Track 13: 'Cause it's getting kind of quiet in my city head, It takes a teenage riot to get me out of bed right now...'

“Sentimental music has this great way of taking you back somewhere at the same time that it takes you forward, so you feel nostalgic and hopeful all at the same time.” ― Nick Hornby, High Fidelity

There are days when I still miss it. Even after all this time.

It’s not the rock & roll lifestyle I miss most, it’s the mundane stuff. Piling into the back of a van to travel across the country with your mates to the next gig. The banter, the laughs, the slagging, the adventure. That feeling after a good show as we sped through the darkness on the road back to Dublin; that warm glow.

The cast of characters we spent long hours making special memories with. Liam, Paul, Baz, Jeff, the Chis, Snoopy, Wiff, Tony, Andy, Mark, Dave, Killian, JJ, Sid.

And the four of us. At the centre of it all.

When the band split up, one of the hardest things to deal with was the lost friendships. In an instant, it was all gone. I felt cut adrift, lost. And I don’t think I found my way back for a long, long time.

Our debut album ‘Submarine’ was recorded and mixed in 12 intense, creative, exhausting days.

We were still relatively green as a band, but we were bursting with ideas; Aidan Foley engineered the record, and was always open to trying new things, while still having to rein us in and keep us on track to get the album finished before we ran out of studio time. We worked long hours and we worked hard - there was a healthy, creative tension during the sessions, until things bubbled over - there was a row, that spilled out on to the cobbled streets of Temple Bar midway through recording.

It had been brewing for a while, and the pressure of working to such a tight deadline eventually brought us to boiling point. It was sorted out quickly, we set it aside, but it was the first time that bond between us as a band had been really shaken.

Aidan seemed to get a kick out of it in a warped kind of way - maybe he saw this as a healthy and necessary means of letting off steam when you are locked in a studio for up to fifteen hours of the day.

Everything had to be done rapidly - the 10 backing tracks of bass, drums, and guide guitar were laid down in two days. Main guitars, overdubs, and additional noises were next. We brought some children’s toys into the studio, and an assortment of percussion instruments. And oh yeah, a kazoo. Which incidentally, ended up on the intro to the first track ‘Safari’.

The vocals went down last -Fearghal feverishly working on the lyrics right up to the last minute. By the end of the recording, we had about three days left to mix the album.

The mixing stage is where a record can be transformed, or ruined.

Aidan was fully committed, working long hours with us to get it right.

We left the studio on the final night worn out, but elated.

We had made a record that might have worn its influences a little too obviously, but we still felt it was a big step up from the EPs. It had its flaws; there was simply no time to revisit things we would have liked to have done differently, but as a document of where we were as a band at that point in time, we were proud of it.

Opening tracks ‘Safari’ and ‘Beatle’ were pulsing, driving guitar rock, heavily influenced by Sonic Youth, Pixies & That Petrol Emotion. ‘Sushi’ made use of the quiet-loud-quiet dynamic to good effect.

‘Favourite Sister’ was the obvious ‘pop’ track on the album, and a song that remained in our live set right up until we split up. I tried desperately to replicate the guitar sound from the ‘House of Love’ song ‘Christine’ - I didn’t quite manage it, but part of the pleasure of making music is taking an influence, and watching it morph into something else, that still somehow works, even when it turns out nothing like you intended.

‘Astronaut Blues’ was a funny one. I had been playing around with this textured, ambient, spacey guitar sound; Mylie added a sweet, melodic bass run while we were messing about in rehearsal. We came up with a vocal melody, and I wrote some words for it. Fearghal tried it, but it just didn’t suit his voice. The mood and feel of the song was sweet and innocent - it just didn’t work when he delivered it. He suggested that I do it, and rather reluctantly, I gave it a shot.

For years after, I never, ever listened to it - I just couldn’t bear to listen to my own voice. I only performed it live just once, topped up with Dutch courage at the Project Arts Centre, but that was it, never again.

I guess I just didn’t have the confidence. I wasn’t a singer and I knew that.

That song closed out side one of the album. Side two, was more of a mixed bag. ‘Betty Clean’ was an obvious homage to the Velvets - I got to play a beautiful white Gretsch Country Gentleman guitar on that track. Pete Holidai had come in to help Aidan out on a couple of tracks and he let me borrow his Gretsch for that song.

Pete was a legendary figure on the Irish music scene - he was guitarist with the Radiators, renowned as Ireland’s first punk band. He then went on to play with another great eighties Irish band, Light a Big Fire.

When I look back, I am absolutely mortified.

I had no real clue who he was - I don’t think any of us really did, or had any awareness of the impact the Radiators made. We went on to work with Pete on a number of recording sessions, blissfully unaware of his legendary status.

It was only many years later I listened to the album ‘Ghostown’ for the first time -it’s a stunning album, and up there with the best Irish albums ever.

‘Betty Clean’ drifts to a conclusion before ‘Buffalo’ explodes into life, a jarring segue. ‘Buffalo’ would close out our live set for many years afterwards; heavily indebted to Sonic Youth, it’s a song that brought out the best in Fearghal as a live performer - he would wreak terror on an audience when we played it! I never liked the track ‘Snow’. Too bland, it felt like a filler to me.

A reworking of ‘Valentine 69’ and the more experimental title track finished off the album. We sent the master tape to the record company - the word was they liked it, but you can never be sure with record company types. A schedule was put in place for the release. Multiple target release dates came and went - there was always an excuse and it was never a particularly convincing one.

By the time it came out, we had been sitting on the album for over a year, growing increasingly more frustrated. A promo single (‘Favourite Sister’) was released to radio in advance of the album - it picked up very little daytime radio play, which came as no great surprise to us.

The album came out in July 1992 - reviews were very positive, particularly in Ireland. There was one funny review in the English music weeklies that concluded: ‘Buy Submarine and get EVOL & Sister free’, an obvious reference to our Sonic Youth infatuation. You couldn’t really argue with that!

We secured a slot on the Féile Trip to Tipp Festival in Thurles in August which coincided with the album release - it was purely coincidental that the promoter also happened to bank roll the record label we were on.

Féile was our first festival appearance, and we bagged an afternoon slot on the main stage. Fearghal was well up for it, buzzing with excitement and when he arrived at the side of the stage carrying a ladder and various other household tools, the stage manager hurriedly produced a waiver, insisting that he signed it or he wouldn’t let us go onstage.

He wanted us to absolve the festival organisers of any responsibility should Fearghal do any damage to himself or others.

It was an odd experience playing on the big stage, with such a distance between us all. We were so used to playing smaller stages, and feeding off cues from one another. We couldn’t do that on the bigger stage. There was no sound check, we just had to go on and do it. We muddled through, and got a reasonably good response from the scattered crowd.

Afterwards, we hung around and soaked up the atmosphere. Spirits were high; finally, it felt like the frustrations of the previous months were behind us. Things were back on track. On that August afternoon, everything felt right, everything felt positive again.

Little did we know that by Christmas of 1992, our time with Liquid records would be grinding to a halt, and the future wouldn’t look so rosy.