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Mowl said:
That one was actually written by a regular visitor to Ireland and even a few times at my Mam's old club - the awesome Jim Page. He and Christy became friends and traded songs, they'd often meet in The Hunting Lodge (now The 79er in Ballyfermot - rough auld shop that) and jam together and trade songs. When Christy brought the song in for the initial sessions for Moving Hearts, the boys jumped on it and turned Jim's simple ballad into a tour-de-force Irish traditional three minute opera of the rage of the day about nuclear power, CND, the protests at Carnsore Point and the British nuclear power station just a few miles east on the southern English coast, spewing shit into the channel that was destroying whole sea fields of fishing areas.

That was the late 70's blossoming into the early 80's and political protest and songs of conscience were de riguer. Elvis Costello's 'Tramp The Dirt Down' (be still my bleeding heart - what a fucking cracker that is) and Moving Hearts version of Page's song were hot radio items. Red Wedge members like Weller started writing more political material, even including 'That's Entertainment'. Which wasn't presented as a tune about hard times: it was a damning fuck you to Thatcher from some fairly heavyweight entertainers. The type who, when they got together and put their minds to it, changed the local view on nuclear power and wrote songs about not just life's general myseries, but also government policy, poll taxes, the race question, the miner's strike, Brotosh Leyland going under, Then himself, Mr De Lorean - even faster and under a mountain range of coke and deception. I still love that guy. The legacy of hundreds of years of collonialism and a British youth who wanted nothing to do with being blamed for their ancestor's actions across the entire world. They reflected the mood of the day for some very hard times all across Ireland: mass unemployment, rife alcoholism, homelessness and the soup kitchens, the Troubles fucking all our lives up living just a hour's drive from the border - stilled manned by snipers at that time, covered in barbed wire and turrets, heavy gang tactics from security going up into the North - same shit from our own guards on the way back home. Remember the Peace Train and Nell McCafferty and all the working class Irish ladies who had enough of thirteen kid families and wanted family planning - fuck the church. So they all took the train up and loaded up on condoms and pills Then set off back to Dublin with the Northern security waving them through into the Republic where they were stopped by An Garda who went through their bags lloking to siexe all of their booty. They were told where to shove their laws, the ladies numbered in the hundreds, the coppers in twos and threes.

The pills made it to their destination: the front pews of next Sunday Mass.

Fuck your bible, you rapey fucking cunts - then it all snowballed.

So don't try to tell me music can't move mountains.

It was an entirely horrid time in Irish history, yet still one celebrated in so many rebel songs.

Jim Page's version of 'Hiroshima/Nagasaki' was just voice and guitar. He also wrote another great one about the Americans installing The Shah Of Iran. I'll look for it later, but it's one of those songs that initially seemed okay for broadcast, until some bleeding heart took offence and had it de-listed from RTE national radio. Hard to find at all these days. Yet they played Hiroshima/Nagasaki multiple times a day on RTE, and those lyrics were even sharper. But that's Ireland for you - the church still had the veto on pretty much everything media-wise. Nothing, fuck all - got past those old toads.

This instrumental was the high point of most Moving Hearts gigs - and rightly so: the pipes were forged in heaven:



Mighty stuff, that.
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threatens to turn into jazz at times. Deadly :)
 
Mowl said:
THIS is a fucking MONSTER tune from Mama's Boys - the actually Mama died quite recently, I read. What a fucking riff this is? I love also the way they use the metaphor of '..and she really loves to move when the needle's in the groove - oh yeah..' Super sexy and one I lifted for a local project a few years back: we used the section above as a call/response type two-part vocal harmony.



Great band - though their story is a little too close to The Darkness, another all-family, pretty-buy, ham-it-up slapstick rock and roll comedy show. Elements of Spinal Tap, references to Jimmy Page's one-piece stage suits and that whole Zoso thing from the Alistair Crowley period.

But still, if playing Mama's Boys just once to some of my Finnish and Finnish/Swedish crew had them all sit up and want to take the fucker apart for re-use and love it like I did was a gas. Of course the same is true in reverse, and they play me tunes from obscure historic Finnish artists and I too get my head turned. I must consider an evening DJ set of selected Finnish classics if I can get someone to counter it with Irish music.

Sounds like a plan?
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Haven't heard that in a long time :) Reminds me of German metal, riff reminds me Schenker Group and Scorpions stuff.
 
Lumpy Von Talbot said:
Haven't heard that in a long time :) Reminds me of German metal, riff reminds me Schenker Group and Scorpions stuff.
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I know those bands, they're hugely popular with the Finnish rockers and death metal heads.

Personally, I want to tear the head off that cunt with that 'Wings Of Change' lyrical dirge. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarghhhhhhhhhhhhh!

I thought dear old Germany had far tougher laws than that?
 
Yes, it was shocking in Germany. They had some quality (not least the monster following Rory Gallagher had there) but I blame the Germans for c*nts like Foreigner and Heart and their rock bollards which crept across from Germany as softened down metal like a sort of Trump ejaculomigration disguised as music.

Somehow or other I blame the Germans in the end for making heavy metal very gay.

This is all seriously camp...

 
Though on the issue of music and culture in the England of the late 70's through to 80's was probably the last time I saw how the music of black, white, Asian, Oriental, and Jamaican cultures actually came to together to pass comment of the real, the poverty stricken, grimy, chips and eggs, tins of Special Brew period of British culture where everyone came together and sang in harmony musically and in unison politically.

These days it's no longer possible to happen - not within the commercial zones of modern disposable bubble-gum pop.

All-singing, all-dancing anorexic teenagers on amphetamines diet pills and Coca Cola, loving their fifteen minutes of lame.

Back then it was every man for himself on the streets, but everyone in unison in the clubs and discos - a time that'll never be repeated for today's kids.

Because it simply couldn't live in this shit-hole period.

Where do the Irish and British teenagers of today actually go for their jollies?

Here's another I can't NOT play after talking it over.. . ..the bitterness and loathing in very breath Elvis takes reminds of how few we, any of us, may have left.

 
Here's another one for Jambo.

I used love these guys when I was in school. I went to one of their gigs, the best stage diving ever, a total free for all, fantastic stuff. (Went again and they cancelled, at the Top Hat, so disappointed.) Anyway.



A chronic complaint of dimness
Prevails your profound ideology
A romantic vision of a "master race"
Attained through coercive forms of authority
Your observance is negligence
If you see the threat from different cultures
We're all in this sinking ship
All of us together
Where does the white man stand?
Where does the black man stand?
Where do we all fucking stand?
Knee deep in the shit!
Look into yourself
And you'll find the real oppressor
To a life of unchallenged hate
It's you who's the N**ger!
 
I lived near Hampstead Heath in London at one point and in the summer it was always great to hear the 1812 Overture from Kenwood House finished off with a fireworks display to roll on from the sound of the 'cannon'.

Even Tchaikovsky hated it in the end :) Still, tisn't often you get a score that calls for 16 rounds from a Siege Mortar.
 
If you want to hear the best Heavy Metal choon ever all you have to do is put on Ride of the Valkyries by Wagner.
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Didn't that song feature in that documentary about the guy who went up the river in Vietnam to slaughter some errant general who thought he was god?

What was it called?

Hmmmmm..

Ah, yes: Apocalypse Now.

Very informative documentary regarding America's military - taught me a lot when I was a boy.

Here's the intro to it:

 
I can't recall the name just now, but this track from Horslips was used as the intro music to some RTE radio show.

Another humdinger of a tune from Ireland's finest:



Not just musically, but lyrically too - they were ahead of their time in so many ways.
 
Mowl said:
Didn't that song feature in that documentary about the guy who went up the river in Vietnam to slaughter some errant general who thought he was god?

What was it called?

Hmmmmm..

Ah, yes: Apocalypse Now.

Very informative documentary regarding America's military - taught me a lot when I was a boy.

Here's the intro to it:

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Came close to getting banned from the juke box in my local for playing Ride of the Valkyries with the full choir version every now and then. Sounds great nice and loud. I knew a lad in there that had a job fitting in a repaired church organ, massive thing it was, the full on range of pipes.

That inspired us to put on Bach's Toccata symphony no 5 and we nearly got barred the two of us. It is about 13 minutes long.
 
When I worked at The National Maritime Museum Of Ireland out in Dun Laoire, the church organ up on one side of the altar where the old Bailey lighthouse top stands was a very nice spot for having lunch, or even a snooze on company time. The organ was built in the 1920's and it had a door you could enter that had a series of ladders to take you up to the various different sections of the lead pipes themselves.

Extremely fragile soft metal, just touching it could cause a dent. But the arrays of pipes were mind-blowing: there are hundreds of them, all connected back down into the three-levels of piano keys on the organ itself. While the keys were about a meter long each, it seemed impossible that you were only seeing like 5% of the entire instrument, you had to climb up the ladders to see the other 95% of the instrument.

Can't find an image of the organ by itself, but it's built into the walls on your right hand side of the Bailey optic.



They may even have removed it - I don't know but I can find out.

The upper gallery was another spot I liked hanging out in: there were piles upon piles of classic Irish canvasses of a sea-faring nature. Gathering dust, likely worth hundreds of thousands. But best of all was up in the bell tower on a sunny day: you had a 360 view of the entire bay area from Bray Head over to Howth head, where the old Bailey lighthouse optic used to stand. The church bell was fucking enormous mind you, just tap it with a nail and it rings for minutes. If anyone had grabbed the ropes down below to ring the bell you'd have been deafened on the spot, so I was always careful when I went up as it was off limits for workers on the project, but I got away with murder because the lady manager, Stella, and I got on really well. One time down in the catacombs (where I had my calligraphy studio with Jean-Paul and the little guy with the hump (very talented lads from France on work exchange gig)) they hid the board I was working on, a sign for use up in the museum above, so I grabbed a fire extinguisher and, when they were concentrating on their work (we had Zeppelin playing really fucking loud) and I pointed it at the two of them and pulled the handle - within seconds the entire catacomb was rendered oblivious. We had to feel our way along the walls to get out.

I couldn't stop laughing though.

Then, as the powder hanging on the air cleared, there was Stella standing there with a look on her face that set me off laughing again. Trying to apologize while in hysterics soon got her better side and she cracked up too. Lovely lady, she saved my life some years later when incoming on the ferry from Liverpool after meeting an ex-British soldier retiring to Sligo. He had a litre of vodka and we drank the lot while he told me about his days in the jungles of Burma. Holy shit. Freaked me out some of the sights he saw. Men getting caught in traps and losing limbs on the spot. Blood, guts, horror upon horror.

When the ship docked, my crew carried me off the ship and dumped me on the front door of the museum. Stella arrived later and called an ambulance. I woke up in the hospital, my then girlfriend sitting at my bedside. The fuck? Where am I? Hospital - they had to pump your stomach. The fuck?

Hopped out of the bed, grabbed my stuff and went to the door of the ward. Spotted the coppers down at the reception desk so we ran the other way and got out without being stopped. Went for coffee and herself hands me a note - it was from Stella.

She berated me for being so drunk, said she thought I was dead. But the lads told her what happened and she called the ambulance. While waiting for it to arrive, she wrote a note telling me that she thought the fire extinguisher event was the worst I was capable of - but THIS situation beat all.

Sadly she died soon after and I still have that note, along with a reference letter for my CV which also contained a note saying she'd forgiven me the fire extinguisher event - but not to try it again with any other employer.

Ahh, youth - oh youth.

Here's a wee sea shanty for the day that's in it, innit.

 
Another amazing Irish band who were criminally neglected: Whipping Boy.

'We Don't Need Nobody Else' (Official Video)



It also has a sea-faring lyrical reference where Fergal refers to one time he was sitting in the toilet of Bono's house out on Dalkey Hill. He was taking a dump and noted that the windows were shaped like portholes, so he incorporated it into the song - which is really about a violent relationship.

Great band to see live.
 
I used go see them every Saturday afternoon in the Underground. Only about fifteen years old, getting sloshed. We were the only crowd ever there, around eight to fifteen of us usually. Drinking pints of Furstenburg, and you had to walk across the stage almost getting the pints in. They were criminally neglected even then, but they were great and it was great to have them all to ourselves, live, a gig just for us every Saturday afternoon. Great days.
 
roc_abilly said:
I used go see them every Saturday afternoon in the Underground. Only about fifteen years old, getting sloshed. We were the only crowd ever there, around eight to fifteen of us usually. Drinking pints of Furstenburg, and you had to walk across the stage almost getting the pints in. They were criminally neglected even then, but they were great and it was great to have them all to ourselves, live, a gig just for us every Saturday afternoon. Great days.
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Aye, the Underground was the pumping heart of the indie scene of the times. I played it a few times over the years and it never ceased to crack me up how the punters had to walk across stage right to get to the boys/girls toilets. There was an incident one night when some fucker came down the stairs, in onto the stage, grabbed an electric guitar and ran for it. It had belonged to the guitarist who were supporting us, and they missed their slot.

Lots of amazing bands broke their teeth on that stage, and as the years passed, the nearby Rock Garden in temple Bar gave them some really stiff competition for audiences, but the were still distinct clubs in their respective rights: the Underground catered for the indie up and coming bands getting their act together, and the Rock Garden provided for bands who were already established and who had a sure-fire audience. The deal on those gigs was a simple 10% of door/tickets plus 100% bar sales for the owner, and the bands had to make the best of what was left.

We an a Thursday nighter called Cosmic Slop, a piss-take on U2's then touring machine: Zoo TV.

To give our show credibility, we assembled a few old televisions and VCRs to create a sort of crappy/RTE/no budget set that vaguely resembled U2s rig, but was so ridiculous you had to laugh at it. We placed a love-seat and standing lamp with a coffee table on stage left for our uilleann piper, a kitchen table and chairs for our guests and a few mates, some boiling kettles of water with the lids open so they kept boiling away. Two of the TVs (at least) were busted and gutted and in one we put a church candle, and in the other a small set of christmas lights in really cheesy colours. The rest of them were for kicking and booting around. Or even something to sit on. The bassist wore a full black ninja suit with only his eyes showing. It was cheap and nasty but it rocked, and we always had a crowd.

Underground gigs weren't much fun. What's his name behind the bar was a great bloke to deal with: took no bullshit, knew what he was looking for, and treated everyone the same: shite. But at least he wasn't fake about things - if he liked your stuff you were welcome back. Try any 'rock star' shit and he wouldn't sell you a pint. GTFO. But it was a handy step between oblivion and semi-professional levels for new bands to cut their teeth. Some nights it was 99p in with eight bands on the list. One drum-set, basic amps for guitar and bass, filthy SM58s he never cleaned, around three lamps hanging off the ceiling, and a gap for toilet access for the punters. No changing room, so space to store your flight cases, no free beers, no bringing in your own cans and filling his glasses with them. The stink of soap-bar hash. Sweat. Hair spray. Piss and bleach. Flat beer and horribly stained carpets that stunk the place out when it was empty.

But it was pure rock and roll in spirit. It had a tough time from the get-go and had to work hard to hold on to its audience with so much heavy competition nearby. What's his name gave it his best but it wasn't to be and when it closed down, the last bash and party had them queuing out the door and down Dame Street towards Dublin Castle. The OMMC and the new Temple Bar Studios venue drew larger numbers and we had a spare line-up from PAMF which we called Loose Booty. That line-up dealt with any and every last minute cancellation as Pete and I could summon up a few extra players to join us filling in for whomever. That's where we built the spring-board for the Loose Booty Drummers, who played with all the DJs at the OMMC in order to satisfy the Fire Chief who insisted on a live act being required under a theater license. Handy gig, handy money (we were paid but we also took late night recording studio time at the TBS in credit) and we gave a break to lots of upcoming kids from the engineering courses that were so popular at the time.

There was an engineering course on Merrion Square, it was run by an Englishman called Thewlis. He set up the course after getting a block on the square and after the students paid in their fees, he had a crew come in the middle of the night to seize everything: tape machines, mixing desks, mics and cables, hardware, everything - plus the fees in the bank. The students came back next day and the front door was boarded up. The cops were involved. We lost a few master tapes but the one we were working on (for the students to watch and see how things were done) at the time really stung: we had Moll from The Big Geraniums on bass, Dreadzilla on FX guitars, me and Pete front and back, and seven or eight new tracks we laid the foundations of and wanted to finish to the mastering stage in the studio/school. The kids all lost their money, the parents petitioned the cops who got involved but in reality did fuck all. So the students arranged a gig at The Rock Garden to highlight their loss. Packed house, lots of slagging and banter, but ultimately, Thewlis made off with the lot. Untraceable. Who knows how much he robbed?

But the reality was that all these engineering kids were kidding themselves: how many sound engineers does one city need to have? Most of them were wasting their time and parent's money - but the same was true for lots of the Trinity crowd: the JCR and Buttery packed to the gills from morning til night. We did masses of gigs for Trinity, including a few in the Veterinarian college nearby the US embassy in the actual auditorium: us down on the bottom in front of the blackboards, and them up and above us in the seating areas. The sound was fucking horrible. Every time.

Dublin back then was a hive of activity.

Not all of it good either, mind you.

But it was ours, and we loved it.
 
Ah it's coming back now. Yes, it was the jacks you had to cross the stage to get to not the bar.

I remember you'd sometimes give a nod to some member of the band whose eye you caught as you passed, as if you were passing on the street, vaguely acquainted. Of course the acquaintance in this case having been made by being a member of the audience in the show.

But I suppose up on the stage, you were briefly crossing into a different domain.

We used to drink a lot too. Seven or eight pints, all the money we'd earned working the night before. So you'd be trying hard to walk straight, not fall over an amp, or trip over a wire, while being casual, of course with a bit of a swagger too, seeing as you were up on the stage, briefly the star of the show, in a sense.

Gas alright.
 
Mowl said:
... But it was ours, and we loved it.
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Yes. It did feel like that . Now we have inflated rents, rates, financing, marketing, branding, sales costs etc. A certain model of business and commercial interest takes over that crushes the individual creative spirit, at least the non commercial minded one. So does everything have to collapse for it to revert to a more human, creative organisation, or is some other model possible? The overweening consumerism of the present model is just weird, unnatural, highly anti social, inhuman in a way, at least I find it so.
 
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