AN OG ROAD TRIP / 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 piss out of The Smiths effectively. Well that’s what I always thought it was doing. I love the line about the ‘beerstained bumble’ particularly - It’s sooo Dundalk. The photo included at the end of the post is Keiran from Rumble at round the time described in the post. Shocked (again) to see Og somewhere he wasn’t expected to be (again) no doubt. Rumble recorded their Peel session on the 19th May 1996 and so the events in this account can be dated quite accurately for a change. Og went on quite a few of these kind of seat of his pants trips at the time and hopefully he’ll write about a few more of them along the way. It was always amazing at the time to hear his tales when he returned from his trips abroad. This was all pre mobile phones etc and any of us having the net - so we would literally hear nothing from him till he made it back to his flat in Phibsboro. Over to Og …
My main memories of the Dead Elvis period are all based around several of the international trips I took when trying to sell our records to unsuspecting foreign people. One highlight was a round trip to Cologne in Germany in May of 1996 to go to a big music trade fair called Popcomm. I wanted to meet two particular people there and also wanted to pass around CDs to any distribution companies that I thought might be interested in dealing with a small label from Dublin.
The people I had specific arrangements to meet were Gary Walker from Wiiija and a guy called Roland from Semaphore Records in Germany who I had already met the previous year. As you know from Eamonn’s various posts - we had very little money as this stage. I wrangled an Aer Lingus flight from from the Irish Trade Board. A guy there called Michael Kenna sorted it for me. He was later to help out with funding for the ‘Zip Up Your Boots’ compilation we did with the guys from Blunt. This flight was a return flight to Düsseldorf. I set out with ten punts, a small brown shoulder bag of clothes which I used this on all my road trips at the time, a tent, a packet of tobacco and a bunch of Dead Elvis CDs. At that point I had already done quite a few similar trips and felt that anything in this line could be done with the price of a phone call and a packet of tobacco.
My intention was to try and find a camp site near the trade fair and stay beside it or in it - but things didn’t work out so simply or so uncomfortably. On reaching the airport in Düsseldorf I went looking for my tent and luggage. The tent didn’t made it to Germany and was MIA. So I went after the man in charge of luggage at the airport and harangued him for several hours pointing out that I was there for four days and that he had just gotten rid of my accommodation for me. I was offered some paltry amount of cash to start with but I finally settled on the equivalent of 150 punts in return for the inconvenience. At this stage it was late in the evening and I wanted to get out of Düsseldorf. I never liked big cities much. I got a train to Cologne and went straight to the cathedral as I knew that a lot of punks hung out outside it. (I think Gary Fitz. from Pincher Martin had told me this) From there I asked how to get to a camp site for the Bizarre festival which was on at the same time as Popcomm.
On the train going to the camp site I meet some young punk lads drinking on the train. I told them a bit of my story and asked them where the best place to try and get a lie down for the night was. They told me they where staying in a friend’s kitchen and offered me some floor space. I went along and they where quite generous. They provided me with a couple of cans of beer along with the floor space.
In the morning I had to get a train to the site where Popcomm was taking place but ended up getting on the train on the wrong side of the tracks. There where a couple of girls in my booth on the train so I asked them, expecting them to be German, if I was on the right train. I was going in the wrong direction but, just as my luck always seemed to have it at that time, they where Irish and asked me what I was doing on this local train. I explained my story and they offered to put me up for the rest of my stay. I changed train after arranging to meet them later that evening in a bar in Cologne.
I went off to Popcomm for the day and met Gary Walker from Wiiija and Roland from Semaphore. Roland ordered 100 CDs from us and, as he had done the previous year, provided me with several bottles of Grolsh. This was a big deal as it ultimately meant 500 punts which would a significant way towards funding another Dead Elvis release.That evening I went to the bar to meet the girls. Late on in the evening I sat back on my own at a table to take a breather. It had been a long couple of days. A man sat on the chair opposite me and started to chat in English. He was from MTV and, like me, had been there for Popcomm. He had to go home the following morning. He said he had six complementary tickets for The Bizarre festival. He asked me if I could use them. All I could see were £££ signs. I said yes of course. He gave me all six.
The next morning I headed out to the Bizarre festival and tried one of the tickets just to confirm that it was ok. I got in and got an armband. So I went back out and sold each of the five remaining tickets for forty punts each. I had now amassed £300 on my travels plus an order for 100 CDs. I hung around for the day at the Bizarre festival. Iggy Pop was playing. I remember the heat and feeling intimidated by the whole thing.Happy with all this and with the newly acquired money - I rearranged my return flight to take me to London to go and see Rumble recording a Peel Session which they’d been offered. They were travelling in a van from Dundalk - driven by a friend of Pete’s father who had been involved with Pete’s father’s old show band.
I can still remember the sight of the lads when I arrived in Maida Vale - a real highlight for me from the days working on Dead Elvis. The van man took a heap of pictures which I think Pete may still have. I’ll try to dig them up. They set up the full band in a huge wooden room and just went for it. I was there with the punks from Blackrock. Almost home, but not quite. The bit left to go to home was an adventure in itself. But that’s another story …
