Track 6: 'Well sit right down my wicked son and let me tell you a story...'

“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt

We are in a band now.

Walking to rehearsals carrying our cheap guitars, we feel ten feet tall.

There might even be a bit of a swagger.

Leaving school, we were braced for disappointment. It is 1988, we are on the dole, but there is a glimmer of hope. Every hour spent playing guitars, making music, it feels like that glimmer burns a little brighter.

We are doing something we had dreamed of doing since our early teens. It’s an exciting time, a real thrill, the newness of it all.

It feels like the first time you fall in love.

Every time I pick up the guitar, I get a sense there is magic there, waiting to be revealed. It might not sound like that to anyone else listening to my primitive fumblings, but that doesn’t matter. I can hear it. And that’s all I need right now.

After the car crash that was our first gig in Edenderry, we are emboldened.

We want more.

Fearghal manages to blag a gig at the Source nightclub, a popular Goth hangout. It will be our debut Dublin show.

He convinces a sceptical nightclub owner that we will bring at least 200 additional punters along if he gives us the gig. At least.

It is a complete and barefaced lie.

Nevertheless, he books us for a Thursday night. We promote the gig by patrolling Grafton Street on Saturday afternoons, handing out photocopied flyers. There is some kind of weird or provocative image on the front, and a unique handwritten lyric on the back of every single flyer, to add to the intrigue.

Most of the flyers we distribute end up in the street bins, but at least we are getting the name out there.

The gig itself can be described in one word - awkward.

As soon as we take to the stage, there is a mass exodus from the dance floor. The walls are lined with the glum, disinterested faces of Goths who came here to shuffle around to ‘ A Forest’ by the Cure - our 35 minutes onstage is a barely tolerable but noisy intermission.

Each song ends to profound silence. A smattering of applause from the few friends who have come along. We take ages to tune up the guitars between songs, which only serves to amplify the painful silence in the room. It is not a disaster; a spirited finale seems to draw out the sympathy of some present, or maybe it is just the relief of knowing they can get back to listening to the Sisters of Mercy.

The nightclub owner isn’t impressed.

Things don’t get a whole lot better with our next gig. We have somehow managed to secure the support slot with a well known Irish band of that time, Auto Da Fé. It’s a college gig in Carlow.

With no transport of our own, we take the train. We are introduced onstage by the DJ playing songs between acts as ‘The Whipping Boys - four kinky lads all the way from Dublin!’

Someone whoops at the back of the room.

At that point, you would struggle to find four less kinky lads in the whole of Ireland.

The gig itself is ok. A few drunken students, throw a few shapes on the dance floor, and then it’s over.

Afterwards, Auto Da Fe invite us into their dressing room. They leave us some beers and announce they are travelling back to Dublin that night. At that moment we realise we have nowhere to stay, and no means of getting home. Fearghal had assured us he would sort something out -’it will be grand!’

Nothing has been sorted out. It’s not going to be grand.

After a few moments of panic, we decide on a plan. It’s a crude plan, borne out of desperation, but it’s worth a shot. The plan? To turn out all the lights in the dressing room, and hope nobody notices we are there. The dressing room is a room in a small hotel, adjacent to the venue.

Forty minutes later the plan is in ruins. A security guard shines a torch into the room, and politely tells we need to leave.

It’s well past midnight, its cold and we are wandering the streets of Carlow town. We head for the train station and decide to wait there until the first train in the morning. It’s the only option.

It’s the longest night of my life.

It’s also the first time I have ever attempted to sleep vertically, leaning against a wall - I don’t recommend it. We board the first train the next morning, cold, disheveled, hungover. The glamour of rock and roll. Back at the rehearsal studios, there is definite progress.

We are moving beyond formless, meandering jamming sessions. There is some structure to what we are doing, but we still leave room to take the songs different places every time we play them.

It’s around this time we write ‘Highwayman’ & ‘Velvet Crush’ - both will appear on our first cassette mini-album. The songs are inevitably concerned with the darker side of life, reflecting the influence of the music, books and films we are devouring at the time. David Lynch, William S Burroughs, Charles Bukowski, Sonic Youth, Swans, Big Black.

A murderous stew.

For a new band in the late eighties, securing gigs in Dublin isn’t easy - the local scene is thriving and competition for bookings is fierce. We approach some of our favourite local acts, looking for support slots. The universal lukewarm response always starts with ‘have you got a demo tape?’ and ends with ‘we will get back to ya.’

We don’t have a tape, so momentum is temporarily stalled. We are an unknown quantity and the bigger bands on the local scene are bombarded with requests for support slots.

We don’t have the money to record a demo tape just yet - studio time is incredibly expensive in the late eighties. We know that recording a demo will potentially be the key to securing more gigs, getting some radio play on the Dave Fanning show, and if the songs are good enough, it might even lead to a recording contract.

For now, the goal is to play as many gigs as possible and build some kind of a following. But the thorny issue of no demo tape is a stumbling block - we come up with a plan.

If the key to unlocking so many opportunities is having a demo tape, we will get one. It just won’t be our music.

English band Pop Will Eat Itself had released their debut EP in 1986 called ‘The Poppies Say GRRrrr! They will go on to be a modestly successful band, but back then they were not well known at all. We are confident nobody will recognise these songs, and our deception will at least give us a chance of securing some bookings.

We lash a few of the songs from the EP onto a bunch of cassette tapes - this will be the first Whipping Boy demo. To this day, I have no idea how we landed on that band or their music - they sounded nothing like us. But now, we have something to give when we go looking for gigs. We have done the rounds looking for support slots, pestering bands on the local scene. We need to think bigger.

There is this venue on Dame Street just across the River Liffey.

All of our favourite acts on the local scene started out there; it has a reputation for giving fledgling bands a chance.

That’s where we will try next.

We are going Underground.