Track 11: 'she's gone crazy about the notion of flippin' in the ocean, without you...'

"When we die, we will turn into songs, and we will hear each other and remember each other.” Rob Sheffield

These were the days of wonder.

The thrill of feedback & chaos, of being immersed in a surround sound that left ears ringing & fingers bleeding. Stages strewn with shattered glass & broken mic stands.

The intensity of it all.

We were growing hungrier, more daring.

We thought nothing of playing an improvised 30-minute song in the spur of the moment. The perverse thrill of testing an audience’s limits, in provoking some kind of reaction other than polite applause. There was a beginning, there was an end, but in between, all bets were off – the songs could explode in different directions, and we would follow. The audience could choose to come with us, or not – we really didn’t give a fuck.

Sometimes, it worked, sometimes the whole thing fell flat on its face. But even that outcome brought its own warped sense of pleasure.

It was freedom.

To be whoever we wanted to be when we stepped out onto that stage. That attitude prepared us for adversity.

There was a gig in the Cube in London in September 1990.  The rumour mill suggested that there was a lot of interest; press, record companies, management.  It was a big show for us.

Ten minutes in, Colm’s bass drum pedal snaps. There is no spare. There is that painful gap between songs, as Colm wrestles with the problem, desperately trying to remedy it, even temporarily. Fearghal, as the front man, is exposed in these painful awkward silences, outside of his comfort zone. He is anxious, glancing back at us, pleading with us to get our shit together. The next song starts, but the temporarily mended bass drum pedal falls apart, and the song grinds to a halt. Fearghal storms off stage, unaware of what the problem is – he just sees a band that are fucking up big time in a big moment.

Now it is our turn to feel exposed.

There is an expectant, impatient crowd eyeballing us, waiting. Colm discards the crocked pedal; we look at each other and just start to play. Real quiet at first, a flurry of delayed guitar notes, a growl of distorted bass. Colm joins in, tentatively, but as the improvised sound begins to swell, he locks in. Fearghal appears at the side of the stage, his curiosity piqued by the unfamiliar drones coming from the stage. Sheepishly, he takes centre stage again, joining in as this new ‘song’ builds and builds; circular notes, louder and louder until the wall of noise is on the verge of collapse. When it does, we leave the stage to a semi-stunned reaction.

We bollock Fearghal for leaving us out there -but he is too in love with what he just heard to care. For another band, that gig would have represented a complete disaster – but we got off on it, revelled in it. It was just the way we were back then.

Around this time, we fell out with Paul Thomas. There was an explosive confrontation fueled by paranoia, alcohol and a simmering sense of resentment on both sides….and then it was over. We never spoke to him again. He had been our mentor, our champion, but his part in our story would be reduced to a couple of cryptic lines in the song ‘Personality’ many years later.

Cheree Records were ready for us to record our second EP for the label. They pressed us to record in London this time around - we acquiesced. We decamped to London for a few days to record and mix the four tracks. I never felt comfortable in that city. It felt vast, impersonal and so different to Dublin. I was acutely aware of my Irishness any time we spent time in London, that sense of being an outsider.

We recorded at Von’s Studio –it was bigger, brighter and shinier than the studio in Dublin where we did the first EP, but the four tracks recorded were patchy at best. The re-recorded version of ‘Highwayman’ which had featured on our first cassette release, was an inferior version. Slower, duller, with none of the urgency or bite.

‘I think I miss u’ was the standout track, but the EP sounded less cohesive than the first record, it was the sound of a band still searching for direction, for a calling.

For the record sleeve, Aiden spilled his own blood over the provocative image of a masked, topless woman wearing some kind of hideous spiked gloves…the flirtation with S & M imagery continued. It was Velvet Underground inspired, but that desire to provoke extreme reactions was a direct response to a Dublin music scene that we felt was too safe, too middle of the road.

Around this time, Fearghal’s flatmate found a treasure in their attic. It was a beautiful red Gibson 335 guitar, in pristine condition. Fearghal presented it to me like it was the Holy Grail. The logic was it was there to be used, because nobody knew who owned it. It was just lying there, hidden away, going to waste. After about six weeks, I was just beginning to feel like that this was something that the Gods had bestowed on me, that it was rightfully mine, when I arrived home from a night out, half jarred. My mother said there had been a phone call, that a guitar had been mentioned, and that if it was not returned, the police would be called.

Turns out the guitar belonged to Fearghal’s flatmate’s uncle (and landlord), and he was none too happy to discover his vintage guitar had disappeared from the attic.

The guitar was returned the next day.

‘Red guitars & broken hearts ‘ - another line for the song ‘Personality’.

We were playing a gig somewhere outside of Dublin around this time, when JJ jumped up on stage, grabbed a tambourine, and just started moving in time with the music.

JJ was a friend of Fearghal’s – he had been hanging around the band at rehearsal, and we all liked him. He dressed incredibly flamboyantly, was erudite, intelligent and very funny. When he jumped up on stage, we all just kind of ran with it – he became like a fifth member of the band for a while after that, even appearing in some band shots we did for the NME.

In 1991, bands like the Stone Roses & Happy Mondays and that whole Madchester scene had just taken off – JJ became the ‘Bez’ of the band, adding a little colour and distraction to the intensity of what we did onstage.

The second EP was released in February 1991.

We played some more shows in London, there were interviews with the English music weeklies, positive reviews of the record, but there was a sense that this was it with Cheree. The end of the road.

There would be no further records released on the label. They didn’t offer album deals at the time, and we all felt that an album was the next logical step. It was an amicable parting.

It was the end of a chapter for the band, a time now for plotting and scheming. In our heads, the future was mapped out clearly, brightly.

But we would learn that the music industry has a way of tearing up the script, of trying to make you bit part players in your own movie.