July 2010
31 posts
THE WORMHOLES - RIOTMAN
‘You walked in / I passed out / C’mon we’ll get our coats / C’mon we’ll go downtown / C’mon we’ll tell the kids what’s goin’ on.’
The Wormholes - Riotman
One of the many unforgettable things about being around the Wormholes when they were recording and playing live was seeing Dave go off almost totally freestyle on lyrics. He seldom...
LEE REMEMBERS RECORDING A SINGLE / JUBILEE - A....
Jubilee - Don’t Give Up On Me
Jubilee - 22 Years
Lee, who for quite a long period was Jubilee’s drummer, sent me the account below of recording their ‘Don’t Give Up on Me’ single in 147. He mentions a phonecall where myself and Og asked Jubilee to record the single for us. I can still vividly remember phoning Fergus on that Sunday night. Nice to be able to...
STEVE REMEMBERS THE J.C.A.S. / BUCKLE - FLOORED
I asked Steve to write what he could remember about attending the Johnny Cash Appreciation Society nights in The Hut in Phibsboro. He kept a diary at the period and the sense of the context in which Dead Elvis was doing stuff really comes through in his listing in his piece of the events he attended in and around the period of the Johnny Cash nights.
That listing set me off on a train of thought...
AN OG ROAD TRIP / RUMBLE - BURN THE DISCO DOWN
Rumble - Burn The Disco Down
This below post is from Og. The Rumble track above is a studio version of one of the tunes they banged out for their Peel session which he mentions in the post. The song was brand spanking new at the time of the Peel recording if I remember correctly. It’s a very very funny rewrite of ‘Hang The DJ’ by the Smiths and it rocks. Certainly takes the...
SUNBEAR - CENTRE PAGE / A SHORT ACCOUNT AND SOME...
Sunbear - Centre Page
Colin who played with Sunbear sent me the short account of their association with Dead Elvis which you’ll find below. There’s an open invitation to others with any kind of association with the label - however tangential to do the same. I had forgotten about their long field recording of the late night sounds of Parnell Street (described in his account) which...
RUMBLE - EDGE OF NOWHERE / DOING TWO 7' SINGLES
Rumble - Edge of Nowhere
We were on a total roll in and around 1995. Wormhole had signed to Roadrunner Records who were releasing some EPs by them before re-releasing their Chick Dig Scars album. We had released three good albums pretty much one after the other from The Sewing Room, Wormhole and In Motion. I don’t know where the idea of doing 7’ singles came from but I suspect we...
MORE TUNES FAVOURED BY THE 'HEXUAL CLAN' / AN OLD...
Unhealthy - The Wormholes (with Joe Ca$h)
I’ve managed to get some additions to the list of Johnny Cash Appreciation Society performances which I started in a previous post. Thanks to those who passed these on. Any more that anyone has would be much appreciated.
Gary Fitz and Oona White: The Lord
Tim Rogers: Up Against the Wall Redneck Mothers
Joe Carolan: April Skies
Stan Erraught:...
AN (EDUCATED) RAW WAIL FROM THE BOTTOM OF THE GUTS...
Female Hercules - Painkiller
At a certain point maybe a year before the ‘Crush’ gigs (described in an earlier post) started in late 93, I harboured ambitions of being a music journalist covering the Dublin punk beat. Again this was in connection with the Dropout publication which Donal Scannell was editing, and which was largely being produced at the table of the house where we...
JOHNNY CASH APPRECIATION SOCIETY PERFORMANCES: A...
Broken Life Waltz - The Sewing Room
I’m starting into trying to compile a list of all the performances which took place during the short but quite insane run, in 1996, of what we referred to as the ‘Johnny Cash’ upstairs in the Hut in Phibsboro. I think the club lasted about 7-8 weeks in total. There was an extremely messy ‘reunion’ shortly after it finished up in...
'HE'S A MOTOROLA MAN BABY': 'CHIPS' BY RUMBLE
Rumble - Chips
Paul (Blunt Recordings Archivist) posted the ‘Zip Up Your Boots’ compilation today at this link. It’s one of the many many things that Dead Elvis were involved in that I don’t have a copy of. I’ll talk about the process of getting it together later on. For now I want to just pick out one track and write a little about it - Rumble’s...
JUBILEE'S FIRST OF MANY FORGOTTEN CLASSICS: BETTER...
Jubilee - Better Than I Know Myself
I was present for some of Jubilee’s first recording session in 147. I sure of this because I remember Jack recording his sax line for the A side of their eventual Hi Tone single - ‘Everyone’s Clown’. They arrived in to do a couple of days recording with Marc just as the Dead Elvis label was getting off the ground. I liked them...
AN EARLY WORMHOLE FAN WRITES / JOHNNY'S VIBE
Johnny’s Vibe - Wormhole
The following account was sent to me by Steve Rennicks, a longtime Wormhole fan. He was actually the first person to buy a Dead Elvis release. He’s written in detail about the history of Wormhole in the past. I’ll be posting about his extensive account of their history later on. I’m working through this account and adding stuff in brackets and...
BRENDAN GRACE'S MANAGER'S STUDIO / 'CAN YE PLAY...
Wormhole (& Marc) - 44 Bulldog Intro
The other Eamonn was in touch to remind me that he first desk in 147 was a 16 channel studiomaster desk accompanied by a tascam TSR 8 half inch tape machine. He bought them off Irish comedian Brendan Grace’s manager in Sligo in 1993 together with some ‘really good’ B&W speakers which Marc loved. The gear had a pre-history...
FIRST RECORDINGS IN 147 / MEETING MARC (AGAIN)
44 Bulldog - Wormhole
Amaze - Pincher Martin
Time - Pincher Martin
The three tracks included with this post were all recorded in 1993 in 147. When the recording gear arrived it included basically a few mics, an 8-track desk and a reel to reel 1/4’ tape machine. Absolutely no fancy stuff. I will try later to get Marc to fill in some of this kind of techie detail.
The gear was...
147
I’ve been chatting to the ‘other Eamonn’ about how we came to meet each other. It’s important to the story because without 147 there would never have been a Dead Elvis. My memories of getting to know him are very sketchy indeed. We met in 92 or 93. I was living in Phibsboro at the time and starting to get increasingly interested in making music videos. I had made a couple...
ALAN LAMBERT - HORSE TAX →
Alan Lambert’s album was the last release on Dead Elvis in 1999. The album begins with a suite of tracks which were made in the basement of 147 in 1994. ‘Horse Tax’ is one of those and is the first track on ‘The Man Who Cycled to the Moon’. Marc was still learning the ropes in terms of recording at the time and he and Alan did plenty of messing around in there...
'CRUSH' IN FIBBER MAGEE'S
Dead Elvis was born on Parnell Street in 1993/4 in and around this financially disastrous club which I ran for quite a long period. It was during that time that I got to know many of the bands who Dead Elvis dealt with in the following few years. Noel from Fibbers asked me to do something downstairs in the club midweek. I have no idea how that came about apart from the fact that I lived across...
THE SEWING ROOM - DELVE →
After the release of Wormhole’s ‘Chicks Dig Scars’ album lots of bands on the scene in Dublin began to think about the possibility of releasing full length albums on CD. The Wormhole album was good and done on a shoestring. The ‘lo-fi’ ethos was big at the time through Sebadoh, Pavement and others. Indie labels in Dublin up till then had tended to fetishise vinyl...
THE FLOORS - JESUS LIVED SIX YEARS LONGER THAN... →
By the time this song fell into our laps Dead Elvis was quite broke and had begun to work out of Og’s flat in Phibsboro rather than from 147. Og was checking out tapes that were coming in the post and he was immediately into this song. He was a John Lennon obsessive when he was young and I guess the references to ‘I am the Walrus’ in the tune were music to his ears. I loved...
THE WORMHOLES - NEW →
‘New’ is the last track on the ‘Chopper’ Ep from 1995. The EP was their second release on the Roadrunner UK label. By the time that it was released the A&R guy who had signed them on the strength of ‘Chicks Dig Scars’ had suddenly left his job at Roadrunner - leaving The Wormholes and Pet Lamb (another Irish band of the time who were also signed to...
LAST NIGHT I BROKE INTO YOUR ROOM - THE FLOORS →
This is the sixth track on the ‘Superbe’ album released in an edition of 1000 CDs in 1996. The Floors were way way way less naturalistic than any of the other bands on Dead Elvis. Not necessarily a bad thing. They sent a tape initially I seem to remember. Og listened to it and said, on the strength of a particular song which he was mad about, that we should release an album asap.
...
MONEY - PINCHER MARTIN →
‘Money’ is the only decent quality track still in existence from a session where Pincher Martin recorded an albums worth of material with Marc Carolan. It was intended to result in an album release on Dead Elvis. Various complications meant the release never happened.
Low quality cassette dubs of the results of the session do exist but the DAT and any decent cassette dub are MIA....
CONCRETE - THE SEWING ROOM →
Handclap heaven. We were a bit taken aback with how rocking (and adult - we were relative nippers) this second track from the Drugfree EP by The Sewing Room sounded. The EP was released on CD by Dead Elvis Records in 1996. The simple BW cover caused us nightmares as we used a Phibsboro printer rather than a CD factory for the sleeves.
The Sewing Room were - Eamonn Davis (guitar/vocals), Stan...
ROOFTOPS (+ HIDDEN TRACK) - WORMHOLE →
This was the ‘final’ track on the Dead Elvis release of Wormhole’s ‘Chicks Dig Scars’ album. The album was the first release undertaken by the label. It was released on CD in a limited edition of 500 in 1994. The band’s name changed to The Wormholes in the period following the release of the album because of their becoming aware of the existence of a US...
CHOMSKY - ALAN LAMBERT →
This was track five on ‘The Man who Cycled to the Moon’ album by Alan Lambert.
The album was released on CD in an edition of 500 by Dead Elvis (and a Hunka Lisa-Marie) in 1999.
The album compiled various tracks which Alan had recorded between 1988 and 1994.
Further info: http://www.metaldragon.net/
BLAME SUPERSTITION - THE WORMHOLES →
Second Track from the ‘Parijuana: 4 Years in Captivity’ CD album by The Wormholes. Released in 1999 in a limited edition of 500 CDs. The Wormholes were Anto Carroll - Bass, Dave Carroll - Drums/Vocals and Graham Blackmore - Guitar/Vocals. Recorded by Stan Erraught.
More info: http://www.groov.ie/memorycells/thewormholes.html
DRUG FREE - THE SEWING ROOM →
First track from the Drugfree EP by The Sewing Room. Released on CD by Dead Elvis Records Back in 1996
The Sewing Room were - Eamonn Davis (guitar/vocals) Stan Erraught (guitar/vocals) Colm Fitzpatrick (Bass/Vocals) Dez Foley (Drums/Vocals)
More Info: http://www.myspace.com/thesewingroom
