MORE TUNES FAVOURED BY THE ‘HEXUAL CLAN’ / AN OLD ‘JOHNNY CA$H’ PRESS RELEASE / WORMHOLE - UNHEALTHY
Unhealthy - The Wormholes (with Joe Ca$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: Wheels
Shane McGrath: Dig A Pony
Shane McGrath: A Different Drum
Martin and Colin (Sunbear): She don’t use Jelly
Martin and Colin (Sunbear): Two of Us
Gary Keogh: Only Fools and Horses Theme Tune
Myself, Joe and Nially also all vaguely remember a performance that involved a vacuum cleaner but haven’t been able to piece it back together at all. Joe reminded me also of all the ‘commie’ shtick that he was into when acting as compere at the nights. He referred to the Johnny Ca$h as ‘Ireland’s first communist country and western club.
The way it worked in terms of an economy was very simple. There was no rent on the room thanks to Joe from The Hut who gave us free use of it and provided a barman for the tiny bar in the corner of the room. Everyone who sang got two pints free from the bar. There was no entry charge. A hat was always passed around towards the end of the night. We’d count the money and ask Joe to give us the equivalent in the old pint bottles of Guinness. These were for the inevitable afters back at the house where I was living with a group of ladies who I knew from college. The live music and tomfoolery continued back at the house, often till the next morning. Quite a few people, and maybe the majority of people who attended the club, lived literally up the street from the house where I was staying and from the Hut so they didn’t have to do any worrying about getting home afterwards.
I’d also forgotten the fact that Joe attempted to put ‘clan’ names on any of those performing or attending who didn’t do so themselves before he got there. ‘Mexican Pat’ is one of the classics along with the unforgettable ‘Jethro Hexual’ and ‘Juan Too Many’ from Spain. But there were many more as I remembered when I dug out the press release which I’ve transcribed below. About a year after the run of the club in the Hut, I was involved in doing some freelance TV directing for a program of the time on Network Two called @last TV. I proposed holding - and filming - a ‘Johnny Ca$h’ reunion for the program and they (surprisingly) agreed.
A gang of us who had been involved in or around the club in The Hut spent a day in Blackrock - on the outskirts of Dundalk at the coast - messing around with Pete from Rumble and Joe taking the lead in a whole load of tunes - making up shit as they went along. It was filmed and quite a few tunes were eventually broadcast. I’ve found a VHS tape of the raw footage which I haven’t tried to play yet. I’m going to try to do so in next few days and will, if it’s in any way intact, make some of it available soon.
Anyway - the press release (minus the boring transmission times / contact info stuff).
“The first anniversary reunion of the Johnny Ca$h Appreciation Society took place in Blackrock, Dundalk on Sunday 12th October. Present were international representatives of both the Spanish chapter and the New Zealand chapter, as well as well as assorted members of the hardcore inner circle including Joe Cash, The El Paso Kid, Cousin Slim, members of the Hexual clan, Mr. Hyde and of course the original members of the Irish Surrealist Movement - Danny and Conor Hughes.
The proceedings caught the imagination of the general public in a big way. At one stage an attempted armed robbery of the local credit union was narrowly avoided. The crowd became somewhat inflamed while hearing the Society’s uniquely moving rendition of ‘Money, Money, Money’ by Abba.
The El Paso Kid’s rendition of ‘Staying Alive’ - performed naked on the beach - also drove the ladies crazy in a big way. Sweet Ass - the female representative of the New Zealand chapter of the Johnny Ca$h became particularly excited and was spotted dancing frantically with several local mutants as the boys countrified ‘Rio’ by Duran Duran and ‘Club Tropicana’ by Wham.”
The track which you’ll find at the top of the post has something of a country flavour and is the one song that The Wormholes released with Joe from the Johnny Ca$h singing on it. Joe was a Wormhole fanatic and loved having an opportunity to get up on stage with them - to rant or sing or whatever - during the long drawn out improvised climaxes which were always a feature of their gigs. They loved Joe. I’m still not too sure how the audiences felt about his frequenty declamatory ‘commie’ polemicising. I do love this track though which Wormhole chose to include on their ‘Parijuana’ album.
It was recorded at around the same time as the thing in Blackrock described above in Andy’s flat in 137 (rather than 147) Parnell Street. I did the single take live recording of ‘Unhealty’ with extremely rudimentary equipment - a 4 channel mixer of some description running into a cassette deck as I recall. We had 2 mics. Anto is playing the synth, Graham the guitar, Dave the live bongo type drums and I’m the one poking unsteadily at a simple drum machine which had pads to manually trigger the sounds.
A lot of material was recorded that night but this is the only part of it which was ever released. I’ve managed to turn up the original tape and will be doing a trawl through it soon. I remember there being some very strong material on it featuring Wormhole improvising with an incredible foot pumped organ which Andy had gotten somewhere and which was a feature of the main room of the flat.
The image below is of ‘Joe Ca$h’. You’d just know fer sure lookin’ at him that he’s one of them there Hexuals.
