Hullo there! It’s been a while! I’ve just recently started a new job and there’s been a manic bedding in period so I haven’t had much time for the ole blogging lark.
The best thing about the job is, no more public transport! No delayed trains wrecking me head anymore, (well for a while anyway) I’ll soon have a new annoyance to give out about though, other drivers! Jesus they’re bad. All that to come.
In the meantime there’s this. Someone’s just turned me on to it. The Drogheda Boxing Club, home to many reprobate (meself included) of a Saturday night during the late 80’s and early 90’s, the best gig venue in the North East. Classic bands such as Hothouse Flowers, Don Baker and Sisters (YES!!! THEEEE SISTERS) of Mercy have all graced the stage of the boxing club. Physically, the place was a kip of the highest order, girls had to go to the toilet in threes (one to go and the other two to hold the door of the cubicle up), guys pee’d into a Wavin pipe that went straight out into the Boyne River and by the end of each night the entire floor was coated one inch thick in a slimey substance that could only have been a cocktail of spilled beer, urine and vomit, but it was our club, the only club in Drogheda and surrounds that catered for your alternative sort.
I first fell in love there, first got drunk there and I smoked my first spliff there. I remember the night we booed a very drunk Mary Coughlan off the stage after her first few minutes. Her band came back on and played a blinder of a blues set and when she herself tried to sneak back unnoticed the boos began again and she left the stage with a ‘Well Fuck yiz then!’
The reason I’m sharing all this with you is that if you look at the site, scroll down through the photos section to ‘The Dreads’ gallery and click in, you will see an 18 year old JackMcMad (The one in the cap at the bridge and the obscured one behind the drums in the live pic from Sir Henry’s Cork) who is, at that time embarking on his first musical career. Also, if you keep going down to the playlist there are three songs for your listening entertainment. Sick of You and She’s on to You are taken from the first brilliantly named, 600 Thousand Million Records On My Head (and I can still stand up) EP and the song Crazy from the album Burn your Idols, with Emma Spiller on backing vocals.
This is stuff I haven’t heard in years and to be honest, not being even one bit biased at all at all, me, never, would probably do well commercially, today.
Oh I nearly forgot, also on that site, in fact here, is a pic of Emptyhead from that era, sporting an absolutely fabulous Mullet!! He’s the one on the right
Sorry man, just had to point that one out. There are more of me amongst the throng but you’d never pick me out.
