Fortunately they were one of my favourite bands in my younger days and they did the live circuit a lot so I would have seen them in Katy Reilly Kitchen in Waterford a few times and in the SFX. The Storm is still a favourite album
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Lankum.
Aren’t Power of Dreams from Wicklow?
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I’d say Ghost of a Chance by the Blades is the best single by a Dublin band in my time.
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Walkinstown
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Ronan O Snodaigh & The Occasionals
Thin Lizzy
U2
The Chieftains
The Dubliners
The Bionic Rats
(Jury still out on D.C. Fontaines)
Really liked The Blades and saw them in The Magnet a few times. Downmarket was my own favourite of theirs. Other singles from back then to find favour were;
The Vipers - I’ve Got You (popular with Paul Weller apparently)
The Atrix - The Moon is Puce and Treaure on the Wasteland (produced by Phil Chevron and Midge Ure respectively)
Revolver - Silently Screaming (from the Radiators gene pool, tipped to be the Next Big Thing but not to be alas)
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Cactus World News
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Donal Lunny - Offaly
You might enjoy this podcast about that album
They were a great band, possibly my favourite Irish band, though there’s a few contenders
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Guitarist Frank Kearns still runs a rock school in Bayside, Dublin 13. Never gave up the dream.
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Has he still got the leather jacket, skinny black jeans and long hair? Like a refugee from a Ramones convention. They were a decent band. I think the bassist was Eamon Andrew’s son.
Thanks. I’ll listen to that tomorrow.
I really like the album with arclight, and the one after, but they seemed not to quite evolve. If they’d stayed in Dublin you’d wonder whether they may have.
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I’m going to listen to that right now. Never heard it before.
Black t shirt, jeans. Short hair, black.
They were never really a Dublin band, they moved to London before ever playing a gig in Dublin,
The second album was better than the first in my opinion, Drunkard Logic was a great tune in particular, I remember hearing it for the first time in Nancy Spains before that album came out and being instantly transfixed
That’s a great tune. Even my lass liked it. Reminiscent of the greatly underrated boomtown rats.
I don’t like Mondays should be in the conversation of great Irish singles.
They were all Dublin or Irish lads who’d have been better served staying in Ireland I think.
He deals with that in the documentary, his dad was a minister, he was from the Ailesbury road, a qualified solicitor, face didn’t fit in the Irish scene according to himself.
Apples and oranges, the Boomtown Rats and the Blades. The Rats were Blackrock educated SoCoDu royalty, the Blades were from Ringsend and educated at the local VEC. The Rats got a shot at the big time, the Blades didn’t.
The Dublin bands of the era tended to be middle class. You could do a thesis as to why that was but I’d say it was largely because working class kids couldn’t afford (a) instruments and (b) to sit around writing songs. Or they emigrated.
There was a big private/Protestant school vibe to the scene. Not a reason to be critical of it but that is the way it was.
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