After spending almost 20 years in the shadows, three of Ireland's best indie bands are tuning up for a Christmas tour of the country – Just don't expect this to become a regular event, writes KEVIN COURTNEY
WAIT LONG enough and you might eventually come back in fashion. As the decade splutters to an end, we are seeing signs of a 1990s revival with new bands cranking up the grunge sounds and old ravers creaking their way back onto the dancefloors.
In the early years of the Celtic Tiger, the Irish music business was very different as local indie bands competed to be heard. Some fared better than others and The Cranberries were almost effortlessly catapulted to success.
A few indie bands grabbed a little short-lived glory too. The Frank And Walters hit the Number 11 spot in the UK with After Alland appeared on Top of the Pops. The Sultans of Ping scored a Top 30 hit with You Talk Too Much. Power of Dreams' debut album, Immigrants, Emigrants and Me, earned the kind of plaudits other bands could only dream of.
This Christmas those three bands are coming together to celebrate the birth of 1990s nostalgia. The Reverberation Tour starts in Dublin's Academy on December 23rd and pings its way around the country, finishing up with a New Year's Eve gig in Dolan's, Limerick. An evening of "barnstorming indie classics" is promised. Between them, the three bands have plenty of memorable tunes including This Is Not A Song, 100 Ways to Kill a Loveand that anthem of lost lambswool, Where's Me Jumper?
“It doesn’t seem like 20 years ago,” says Paul Linehan, singer, bassist and songwriter with The Frank and Walters. “It seems like five.”
Back then, says Linehan, he was a young, wide-eyed, innocent lad from Cork. At 43, he’s still wide-eyed. “I’ve still got a lot to say. I’ve got a lot of energy. I feel I’m a better singer than I was 20 years ago.” “I’m better at playing my instrument. I might look a bit older, but I can still entertain and I’m a lot more confident than I used to be. And I hope I have some of the innocence.”
The Franks have adapted to the changes in the musical landscape. This year, the band have been putting out a single a season. The winter release is a Christmas tune called Song for a Future Love. "The emergence of the internet gives bands like us, who weren't world famous, just bubbling under, a chance to advertise our gigs on the web, and it gives fans the chance to check out our music," says Linehan.
“It’s about getting out there and sharing your thoughts. We get royalties from airplay and we tour. That’s how we make our money. In the 1990s we toured to sell our records. What you do now is put out a record so you can tour. It’s totally reversed. The only sad thing about downloading for free is that it has devalued music – it’s like sand in the desert.”
Craig Walker from Power of Dreams (PoD) never gave up on his musical dreams, even though his band never fulfilled the early promise of their excellent debut. Formed by Walker and his brother Keith, the band released their debut EP on Setanta Records and were soon surrounded by record company executives waving chequebooks.
“We were very young when we got signed,” recalls Walker. “I was 18; Keith was 16. It was a bit of too much too young, but I have no regrets. We got to tour the world, and made two albums on a major label. The worst was when we were dropped. I was 21 and it felt like the end of the world. Suddenly no one in the record company is returning your calls. That was hard.”
After PoD disbanded, Walker and guitarist Ian Olney formed Pharmacy with two former members of Sultans of Ping. Then he joined Archive, a UK ambient-progressive rock act, which enjoyed huge success in Europe. Before the Reverberation tour, Walker is doing solo acoustic gigs in Greece, where he will be playing several Archive songs along with ones from his 2009 solo album, Siamese.
But it is PoD songs such as A Little Piece of God, Never Been To Texas, Stayand American Dreamthat fans will be calling for in Dublin, Cork, Kerry, Mayo and Limerick, and they will be happy to oblige. All their best tracks have been gathered together on 1989 - The Best of Power of Dreams, released last Friday.
“We did a few shows in Ireland and the UK in March for the 25th anniversary of the debut album, and they went really well. It had been 16 years, a long time. When we were rehearsing the old songs, I was amazed how good they were. It was like I was listening to a completely different person,” he says.
Walker, who is married with a three-month-old child, moved back to Dublin from London recently. “I missed the whole boom, got back here just as everything peaked and started going downhill. I’m glad to be back, though. The place has changed a lot since I last lived here. It’s very international.”
The live scene has also changed since he was a young buck living the dream.
“The venues are better and they are more efficiently run. And the equipment is of a much higher standard. But there are more bands around now, and you’d wonder if anyone will still be releasing albums in 10 years time.” Time, though, is still on his side. “We’re still younger than a lot of bands that are going around at the moment,” he says.
For several years, Niall O’Flaherty was notorious as the flamboyant, spandex-clad shouter with Sultans of Ping, a motley crew from Cork in thrall to thrash punk, garage and the schlock horror sound of The Cramps.
The Sultans' 1992 single, Where's Me Jumper?, reverberated through indie discos around the country, and their debut album, Casual Sex in the Cineplex, was the loose-limbed soundtrack for the new Celtic Tiger cubs. While the Sultans enjoyed cult success in the UK and Japan, they decided to quit while they still had the shirts on their backs.
“We just gave up. We had got up to playing pretty big venues, but then we were starting to slide back down again. We were looking at our next tour and we just thought, can we face being on the road doing these sh**holes?” he says.
In 2005, a decade after they had disbanded, the Sultans released a single called Girlwatchin’ and played a few gigs with Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine. Though he enjoyed getting into the spandex again, O’Flaherty is reluctant to embark on a full-scale reunion.
“We all live in London, so we could get together easily enough, but I don’t think we’ve got the will to do it. We’re happy to get together every now and then and do a couple of shows, but we would never want to do that endless touring again. We worked bloody hard back then. And we wouldn’t want it to descend into a nostalgia thing.” Still, when the band played their first reunion gig, there was a distinctly warm feeling of déjà vu.
“Downloading has been great for us. We can put out all our old stuff on iTunes, I wish we’d had it back in the day. These days it seems to be run from the top down, which makes it hard for young bands starting off.”
The Sultans may be keeping it low-profile these days, but there’s nothing low-key about their live gigs. “Every time we go out there and do a show it’s always different – we try and blow the place up. We like to think a Sultans show is an event.”
More than 20 Christmases have passed since the Sultans formed, and there’s still no sign of O’Flaherty’s missing geansaí. Will Santa bring him a new jumper this year?
“I’ve never been given a jumper for Christmas, although come to think of it, I actually could do with one.”
The Frank and Walters, Power of Dreams and Sultans of Ping play the Academy in Dublin on December 23rd, Inec, Killarney on the 28th, Savoy, Cork on the 29th, Royal Theatre Castlebar on the 30th and Dolan’s Warehouse, Limerick on the 31st
