Track 4: 'I've been waiting for a guide to come and take me by the hand...'

'This is a chord - this is another - this is a third ... now form a band'.

Punk’s greatest legacy was a single, powerful message.

Anyone can make music. Anyone can play guitar.

We were too young to experience the full force of punk music when it first exploded, but that message echoed long after punk began to fade.

It was that message that led us to believe, at a time when belief was in short supply.

For someone raised in an environment where any flicker of hope or ambition was instantly quelled, the DIY ethos of Punk, the message that the barriers to creating music had been stripped away was a revolutionary one. It was a chink of light, a potential way out, a neon sign offering a different route.

1986: a stellar line-up of Irish acts played a concert at the RDS. Billed as a benefit gig, Self Aid was staged to highlight the chronic unemployment problem in Ireland at the time. Almost 250,000 people swelled the dole queues that year. Even as we watched the concert broadcast live on RTE, there was a sense of inevitability that we too would be joining those growing queues in the near future.

Mylie and I continued to make slow, intermittent progress in learning to play our instruments. We had picked up a couple of cheap Sound City amplifiers, so now my small bedroom in Dominick St became this hub of noise, as we bashed away, furiously playing along with our favourite records. There were plenty of bum notes, malformed chords -it was all part of the learning process; we were progressing, albeit slowly and not without a few backward steps along the way.

We must have driven the neighbours crazy - my mother just about tolerated the racket; the occasional shout to turn it down was obeyed, but within minutes, the volume inevitably crept up again.

We never bothered practicing traditional guitar scales, or did any kind of formal guitar lessons. We had this naive belief that by doing so, it would suck any kind of originality out of how we played - in hindsight, that naive belief may have served us well. We used to watch Rock School, a BBC show that provided tutorials on playing different genres of music. It all seemed a little staid, joyless, and rule based. The antithesis of the Punk ethos.

I struggled with barre chords, so I found another way of tuning the guitar that made fretting the chords easier. It also subtly changed how those chords sounded. I played simple guitar lines because most of the bands I liked didn’t feature technically proficient, showy guitarists - musicians like Will Sergeant, William Reid, Robin Guthrie & Bernard Sumner inspired me to believe that I could attain a level that would allow me to at least get by, and hopefully aspire to reach some kind of decent level as a guitarist.

Right from the start, Mylie instinctively played the bass like a lead guitar; there was a strong Peter Hook/Simon Raymonde influence on the way he played so almost by accident, we were both finding our own styles, doing things differently; sometimes out of a sense of necessity, and sometimes out of a sense of curiosity and a desire to explore.

We had graduated from listening to the British Post Punk bands of that era, to the noise bands from the US - Sonic Youth, Big Black, Dinosaur Jr, Swans, Husker Du.

Those early Sonic Youth albums in particular had a massive impact on us -’Bad Moon Rising’ and ‘EVOL’ really reshaped how we thought about playing guitars - it became an instrument that could be exploited in so many different ways, beyond mere chords and lead solos.

We were growing restless, impatient. We were going to see all these great bands playing the local circuit, but we felt trapped, confined, like we were going nowhere. We wanted to form a band but didn’t know how. We weren’t even sure if we were ready, but we knew the only way to find out was to try.

Pinning an ad up in one of the music instrument shops seemed like an improbable long shot in trying to find like-minded souls. We had no real connections on the local music scene - we were pretty much isolated, living in our own bubble.

Around about that time, a friend of ours suggested we go see a band she was doing backing vocals with called That Large Pink Devil. They were supporting Aidan Walsh & the Screaming Eagles in the Cathedral Club in Dublin. She mentioned that the singer with that band might be looking to do something else. We went along with no real expectations.

That Large Pink Devil were loud and chaotic in a quasi-Goth, Birthday Party type way. Flanked by two figures beating the living jaysus out of what looked like upturned oil drums, the singer had a magnetic intensity, a fire about him that we were instantly drawn too.

They did a cool cover version of ‘Is Vic There?’ by Department S before the whole thing collapsed in howling feedback and onstage disorder.

After the show, we were introduced to the singer Fearghal. He was affable and down to earth, a different beast to the scowling, intense front man we had just watched onstage. We discussed music, the kind of bands we were listening to and told him we were looking to get our own band together. He gave some indication that he might be interested, but naturally he was a little guarded. Phone numbers were exchanged, and we left the venue somewhat buoyant.

A new connection had been made.

Possibilities.

It felt like we were closer to our dream than we had been just a few short hours earlier. That fateful meeting laid the groundwork.

A few weeks and a number of phone calls later, we had set a date to meet at a local rehearsal studio. Fearghal would be there. He knew a drummer. Finally, we would be leaving the confines of my bedroom.

This could be something. This could be it….