francisco. The legendary Sir Henry’s in Cork with Shane Johnson and Greg Dowling was up and running by the early 1990s, attracting busloads from Dublin, with many of these Jackeens then starting their own club nights.

Acid house, initially the most abstract form of disco’s revenge, began to attract attention and the first DJ generation inspired by Webb and Fitzpatrick began to pass through Sides.  A profile of DJ Noel in the July 1991 issue of DFC News by DJ Bass mentions that he will be throwing down “Italo, Techno, Indie, Ambient and Deep House.” Noel mentions he likes working in Sides because “it’s different to any other club.” The description of his playlist signified that the varied pulses of Webb’s inaugural sound had been streamlined and this defining house groove would be the foundation of nationwide dance parties throughout the 1990s.  The impending onslaught of Irish rave events, often cited as the beginning of a dance scene, in Ireland was coming.

 

A geographical description of the dance scene in London from The Face’s December 1989 issue lists the grooves that were now also the progressive sounds of Dame Street: African chants, flamenco guitar, indie thrash, Eurodisco, Chicago house, hip house, Detroit techno, New York garage, rap, skacid, acid jazz and “almost anything else you want.”  In today’s comfortable specialist clubbing age, there is no form of electronic dance music that today’s Ireland cannot absorb. That menu from The Face reads like the proud work sheet from the Warhol-inspired factories that were in effect the Hirschfeld and Sides.

 

 

West in Motion by Bumble. An internationally acknowledged Irish Rave anthem

This historical sketch ends with the beginning of the Celtic Tiger prowling round the notion that there may be some financial sense in these dance clubs as house music and hip-hop in the charts made what was previously underground accessible.  The thrill of dancefloor discovery on the same level as back in the early days ended. The secret of obscure sound, the careful building of music, the fun of building an environment, the community, the wine licence restrictions, printing the names of the bouncers on flyers for Sides because everybody liked them: all this belonged to a slower, more transitional age.  As the developers and drug-monitoring gardai moved into Temple Bar, the spots here and throughout Dublin began to accommodate a faster tempo.

More was lost, however, than just time and place. By then, everyone knew the consequences of AIDS, none more so than many of the original pioneers of the Hirschfeld. “Just before the end of Sides, the scene was very dark, with funerals of many who were integral to the scene,” recounts Webb.  The Hirschfeld itself fell victim to a fire before Sides too finally closed.  With it went a decade of sonic and social achievement that redefined the transition from suited showband shuffling to synchronised hands in the hair. With dance remixes of U2 on the radio and Paul Oakenfold warming up for them in Lansdowne Road, the job started in a Dublin basement by some very energetic outsiders was done.

 

 

Click here for  Audio of Scary Eire suporting U2 at Lansdowne Road, 1993

 __________

O2  Irish blog post of the Month Sept 2008

 

 

Aidan Walsh: No meaning and no end to the Master of the Universe

 

A version of this review was originally posted at www.cheebah.net after the author found a second-hand copy of Shimmy Marcus’s 2000 film Aidan Walsh: Master of The Universe in Limerick. Much of the commentary alongside any descriptions stems from the author’s own personal experience of Dublin between 1984 and 1991.

 

***

 

IN the battered Dublin of the 1980s, urban cowboy Aidan Walsh had all the trappings of a 15-minute superstar. The Temple Bar glimpsed in Shimmy Marcus’s 2000 documentary, Aidan Walsh: Master of the Universe, is a million miles from that of the now familiar, bustling, commercial hub, fed by the Celtic Tiger’s greedy cubs. Back then, it was a starker, harsher, poorer area, but Marcus’s documentary fittingly portrays it as an open canvas used by a multitude of artists throughout that decade. And of the many artist types, Walsh was perhaps the most significant.

The Temple Bar of Walsh’s time was a transit zone where cheap rents allowed for an abundance of gallery spaces and performance venues. It was a creative hotspot and, on any given day, you were likely to come across some sort of performance-led event spilling out onto the streets from the area’s primary venue, the Project Arts Centre.  Here, musicians and creatives collaborated on all manner of exciting and innovative presentations, including the ‘Dark Space’ gig where the likes of The Virgin Prunes shared room with Nigel Rolfe and other performers for a 24-hour experience. Amongst the clusters of ‘funny bunnies’ (Councillor Ned Brennan’s famous quote) congregating on the cobblestones for these events, one would occasionally see the ever-smiling Aidan Walsh.

It was easier to be a ‘face’ in 1980’s Dublin than it is today – emigration had culled the younger spectrum of the population, making social circles tight. But justification aside, there is no denying that Walsh stood out.  Dublin city was being overtaken by the punk look imported from London; Grafton Street was being styled in the image of King’s Road, and rebellious poses were the norm. In the midst of all this, Walsh’s look was out of time, un-urban; he had spurned the second-hand London look in favour of his own style, and came across as a flamboyant, rural character.

All of the city’s bohemian population seemed to be on nodding terms with this ‘cowboy’.  Artists and creatives befriended him, attracted to the outsider notions he represented. His new friends recognised in Walsh’s energy something that was not led by a conventional star agenda. He showed no interest in pursuing fame and its benefits. He didn’t just want to be the next big thing; he was that thing already. But if these artist types could help to promote this news, then he was willing to franchise his brand for the greater good.

This singularity was fascinating to all who encountered him. Walsh’s difference generated a romantic agenda, not just for himself but also for a local Dadaist fringe led by band members of The Golden Horde and the remnants of The Virgin Prunes. Product from these liaisons began to appear on the streets. The Master of the Universe brand was created, and could be found at gigs and in paintings, colourful posters and a lot of cartoons. This all helped to keep Walsh’s name, and his mission, in the public eye.

Shimmy Marcus’s film places Walsh’s experience in context, and suggests that his individual path was specific to a time and a place. The Dublin of the 1980s was in the process of deparochialising itself, seeking a postmodern place and striving for a worldview by establishing various international cultural and social links. Art spaces were operating between the international pinnacle of the Guinness Hop Store and the small, damp studios of a run-down Temple Bar. An example of the cultural index of the time was the journey by some of Walsh’s creative contemporaries to London for the Sense of Ireland Festival in 1980, whereby officially-sponsored artists and rock groups travelled to represent the nation’s art trends.

Behind Walsh’s big smile was the hard tale of an abandoned orphan boy. What saved him from his harsh childhood was an imaginative passion and a desire for a happy conclusion as an adult. In Marcus’s film, we can see that he is totally without social boundaries. Like a Celtic Sun Ra, he creates a basic rhythm and circles it in shiny costumed garb, expressing himself in both popular and unintentional conceptual art speak, communicating in fairytales and riddles. He sleeps on four mattresses, watching TV, and keeps a teddybear — not a girlfriend — next to him. Robots, he explains, have sex for him, as this is easier and cleaner for all concerned. He loves the community games and has claimed it is an artistic form understood only by himself. At gigs, he takes your picture and cuts it in half; if you don’t have your half with you at the door, he refuses to recognise you. He once performed at a polling booth when he ran against Bertie Ahern — later to become Ireland’s Taoiseach — in a 1997 local election.

 

Amongst the great showbiz tales and the pathos of his dealing with abandonment and “things he can’t tell yet”, the film’s narrative also documents a wider longing at the time for an urban underground scene typified by the imagined vibrancy of London or New York. The radio station 2FM — owned and set up by the national broadcaster, RTÉ — began broadcasting in 1979 and soon a post-punk sound and attitude began to filter through Dublin and the rest of the country. Suddenly, ‘edgy’ records (such as John Cale’s ‘Fear Is A Man’s Best Friend’) were being played. But would the national broadcaster be open to the wide-grinned bohemian on their doorstep?

Throughout the film, there are clips of various youth programmes illustrating RTÉ’s position on delivering rebellious or avant-garde material. It was all just light entertainment from a capital-centered jamboree. There are clips of Walsh on a popular TV pop music quiz, invited on by ‘hip’ presenter Gerry Ryan. The cowboy quickly spurns Ryan’s patronage as he proceeds to short-circuit the show’s banal answers, much to the quizmaster’s displeasure. He literally pressed the wrong buttons. Moving on, a radio clip of Dave Fanning’s show has a jubilant Walsh in full flight as the presenter attempts to police the spectacle. Fanning sighs, “Here we go” — just because Dave’s designated authority is on top of ‘what’s happening’ doesn’t mean he has to like all the material, or be seen to support Walsh’s surreal agendas.

The potential subversion of the idea of the pop star – which Walsh always represented – could, in a certain light, be regarded as a threat to Fanning, Ryan et al. The national pop channel’s belief in a modernisation manifested itself in the desire for universalisation; any attempt by an Irish Sun Ra to interject could feasibly liberate listeners from consumer passivity and create problems. Walsh’s jabs at the spectacle and his persona in this arena were unique and, in the end, were seen as a counterbalance to the establishment professionalism of RTÉ and its presenters.

Fanning and Ryan were big names in the Ireland of that time. They were both ex-pirate radio personalities done good, and they embodied Irish pop-rock celebrity. Interestingly, they are both recorded as orchestrating downtown events with Walsh, in situations that Ryan admitted were more beneficial as ‘street’ publicity for the 2FM DJs, than for Walsh and his vision. Ryan admits that Bono once had words with him about how this one-way traffic was being handled and he eventually assisted Walsh in a more responsible manner, particularly in helping to track down the orphan’s aunt on his radio show.

Ever since the beat scene of the 1960s, the gig trail has worked according to a pecking order of paying one’s dues. On occasion, Bono has rolled out the metaphor of the bucket of lobsters clawing back any of their own that dared to escape. Hence, as Walsh rode the bucking bronco of recognition, there always seemed to be some attempt to categorise him. But Walsh was usually energetic and original enough to sidestep these snide obstacles and embroider them into his own tapestry. Fame and his unique quest for it were sacred and eventually people began to realise that normal (and 2fm) rules didn’t apply to him. The Master of the Universe was so called because he controlled his own universe.

Around this time, Bono and U2 were enjoying momentous success internationally, and the momentum of this meteoric rise impacted not just on Walsh’s circle but on the whole of the Dublin city scene. The group’s campaign peaked at the time of the release of their film, Rattle and Hum. The people of Ireland supported their fame and worshipped them in whatever image they chose to present themselves as — at this stage of their career, they happened to prefer the ranch-style cowboy look. U2 now showed themselves off in denim jeans and Stetsons — which, let us not forget, are the mark of a gent in country and western terms and Walsh’s patented attire. However, the band’s very intent and serious delivery of their message, as well as Bono’s Messiah persona, were beginning to be remarked upon. Amongst Walsh’s then contemporaries were The Joshua Trio, a talented musical comedy act who reinvented themselves as cod preachers, sending up U2 in pub gigs with country ramblings like ‘The Edge Has Got His Hat On’. Meanwhile, as the celluloid Bono, Larry, Adam and the Edge spinal-tapped a rhythm in Graceland, Walsh took small ads in the Dublin indie press announcing, in all seriousness, that since Elvis was dead, it behooved the Master of the Universe to fill his shoes.

The music industry reacted instinctively to U2’s remapping of Dublin as the Klondike. Waves of A and R men flocked to the capital seeking the next big thing and there was no shortage of takers – the sense of expectancy around the clubs at the time was palpable: if you were a four-piece Irish rock band with messianic tendencies, it was only a matter of time before guaranteed airplay money came your way.

In the middle of all this hubris, Walsh was signed and released an album, to some discontent from the conservatives. There is some great footage of a London showcase of Irish acts where Walsh and the Screaming Eagles are being praised by none other than Brian May of Queen, while at the same time being castigated as taking up space for “real Irish bands” by a mullet-headed Bono clone.

 

The producer of Walsh’s record was The Golden Horde’s Simon Carmody, who comes across here as a genuine supporter and facilitator of the Master of the Universe. The music he produced for Walsh reached out to the style of a Cramps-led, swamp-rocked jangle that had held its own through punk in England. ‘Psycho Billy’, as it was sometimes called, was more upfront about treating stage image as equal with sound, and Carmody was well aware of its suitability for the Walsh project. The Boneshakers were the first Irish manifestation of this live sound, followed by The Gore Hounds and Shark Bait. It was also represented visually in the comic shop culture that had only recently begun to find its feet in Dublin. The groove was also the personal taste of those that ran influential record spots, such as Freebird and Comet Records. For a fun snapshot of these times, check out Eammon Carr’s compilation ‘Guru Weird Brain Presents’. DJ Carr also played this style on RTÉ on occasion, so it had a listenership and, as a trend, it briefly had legs.

Carmody, like Carr, was very hip to the more esoteric, art-tinged possibilities of rock ‘n’ roll-based drama. He had a studied knowledge of the vintage garage rock scene that spawned Love, The 13th-Floor Elevators, and The Stooges, as well as a combination of scenarios that created the legend of The Velvet Underground. He appeared committed to developing an Irish version of those previous successes. He was the type that would not only know who the 1960’s US icon Robert Anton Wilson was, but be aware that he was actually living in Dublin for a while in the late ‘80s. The off-centered cultural knowledge of Carmody, combined with the avant garde tweaks of Gavin Friday and others, gave patronage and credibility to what otherwise would have been a private universe existing only in notebooks and cassettes archived by ‘The Master’ in inner-city Dublin.

As part of a wider agenda, Carmody’s stewardship of this project would consolidate the imagined (and constantly desired) underground perpetrated by groups like the Horde and offshoots like Hackalacka Biniti from the Prunes. The conservative Catholic landscape was one factor demanding necessary rebellion and another was the steady imperialism of the stone-washed Americana being played on radio. By now, Van Morrison was collaborating with The Chieftains and, with the commercial popularity of The Hothouse Flowers and The Waterboys’ star in ascendance, music culture seemed to negate the possibility of any type of post-punk progression being generated from the post-hippy Dublin scene. This is the legacy of modern Irish pop rock. For all Gerry Ryan’s patronage of Walsh and appearance of hip rebellion, his attention was never going to have the same impact as John Peel had in his support for The Fall; gate-keeping lines in Donnybrook are always drawn clear. In this light, Walsh’s legacy from the time stands proud. He literally tried every door in Dublin’s rock saloon and found only unworthy artifice lurking inside.

In retrospect, the nascent dance scene would have been a more receptive home for his mission. And as it was being created in real-time with committed hedonistic followers, it could be constituted as a true underground. Another Venn diagram would circle the Alternative Miss Ireland project, which was being promoted by Tonie Walsh and friends, again in Temple Bar. However, the idea of guitars, drums and sunglasses as a template for magical change was a hard one to leave behind, as these structures were built for a type of accepted radicalism.  No matter how different you wanted your project to become, you were invariably sucked into this ultimately rock-driven commercial black hole.

Carmody’s particular brand of hands-on patronage was the equivalent of Frank Zappa in the 1970s. Zappa developed the outsider musician Wild Man Fischer as a countercultural performer, as the industry co-opted and controlled the freak scene in the ‘70s. Like Zappa with Fischer, Carmody’s work with Walsh was a one-off. The music created specifically for Walsh as a stand-alone package does not age as well as could be expected but, overall, is still worth checking out. At a push, the history of the famous ‘60s New York street musician Moondog is another outsider example for consideration too.

The colourful adventures of the Master of the Universe would always be too busy to be contained within the confines of any lurching model of the Irish music business, pre- or post-U2, and Shimmy Marcus’s film sketches the ups and (mainly) downs of various other commercial endeavours Walsh was involved in over the years. One great story has Walsh trying to buy the building on the Quays that was to become the Virgin Megastore. He began a bidding war and forced the price up, before Richard Branson cash-grabbed the building. Towards the end of the film, we see our hero starting his own young band showcase, offering advice and support to a group of very polite youth (his website currently continues this work). These stories are often disappointingly conveyed by Carmody and others, who tend to mimic Walsh’s distinctively high voice. This is unnecessary but, taken in context with Fanning’s ‘sure, it was only a bit of a laugh at the time and nothing more’ commentary, it gives Walsh’s own words a deserved sincerity.

The film cleverly balances all these strands, never losing track of Walsh’s humanity and enthusiasm. I personally remember him in the mid-‘90s, circling Grafton Street, his face hidden behind a mask, touting a sandwich board for a now long-closed record store. He wandered amongst a public who, if prompted to remember him, would wonder why was all that attention given to a strange non-singer who really didn’t seem Irish. Towards the end of the documentary, national broadcaster Fanning yawningly alludes to the whole exercise as an example of the quirks of an entropic scene specific to the Pale. In this, he echoes the underlying industry snobbery espoused by the Bono clone at the London gig. This offhandedness denies the Master of the Universe his righteous, multi-platformed legacy – another example of venerating conventional paths at the expense of outsider experiments. I wonder then how Fanning would describe Gavin Friday’s influential time in The Virgin Prunes? (Friday has alluded to the fact that the ending of the Prunes project coincided with them being co-opted into traditional promotional ‘rock’ mode.)

The victors always write history. RTÉ 2FM’s website proclaims, “There are those who say that without Dave Fanning’s live sessions, U2 would never even happened” – the implication being that gate-keeping was always in place, throughout. This note is rockist revisionism in place. The site also mentions that Gerry Ryan gave a (wacky) hairdresser from Cork called Terence a helping hand to become a national institution, confirming the thrust of Ryan’s curatorial designs. There is no mention of Walsh here or on any other site, apart from his own modest one. Does anyone remember Terence the hairdresser?

In reality, Dublin was always too small for Walsh to be excluded completely and Shimmy Marcus and all involved are to be applauded for readdressing and repositioning Walsh’s legacy within the city. The film opens with footage of the generation of 2000 welcoming a still beaming Aidan on-stage at another gig. Walsh’s impact on the Irish performance scene is clearly understated.

Twenty years on, Walsh’s presence can still be felt through the highly idiosyncratic ‘Country n Irish’ videos by Seamus Moore et al that can be found on Youtube. These, and the likes of the Hardy Bucks and Limerick’s Rubberbandits, make Walsh’s mission to the stars timeless. Now, as the godfather of a universe that has been officially mapped, Walsh’s mission continues unsullied.

To conclude, it is only fair that Walsh has the final word. This quote was taken from his website, and gives a brief insight into the mind of the Master of the Universe:

“’Aidan Walsh Private Investigator’ was shown on Irish television on December 8 (2008) on RTÉ’s Blizzard of Odd. The whole thing was out of this Planet what you could have ever seen before in this galaxy you’d die with a heart attack, a private detective taking over planet earth. Without no meaning and no end to it.’ [sic]

 

 

 

Never Talk Cheap

 

 

 Click for DJ Mek Saint Patrick’s Day mix.

This short piece is a commentary commissioned by Rabble magazine on the occasion of a TV report on Irish Rappers  (RTE February 2012.)    The programmes research edited an underground verbalisng on Irish social themes by a series of contemporary individuals in the Irish rap scene.  The audience was presented with a post Celtic Tiger reading of a type of US/UK discipline of rapping which did not represent or acquit itself well within the understated continuum of Irish Hiphop. There was a confused commercial intention held in both the programme-makers’ and rappers’ agendas. 

The participants in Irish rappers came across as dislocated verbalisers, isolated from the actual discipline of hiphop, which exists, relationally with the other key elements of its history.  In this absence the interviews highlighted the presence of a traditional US rap entertainment narrative in which the ‘skills to pay the bills’ are seen to magically pave a road ‘out of the ghetto’. 

This forced consumerist fantasy became the programmes default focus and confirmed the consequences of the historical gap between the programme’s portrayal of ‘struggling artists with something to say’ and original Irish hiphop crews who practiced rapping as part of an educated discipline with an awareness of their position in a social environment. 

Published by Rabble Magazine, Dublin  Issue 3  April 2012

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

For its February ‘Reality Bites’ series RTE showed a documentary on   Ireland’s Rappers that hurled a version of Irish rap into the laps of the licence holders countrywide.  Viewing figures for it were good but not as good as a rival station repeat show on gangland Ireland.  RTE also focused on the so-called working class side of things.  The resulting look at “a highly creative and dedicated subculture’’ was not welcomed outright either inside or outside the portrayed community.

 

 

This TV account of how some Irish youth have alighted on an urban art form to voice post-tiger complaint and pursue some sort of music careers in the process was buried in a bonfire of angry voxpops and docu-dramatic representations of the participants ‘keepin it real’.

Nominal representations of the expressive factors associated with ‘rappin’ such as ‘writing’ ‘battling’ and ‘community’ as outlined by Redzer, The Class Az’s and Finglas rapper Miss Elayneous amongst others, became damaged, internalised and caught up in the programme’s eventual confusion.

Some commentary, particularly on Jim Carroll’s Irish Times blog, mentioned that those who did partake seemed hung out to dry in the edit.

A wider picture emerged as the bulletin boards lit up immediately after broadcast as some of the programme’s ‘stars’ and concerned others sought   to create some perspective, historical and otherwise, around a debate on the exotic subject of Irish Rap.

The elephant in the room was the very idea of something called Irish Rap in the first place.

The year zero for many of hiphop’s contemporary Irish followers remains somewhere in the mid 90s as marked by Curtis Hanson’s Eminem starring film 8 Mile.  One recent post on this theme actually asks for clarification on ‘old school as beginning in the year 2000?”  Although released in 2002, 8 Mile establishes its white boy/black world outsider narrative in the now golden era circa 1995.  While the term hip hop threads the contemporary Irish narrative regarding ‘Irish rap’, its current state maintains no significant links with those Irish pioneers who began to verbalise over beats and represent as an Irish chapter of the universal Hip hop agenda.

The contrast to the early Irish hiphop scene with its reverence for the emerging scene worldwide from the early 80s is significant.  Once the original art form announced itself any dedicated Irish participant who answered the call was required to invest physical time and effort in paying dues.  Peer review was serious, whether in ordering a record, practising with a felt top pen/rhyme book or saving for the right tracksuit before they became known in Dublin as ‘police property clothes’.

This real time authenticity allowed groups like Scary Eire, (Curragh Camp / Tullamore /Dublin) Ghost and J, (Dublin) Ill dependents (Wexford) and AR LA (Cork) to confidently develop their homegrown productions.  In their own words, after studying and representing on their own experiences, they would, ‘never talk cheap like a yellow pack brand’ (Scary Eire).  Records, tapes and magazines were considered tools for an agenda first and consumer perishables last.  An example here from 1983 is the passionate footage of break dancers speaking in Limerick, which is regularly shown, on RTE’s ‘Reeling In the Years’.

Today the history of these pioneers is assessed and processed in a much quieter vein.  It is often manifested digitally in private web nooks and crannies and there is a reason for this.  One is to distance the hard won ethos of those days from the ‘instant dues’ of today’s new breed. The other reason is to reaffirm the importance of the original hiphop experience amongst themselves and constantly acknowledge the original community.  As part of this there is an understated ongoing archival process and it resides in clips such as ‘Sipho & Bionic M.C from the London Posse’.

 

 

Here a rare 1986 early performance of the seminal London rappers is captured on RTE’s Megamix youth programme. Before performing, the pair politely explain not only their unique take on their technique but the difference between UK and US hiphop.   RTE didn’t put this lesson up on you tube but someone who saw the original transmission took time to get out to Donnybrook and get a copy for those of us who imagined we did.

Contemporary Irish rappers from that era who still represent on stage and on the web include Scary Eire’s RI-RA and the conscience of the Celtic tiger, Captain Moonlight.  ‘Dirty Cunts’, Moonlight’s rant on the Ahearn’s teams corrupt management of the country from a few years back is one of the most significant (if not only) 7’’ singles to exist in any era of Irish Hiphop.   Dole Q’, Scary Eire’s only 12’’ from the 90s ‘and the ‘Sons of Rosin’ track on the Ill dependents EP equally scratch the same post.

 

 

All these are vital artifacts and flag links not only between a similar political agenda of Irish and international hiphop but also between a legacy of traditional verbalisers and musicians such as Luke Kelly.  Scary Eire’s ‘lost for words’ quotes the uillean pipes of ‘Moving Hearts in another nod to an under-appreciated continuum.

The 4 songs quoted here all made it on to actual record by hard work. The idea of ‘dropping another mix tape/album next month’ as befits the post 8 Mile generation is light years away in terms of mp3 distribution versus a ‘slow food’ recording attitude of the above crews but also in the concept of longevity.  One producer from the above scene told me recently that the new scene is cursed ‘with music that just isn’t good’.

The gap between the old school attitude and hyper-assimilation is significant.  But according to the Ennis hiphop Dj producer and teacher mynameisjOhn this gap stretches, contracts and within this tension offers possibilities.

’Seventeen-year-olds I have worked with are all up on the new Irish acts like Lethal Dialect’ he says, ‘but equally they balance an appreciation of contemporary expression with exposure to classic material from Wu Tang and before.   That can only be good.  Music gets exhausted quicker these days and people are beginning to see that this is having an effect on its appreciation.  My generation might get a rap record in 1994 that would have come out in 1992 and live with it until 1996, but that gestation pays off if you want to pursue any of the hiphop elements’.

In someone like John’s opinion (an old school head / new beats producer), a fluid and relevant practice will arise with an awareness from today’s youth that speed of the almost daily ‘mix tape’ scene is not the sole representation of an appreciation of hiphop culture national or otherwise.  We actually don’t need an Irish Rick Ross styled product delivery or Tim Westwood styled hype no matter how the mechanisations of the intense Irish mixtape scene would suggest.  We need positioning to offer a balanced perspective and a start would involve more recognition of the Irish Hip hop pioneers in future conversations.

As for the ‘lads’ (sic) tarred by Reality Bites, a YouTube post by someone called Bulltilt31 after a clip of Redzer performing lays it down as such

‘’Yes the boys can put rhymes together but aint none of em look or sound good doin it. Sad to see lads keep on tryin at something they will NEVER make money in. At least the young lads realise there isn’t money in it and they do it coz they love it. You can make it with a guitar or turntables in Ireland, never as a rapper.’’

 

 

 

 

 

The Mission is Balance

 

 

 

 

A version of this review was originally posted at www.cheebah.net 2008.

 

__________________________

This conversation, hosted by the Red Bull Academy, presented one of the sonic architects behind the classic Public Enemy sound of the early 90s.  The combination of the Shocklee brothers, Hank and Keith, with Eric ‘Vietnam’ Saddler made the production team the Bomb Squad’s work for PE the definitive rebel music of Hip Hop’s third stage.  Currently working on a series of electronic works including the debut album from the Bomb Squad,  Hank Shocklee’s profile has acquired a rejuvenated relevance.  In Dublin to outline PEs themes and history, he is quizzed by host and fan, DJ Fergus Murphy.

For years the production of the first three Public Enemy have been dissected by HipHop’s faithful.  As layered sample orchestrations they offered a glimpse into the political rawness attained through an ideology of conflict that fused the organic grit of James Brown funk with the uncompromising metal of Slayer.  Once this flagpost was planted, Chuck D’s conscious lyrics hoisted the colours red black and green high for a multiracial worldwide audience.  PE are still on active duty, overshadowed perhaps by their own legacy and how three crucial PE albums impacted in the era 87-93. The story of the group’s history in relation to how the elements of that era came together became the focus of this talk.

Shocklee is currently delivering versions of this conversation.  He told me later that since the Waxpoetics magazine article of June 2006 had presented a definitive review of his early years, he now fashions historical bites specifically for each crowd.  This brings out the educator in him as well as keeping it fresh.

The Shocklees were a musical family and music obsessed Hank’s formative years revolved around following teen funk bands with additional pilgrimages to the parks to check out Djs like Kool Herc and Grandmaster Flash.  He began first to Dj this passion then promote it for an audience through the discipline of a sound system.  He spoke on the excitement of hearing raw funk and Bob Marley for the first time as part of a combination of conditions that led to the creation of his own sound system.  B-boys in the audience tonight caught some classic old school vibes from simple descriptions of how the visual dynamics of a Grandmaster Flash flyer hyped Shocklee’s Long Island posse.

These snippets were a glimpse of primitive times as the majority of this audience were certainly raised on an accelerated diet of mp3s and downloadable music software.  Thus the contrast on the emphasis on the importance of finding the right guitar lead to allow to a turntable to be wired up a public address system was significant here.   Here is a report of the transition from observer to practitioner as a physical act.   From the curiosity of the analogue-led process of funk bands to the dynamics of a sound system needed to drive his experiments, Shocklee was careful to accredit the formative act of the physicality in building a sound from scratch.  Only through direct engagement did one get to know where the creative parameters of a street-amplified funk sound lay.

In fairness there is a week long seminar needed to do justice to the history of Public Enemy in terms of the integration of sound design and social perspective in the canon of Hip Hop.  PE’s origins were grounded in the promoted gigs run by the Shocklees Spectrum Sound system. This was in full effect after the acquisition of an initially unwilling MC, Chuck D.  The extension of this hustle led to a radio show where the crew pioneered the idea of the continuous Hip Hop mix, a format which was then taken up by the legendary NY Dj’s Marley Marl and Red Alert.  The record ‘Check Out The Radio’ became a celebration of their adventure so far. The next step involved the mutation of radio shout outs and jingles and the looping up of the James Brown intro to ‘Blow your Head’. This seminal loop became the track  ‘Public Enemy no 1’ and The Spectrum Sound became artists.  With the horns of Fred Wesley as a bedrock, rappers Chuck, Griff and Flavour Flav’s hardcore rhyming launched a concept of an organised militant rap set to operate on the battlefield of conventional entertainment.

At that time that the American music establishment had accepted product from the youthful hiphop movement as party music, an extension of the goodtime rhymes of mid 70s funk groups like the Gap Band but not so much the conscious funk of ‘America Eats its Young’ of funk by the renegades, Funkadelic. The potency of post 60s Black protest music was recognised and prone to content censorship which on occasion included self censorship.  For example, while Grandmaster Flash and The Furious 5 had premiered the concept of the contemporary social rhyme with their 80s track ‘The Message’  they were not averse to performing it as a hit party record on stage.  This denied the power of a ‘message’ as such and confirmed the music establishments regulated stance in regard to overt commentary as entertainment.

Public Enemy would not be found compromising on a black agenda. When their mission was finally rolled out fully formed, it attracted criticism both inside and outside the hiphop community.  Most notable at the time was an angry response from Melle Mell of the Furious Five.  The distinctive difference between the two era’s types of message delivery resided in the Bomb Squads insistence that the texture of the sound and lyrical content should be as one. There could be no looseness that could invite a separate benign ‘pop’ reading. There had to be no confusion in delivery.

T La Rock may have premiered the stark bass shudder of ‘It’s Yours’ when it became Def Jams first record but as Shocklee pointed out, his crew had already showcased self-produced versions of this transitional beat on their radio show on WBAU.  As the tempo of hiphop downsized to 98 bpm the siren call of ‘Public Enemy No 1’ hit hard. This raw production sideswiped everything and a new agenda was heard on the street.  The Bomb squad was in effect from this point and Shocklee knew just from beatbox plays of the track in the park alone that their lab experiments were hitting home.  A realisation that also confirmed in himself a calling as a producer.

Tonight’s discussion culminated in Murphy dropping the needle on the intro to PE’s third album, Fear of a Black planet.  ‘Contract on The World Love Jam’ is a deep collage that includes audio sound bites that reference the complexities of terrorism in the media context of the early 90s.  This blast referenced the threat an American media insinuated into most internal discussions of the then Black agenda.  It also reflected the pressure Public Enemy were under at the time following high profile criticism of their statements on a variety of subjects. These considered elements also took into account hiphop’s position regarding the target campaign by the increasingly influential Parents Music Resource Centre.

Since 1985 The PMRC’s campaign to neuter music by stickered warnings to protect the family unit had increasingly taken black music to task.  It seems unregulated music contained dangerous words that were (quote) ‘infecting the youth of the world with messages they cannot handle’.  Early in the PMRC’S campaign Tipper Gore publicly accused West coast rap don Ice-T for increasing the levels of violence against the LAPD.  For artists like Public Enemy and Ice Cube, who were then producing key work with the Bomb Squad, under a constant threat of censorship, the ideal and necessity of revolutionary music could not have been more real.

To question power was to be in effect anti-American where any dissenting opinion could be regarded as treasonous.  The Bomb squad’s uncompressed, almost ‘rock’ production became a psychedelic black anti-censorship response to all this confusion.  The message in strident beat of ‘contract’ track didn’t need a rap to underline the issue and Shocklee’s insistence that the samples remain unprocessed and ‘not soft’ created studio tension even in the Bomb Squad . Tonight its politically charged blast caught those of us who had not heard it since 1991 off guard.

In response to an inquiry by Murphy about the layers and texture on that intro, Shocklee expanded, ‘Everything that is in key is in harmony but at this time in my life I felt anything but harmony and the music reflected that.’ The Bomb Squad’s intention in Contract was to create a ‘call to arms’ to ‘make people stand up’ in light of the unrest left by the Regan administration.  Revisiting the intro tonight he spoke of the agitation he originally felt in creating the sound of that LP.  The sound was the texture of something ‘just not sounding right’. The texture, the fear of a black planet.

Murphy concluded the session expounding on the embedded theme of resistance forged by the squad in a 90s music format.  Something that white Europeans only appreciated after necessary research on the militant agenda of radical muslims like Farrakan were investigated.  In pre-internet times this was achieved by white fans by scouring hiphop album covers and print reviews to make sense of certain recurring names.  After the reactivated radical black agenda of the 60s and 70s became entwined with the profile of groups such as PE, there followed an obligation by fans to also get with the programme.   In the early 90s cassettes of Malcolm X circulated amongst hiphop followers in Dublin.  The clandestine tape hiss layered over Malcolm’s high pitched sentences were a dramatic feature on a first listening and ultimately part of the audio experience. The act of listening to the tapes became complex as this multiplying effect registered not just the content but the travelled noise.   A patina existed that was an inclusive audio marker hinting at just how many fellow travellers had previously held and copied the tape.

The ‘just not sounding right’ audio reference was Shocklee explaining the type of direction and structure taken in the lyrical content / noise of late 80s early 90s political rappers such as PE, BDP, Lakim Shabazz and others. These pro black voices often looked to 70’s Black militant orators such as Cleaver, Davis and Newton in their delivery. The artifact of the spoken word LP or cassette factored in the construction an agenda of resistance whether one approached it from the perspective of a producer or street fan.  White fans collecting the Eldridge Cleaver LP ‘Soul on Ice’ was just the kind internal terrorist behaviour the PMRC warned of.  Public Enemy didn’t invent the slogan ‘Fight the Power’ they re-claimed, re formatted and re ignighted it.

Before the work of this New York agenda landed in Ireland, previous texts of interest were found prehaps in the anarcho-punk band Crass.  UK groups such as Crass and Mark Stewart and the Mafia worked an equivalent text and audio matrix that demanded a social responsibility in the act of listening for an audience.  The 1988 preformance by Public Enemy in Ireland made a point of referencing republican concerns over a scratched Thin Lizzy beat as Chuck D spoke on colonialism, Thatcher and the importance of roots.

The final question tonight  ‘Is this revolutionary agenda still relevent for the Bomb squad?’

In answering Shocklee adopted a polemical stance. ‘More so than ever’ he responded.  Describing Public Enemy as an experiment,  he wanted to see if by ‘injecting inspiration and anger’ into the body politic of a major label record company, could he creatively visualise freedom?  ‘Freedom, musical freedom.’ ‘Everybody was fitting neatly into these little boxes and I wanted to take away a lot of those comfort blankets’. Feedback from that experiment is what keeps this producer in his own words, ‘humble today’.

Finally Shocklee spoke on the music industry as well as a society that is often a willing participant in American hypercapitalism.  ‘We are becoming comfortable again, he said  ‘starting to get back into a place that’s very dangerous by allowing the establishment to dictate what our lives are going to be as opposed to us dictating what our agenda is.  Music is the only form of communication left that allows us to resist the establishment.  Musicians are community leaders, artists are supposed to represent their fan base but today artists are starting to become self indulgent with no point of view and that’s why their fans are leaving them. The artists are starting to adopt the same attitude as their oppessors. Shouting on the corner has a limited success but art can change the way people think.’ Fans again are browbeaten in to supporting an agenda that celebrates the absence of a point of view.

Mentioning that he never liked Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’ Shocklee says he only respects music that makes an impression on him and Thriller ‘did nothing for my soul.’  Dylan may have a ‘terrible singing voice’ but he certainly leaves an impression.’

Today we are focused on detrimental factors that hold back an artist from making a stand instead of exploring the dynamics of  the expressive possibilities in the craft of music construction.  Shocklee spoke of the two types of vibrations in the world,  positive and negative, and as one shall not cancel the other, the mission is balance.  There is a loss of perspective that comes with the lack of understanding of one’s rights. This was Shocklee’s philosophical coda in summing up his own position, not simply as a participant in the industry but as a rebel, never on pause.

Sloganeering? This description does not do the talk justice as the passion that fueled the final summing up was a genuine representation of the polemical agenda in the Bomb squad’s productions.  This conversation was a worthy Dublin extension that was begun on a 1988 stage graced by Public Enemy.

Shocklee ended the night in a club a stone’s throw from the venue of PE’s 1988 gig.   He Djed two hours of heavy bass-influenced Dubstep.  It was a perfect end to the event.  Meeting him and hearing him excitedly discuss the Heavy Metal influences on his early productions was a personal highlight (‘look at me, I’m over 6 foot, black, and I sold Black Sabbath records to metal heads!’) The second coming of the Bomb squad is awaited with more than interest from original fans, and from the reaction of the audience tonight, many new converts.

 

 

 

 

Paul Tarpey

 

 

Does your mother come from Ireland?

RTE archives are in possession of a 1981 documentary called Does Your Mother Come From Ireland?  It was  co-produced and presented by Limerick traditional musician and US-based acedemic Mick Moloney.  The film gets an occasional airing, the last for RTÉ being 11/11/2011.  Information about the film is not readily available and the following is based on a single viewing.  Corrections may be needed.

Does your Mother Come from Ireland is roughly 45 minutes in duration. The brief was to film the practice and maintainance of traditional Irish music in 80s New York.  The  film follows Moloney and cameraman Paddy Barron to New York and then back to Ireland where they record the 1981 All Ireland Fleadh in Buncrana, Donegal.

Opening with the vista of the New York from the air, and soundtracked by the Bob Seger rock anthem ‘Rosalie’, Does your Mother Come from Ireland? is a unique visual record of many contrasts specific to its time, an exploration focused on Bronx residents, the Tara Céili Band who were busy preparing for a return to Ireland to compete in the annual All Ireland Fleadh.  These teenagers had previously won the title three times before and would be filmed winning it again.   Historically this film is a record of a pan-Atlantic traditional music scene.

Embedded in the film was an outline of the cultural mission imitated by an Irish dispora concerned for the upkeep of tradition.  The New York players were conscious of  the possibilities of cultural isolation and insisted on the maintenance of a continuous link with the source of the music.  The NY Irish community was known to harbour talented musicians and families noted for their traditional strengths but no one had investigated, in film, how their endeavours fed back into the cultural cradle in the ‘old country’ and Moloney’s film is a singular record of this.

The cast, including the celebrated fiddle player Eileen Ivers, were all young American-born musicians who were as proficient in the language of traditional jigs and reels as they were in typical New York pastimes.  Footage of these youths playing baseball styled in that particular filtered haze, unique to filming in New York in the late 70s.  It rendered the Irish Americans similar to those who shimmered in the otherworldly Coca Cola television ads familiar to on Irish Television audiences.  When the film cut to the same youngsters in houses in the Bronx, diligently playing the sets in that would win in Donegal, it registered as a benign jolt.

The overlap between 80’s America, Ireland, Irish America and TV America on Irish television became more than just a subtext as the film progressed.  In the 80s, US immigration restrictions ended the steady traffic that had replenished New York’s Irish population since famine times. The special Irish relationship finished and with this ending the cultural update injected from each new group of Irish immigrants did also. Those who delivered styles to the Bronx from sessions all over Ireland were now without visas.  The consequences of restrictions  forced a realisation that, for the culture to progressively continue, the response would involve an Irish return.

 Moloney interviewed parents, teachers and other members of the community after the fallout from the decision of the US government to cap immigration.  The annual visit to Buncrana was part of a solution.

Increasing awareness of the lack of immigrants  arriving  with new songs  encouraged the parents and teachers to support the concept of the return.  The passion and commitment of these teachers in this process was very evident.

Other vital insights arose in how the culture was being maintained. One involved Martin Mullverhill, a Bronx musician and teacher. He described quickly crafting an original Irish tune underneath the city (in tunnels perhaps dug by Donegal men).  The subway composition flowed easily,  ‘I had it finished by 205th St’ he said proudly.

Heading to Ireland and winning the Fleadh were happy events for the young American passport holders but those were not the main priorities of the trip.  The youth were engaged in a type of journeying, travelling in the sense of a pilgrimage. An undertaking of a type of pilgrimage that sought rejuvenation and reflection.  The humble showing of awards at home by the Ivers family testified to this as did a Bronx bar manager’s dignified imploing while helping to raise 5,000 dollars to send the Tara Céili Band back to the Old Country ‘ if anyone here tonight hasn’t the money to contribute, please stay and enjoy the music anyway.’

The hazy tone of the 80s New York landscape as a backdrop to the endeavours of the American Irish youth filled the first part of the film.  The second part while filmed in colour stock may as well been shot in black and white such was the contrast of location at the Fleadh.   Now far from the Bronx, the Tara Céili band are performing on a knocked-together stage in a grey parish hall.  Their practised reels were clinically measured under the hornrimmed eyes of a stern adjudicator.  The cigire.  An impassive seated crowd also measured their performance.

A readjustment of viewing was needed as the romance of the previous communal preparations undertaken in the beauty of a New York summer was left behind. The music was the same  but it was  now heard in the environment of a monochrome Ireland, an 80s island that was home to many who wished they had the chance of returning with the american visitors.

Moloney’s Ireland presented itself  through another lens.  The landscape could have been taken from any Irish documentary film of the 50s.  Things moved differently, people acted slower.  An officaldom appeared to take over the camera as if the regulations of the Fleadh insisted on it. The adherence to Comhaltas rules and the rigidity that accompanied the reading of them registered  even in its recording.

Impressively the Americans were observed at work by performing diligently and successfully in all categories .  Afterwards they quietly moved outside with portable cassette recorders recording the open sessions in the unregulated public space of Buncrana.  This act of capture was what the journey was about collecting evidence of native playing.  The Americans were capturing the Donegal air to uncap and release on their return.

Historically the natives merited recording also.  A long shot showed tents surrounding Buncrana.  An atmosphere was evident in the attendant mingling of generations and visitors, each with their own agenda.   Another shot on the street captured a suited family man, in town for the day, holding his own as he passed longhaired youths and neatly dressed musicians.

Fleadhs at this level were the social midway for the remaining Irish generation of the 80s.  The campers in the background sought a music based outlet in this, a transitional time.  For the longhaired youth the landscape of this Fleadh was open ground between the depressed dancehall scene and festivals that had yet to appear.

The demand for trad-based groups like De Danaan and Planxty on  the festivals that had began to appear came from the transitional longhaired demographic filmed by Moloney.  Panning his camera for background filler the filmmaker inadvertently documented a crossover.

Another vibrant shot of overlapping cultures was a brief shot of a native Irish céilí band with a young drummer starkly wearing a Doors t-shirt. There was a minor cult for the ‘poetry’ of Jim Morrisson circa 1981 as the Doors’ back catalogue was being repackaged.  But a Doors t-Shirt was a relatively rare and exotic item particularly for a teenage drummer in a céilí band in Donegal.  Would one of the American contingent have gifted him the shirt?  Perhaps gifted tapes also?  The Americans were now known as regulars and tentatively part of this Fleadh community.  It is conceivable that friendships were made and cultural exchanges of many sorts were perhaps a regular feature.

It is fair to speculate that the New York parents who facilitated their children’s activity to maintain the diaspora’s cultural link to Ireland could have inadvertently instigated a reciprocal musical process.   Eighties Virtual America, especially the urban otherness of New York, was a visually a familiar sight from Irish TV programming which leant heavily on US import drama.  A type of virtual American landscape  began to merge with an Irish one.  A topology that stretched from Walton’s Mountain to Kojak’s Manhattan with the beach of the Rockford files in between.   The virtual West was passively received,  indulged as a glamorous contrast to a recession-based Irish vista.   An aural insight to the land of opportunity would have delivered a different sensation.  This insight may have been on a cassette tape containing excerpts, musical and otherwise ranging from New York radio to trad sessions in the Bronx .  Those cassettes may have been left behind in Buncrana.

The content of Does Your Mother Come From Ireland? whether primary, secondary, or speculative remains as entertaining and historically informative 30 years after it was shown and its concept is a credit to Moloney and his team.

 

Linked online communities as a cultural resource

 

There is a notable participatory drive organising pop cultural material representing Irish social history at present.  Blogs and sites such as Come here to me, Brand New Retro, and Where’s Grandad? have activated significant online communities of interest to harvest memories and archives for a rich and socially-engaged commentary on popular events.

The expense of 20th century production demands account for why much underrepresented historical material has lain dormant or has existed only in private archives.  Usually, if this research had been ongoing and compiled yearly its end product could have furnished a book, a long magazine article or documentary film with all the accompanying costs and commercial editing demanded by those conventional platforms.  Annuals were reserved for official events and the pre-internet concept of the act of donated material organically creating an archive for publication would have been discussed in terms of private collections.  Much of the material would have been classed as transient and without merit.  Apart from reduced production costs, the resource primarily offered now by participating online communities is a correlation of interest in mapping the margins of Irish social history.

The advent of online publishing has not only shone a light on the structure of the nation’s cultural landscape from the ground up but, in categorizing material ahistorically, it has acknowledged the importance in this process of multi-authored digital participation. This is exemplified best in the site Brand New Retro where the structure of an alternate historical timeline is under constant construction with pop cultural contributions by a variety of authors.

The National Queer archive has begun to digitally share a wealth of its recently assembled material showcasing decades of Irish political activity. Political cuttings stand with the celebratory social images of the so- called outsider club scenes in a curated display of their dealings with the Irish establishment, an establishment let it not be forgotten, which had previously criminalized a section of its citizens.

Before these new repositories, possibly the only similar tracker for this material was the commercial chapters of Reeling in The Years which could be seen to be constrained by national broadcasting concerns (RTE) and its own brief where lyrics of the chart music of the day playing over news clips of the day is highlighted in each episode as a necessary chorus.  RTE’s commercial and uncritical titling of its chapters on the programmes website is of note. The 70s! The Decade that taste forgot! Disco dancing… Eurovision fever… mohair suits… moonwalks… unemployment and emigration!

Ads and flyers for events from the 60s onwards, particularly those from Irish nightclubs in the 70s, are numerous  and often the most memorable in these organic digital collections. The disposability and faux modernism of these ads, are today intriguing as the styles and event imagery can now be seen as versions of English and American fashions which reflect a nation’s surface desire to represent itself as a modern state.

However the Irish experience is far from straightforward as our adopted versions of foreign cultural movements since the Rock and Roll era did not strictly follow any of the imported movements’ own timelines.  An Irish version of Studio 54 visualised in any rediscovered 1978 ad for a Dublin Nightclub should not now be regarded as a legitimate extension of a worldwide disco movement. But  instead its manifestation in a post de Valera contemporary newspaper is now of historical interest.  It is this gap that the contemporary sites address by compiling and positioning material to investigate the vernacular differences offered by Irish designers and tastemakers in the mainstream media of the day. While there was instant access and coverage of international popular events in Ireland since the Jazz age the embedding of movements instigated by them often occurred later.  This gap highlights a continuous late starting Irish timeline for almost every pop cultural movement. Authentic histories of the Irish punk or Hip Hop scene for example must be considered within this time lag.  Gary O Neill’s 10-year project Where were You? (2011) visualised decades of urban Dublin tribes and has a surprising number of out of time images of rockers and mods simultaneously moving amongst the adopted London stylings of Dublin’s early 90s ravers.

O Neill includes as much event mementos as possible to contextualize the donated pictures of his dressed up participants. This framing is important and the collected flyers dotting the pages may be the first officially published record of this type of material. Souvenirs like the laboured modernist ads of the 70s were not designed to last or feature in future conversations.

The workmanship design of the early ads in Where were You? and the websites in question combined with the accommodation of generic internationalism in design, which persisted in urban Irish culture right up to the 1990s, can be seen as an outright refusal by Irish event organisers and venue owners to represent anything resembling the variety of a conventional Irish experience to be considered in the actual event itself.   In one late 90s instance an image of London itself promoted a Dublin Drum and Bass night. (1)

Apart from the obligatory element of otherworldness in promoting any youth-orientated event, this choice was perhaps evidence of a realisation that the social gap between the rural and the urban was so great for this young nation that any stylistic representation, be it a weak imitation of London or New York, was sufficient in identifying or branding an event. The absence of the Irish vernacular outside the country and Irish scene is why much of the evidence of Irish social events over the decades appears, as dislocated pale imitations especially when now looked at. collated in contemporary collections. However in exploring the adopted design for imported entertainment throughout the decades, as undertaken by the sites in question, it must be accepted that different approaches will arise for comparison.

Where are the ongoing archival projects that assemble material from current events? If the possibilities in the process can be accomplished immediately can we review and collate this process in real time? On this there is one example of note.

The accumulation of promotion material of contemporary Irish clubbing contained in the Facebook page shiteirishclubnights (S.I.C.N) is an example of real time archiving since its inception in 2012. The territory of the site is national with a concentration on promotional material generated by rural venues. (2).   S.I.C.N is similar to the previously mentioned sites in that it positions recent promo material with minimum commentary and, as the collection built by digital donation it too builds a portrait of a contemporary Irish scene that is music led.  These are the only similarities as the agenda of S.I.C.N proclaims that it exists to castigate the behavior associated within the scene it has focused on.

Since the 90s the rural-led non-designed club poster has used anonymous design to promote club nights all over the country for commercial ends.  This agenda dispenses with any design concerns regarding any music-driven concept for the venue. (3) The rural flyer is now primarily delivered electronically with communities for individual venues sought from social media.  In the mode of its design it recognizes the social media-led zeitgeist promoted by the RTE show Republic of Telly, rural car culture, and above all celebrity culture.

The archive/commentary of Shiteirishclubnights is led by these flyers engaging with them at their own level of intensity.  (3) This Facebook page represents the energy of the post-tiger youth positioning the community as a vodka-fuelled homogenised entity that participates in events such as the yearly flash mob of Supermacs in Galway. (4)  ‘Send us your shite’ proclaims the page as an immediate picture of an ignored culture swims into focus in real time. The administrators of the page castigate the events but carefully file the submitted information teasing out subjective threads in categorising events from Tralee to Athlone.  They justify a rationale in following all things ‘tacky’ and blatantly despise these gatherings in their banner statement. Yet there is a seriousness held by the page in holding up a mirror to this  ‘spring break’ behavior encouraged by promoters nationwide.

There is a unifying national thread in the exercise. Music is still in the equation but its use is unsubtle in the venues. It is background noise for nights facilitated by celebrities and DJs in conjunction with their own hype teams and highly-paid celebrity guests.  Prerecorded sets are common which lean heavily on over-processed trance based chart music. Nightclubs do not seem to priotorise dancing and appear to demote traditional socialising. These rural venues have become holding areas for almighty spectacles that extend the industry of the reality show.  Pictures of the events are often unposed and show celebrities posing behind the bar or the dj booth almost crushed by a volume of youth.

On the site for context there is a link to an Australian review of the situation surrounding a dj set by one of the stars of the American MTV TV show Jersey Shore. It clinically lays out what is an actual international trend, which is a litany of what the site’s administrators call ‘godforsaken nights’.  Many of the reality stars of Jersey Shore and Home and Away have performed in Ireland in this fashion over the last year.

 

Some nights charge up to 20 euros when an Irish model or actor from profile English or Australian soap operas appear.  Rag week events compete with these with versions that include ‘All Ireland Shifting competitions and beer bong challenges recorded by a paparazzi photographer’. Like and share these events on Facebook for a chance to win a bottle of vodka, 10 Red Bulls or 10 beers.

Where previously nights paced like these happened once a year, usually around rag weeks in college towns, the intention, layout and editorial of the shiteirishclubs page suggests they have now become a regular landscape feature propelled by a complicit audience.

Some events appear to be imaginary. This is where the flyer uses an imaginary image and DJ listing, for example, the international dance event Tomorrowland.  Promotion in this fashion suggests a famous brand is scheduled for an Irish venue. In another example American ‘party rockers’ LMFAO seem to be appearing in a midlands bar with the legality of the term ‘tribute night’ being one of the lesser concerns of the text on the flyer.

An attempt to contextualize and give a twist to the scene is found on the S.I.C.N site. It comments on the opening of the Abercrombie and Fitch store in Dublin, which is described as an occasion for ‘assholes that go to these godforsaken nights’.

Shiteirishnightclubnights short and brutal editorial reads ‘if you go to these you’re probably a cunt’. It is the polar opposite to the editorial if the American site Dangerous Minds, which reads in full,

Dangerous Minds is a compendium of oddities, pop culture treasures, high weirdness, punk rock and politics drawn from the outer reaches of pop culture. Our editorial policy, such that it is, reflects the interests, whimsies and peculiarities of the individual writers. And sometimes it doesn’t. Very often the idea is just “Here’s what so and so said, take a look and see what you think.” I’ll repeat that: We’re not necessarily endorsing everything you’ll find here; we’re merely saying, “Here it is.” We think human beings are very strange and often totally hilarious. We enjoy weird and inexplicable things very much. We believe things have to change and change swiftly. It’s got to be about the common good or it’s no good at all. We like to get suggestions of fun/serious things from our good-looking, high IQ readers. We are your favorite distraction.

In conclusion there is no regulation or linked editorial guidelines in Irish sites processing the ephemera generated by public and private material for historical research surrounding entertainment events past and present.   Currently the online communities discussed generate and monitor the context and relevance of events as befits their singular agendas. While subjectivity and a political hierarchy exists in how each site can be accessed for research, it must be recognised that in any responsible engagement with a broader social picture, all portals currently serve a collective archival need now active through online participation.

 

Paul Tarpey March 2013.

 

 

(1) This was an image of Battersea power station in London used by the club Bassbin. This image can be seen on Bassbin’s Facebook archive page. Around this time Circa Magazine published an article on a short history of Irish club flyers (no reference currently available)

(2) Apart from the site Irishshowbands.com there is no equivalent example of a similar rural based repository.

https://www.facebook.com/ShiteIrishClubNights?fref=ts

(3) The idea of the famed delicate flyer as typified by the famous Irish example, which was used for the long running Dublin Club Strictly Handbag. It invited one to actually construct a miniature retro handbag from the flyer itself. This would be the polar opposite of the material and intention for these promoted rural nights.

(4) Not in the polished light of a recent Irish Times profile on Irish youth, which portrayed those who choose to remain as creative professionals.