LEE REMEMBERS RECORDING A SINGLE / JUBILEE - A. DON’T GIVE UP ON ME + B. 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 date it. It was approximately eight months into the existence of the label. Myself and Og were sitting together in the very narrow back bar of The Hut at the time. Joe in the hut was always game for giving us a few jars on tick and it was a kind of sanctuary back then for us from ‘town’ and all associated with it. I had drank regularly there for a few years already at that stage, and, despite the fact that I lived in town at that time(?), would meet Og and others regularly there. The phonecall was actually a series of phonecalls from the coinbox in the pub. We had seen Jubilee perform the song just before that somewhere and we convinced each other it was a stone cold classic worth fighting for.
The ‘fighting’ involved much whinging, bullying and pleading over a series of at least three calls. A ‘what would Husker Du do?’ kind of level of stuff with me making sure that Fergus was clear that it was a ‘now this minute or never’ kind of deal. I remember the calls being full of humour at our end at least. Myself and Og getting drunker and laughing about what taunt or wind-up we could try in the next phonecall so as to up the ante. We were easy and already friendly somehow by that time with Fergus. We had no reservations about slagging him anyway. It worked. We were absolutely thrilled. I can’t remember if he and the others succumbed to our assault on that evening or in the few days afterwards - but succumb they did.
Lee also talks about what was in fact their launch gig for the single in Barnstormers in his account. We used Barnstormers for quite a few gigs at the time. We had become friendly with Dougie who had run the ‘Fusion’ club in McGraths in O’Connell St and when he started running Barnstormers - we started asking him to give us space for gigs. The bikers were indeed frightening to look at but we never had a single tiny bit of hassle from them over the course of a good lot of gigs we did there.
People got a copy of the 7’ on entry at the launch. I remember that there was a decent crew there - but nothing resembling a full house. I don’t think many people were paying much attention to Jubilee at the time. The single changed that very quickly - and I’m still proud to this day of that fact. The image at the bottom of the post is the club ‘colours’ of the Bikers who haunted Barnstormers in numbers at the time. I’m also including a vinyl rip of ‘22 Years’ - the B side of the single which Jack added sax to as described by Lee. The video which Daragh McCarthy subsequently made for ‘Don’t give up on me is linked to on here somewhere too. Over to Lee …
I remember Eamonn rang Fergus in the Avondale Road house on a Sunday night in May 1995 and asked if Jubilee wanted to do a single with Dead Elvis. After practicing on the Tuesday evening as usual, we went into the studio in 147 on Wednesday for an all-nighter.
We’d been there before when we recorded our first single in October 1994 so we knew Marc and we knew the layout. Fuse was a basement space with a small control room and a small live room. Marc was a great engineer who had the knack of making people feel relaxed. That really helped us. As Eamonn has already pointed out, we weren’t really technical musicians but we did have good ideas and there were times when we had a beat, albeit primitive. Marc helped us ease into the process of getting recordings down on tape.
We were still a three-piece at the time, so we recorded the two tracks live and did the vocals and extra instruments as overdubs. Barry did a one-take solo on ‘22 Years’. We were all taken aback by how good it sounded and decided on the spot that it was now imperative he join the group. Jack did the sax. I remember we weren’t too bothered that the instrument was in a different key from the song. We told Jack to just make some noise. We didnt really care if it sounded wrong. At the time we relished what we imagined to be the confrontational aspects of making a racket. Our aesthetic was that being in tune was bourgeois conventionalism of the worst kind. But, a professional even then, Marc slowed the tape down so Jack and the song were in some kind of sync. In retrospect it was probably the right decision.
When I listen back to ‘Dont Give Up On Me’ I hear how much it speeds up. I remember the banter that night was to quote a phrase by Guy Stevens to the effect that all great rock and roll speeds up. What I hadn’t fully grasped then was that the converse did not necessarily hold true. Not all rock and roll that speeds up is great. These two tracks are pretty cool though.
This recording was definitely a high point for us. We were unselfconscious in our approach and bowled over that Eamonn and Og would want to do a single for us.We got the whole thing recorded and mixed in one night. I think the session went from something like 8pm to 6am but I could be a bit off in those times. I remember having to leave at some point before the mixing began. I was finishing a year in college and I had exams the next morning. I felt very rock and roll sitting in the exam hall that day. Who else there had made a record the night before, I wondered.
The single came back really quickly and a couple of weeks later we played a few gigs to publicise it. I remember one in Barnstormers on Townsend St. They had a cigarette machine on the stage, which was tiny and right beside the bar. People would buy smokes while you played, interrupting the band to get 20 Superking and challenging you to make something of it. But the place was a biker pub so no-one ever quibbled. It was that kind of venue. And Dead Elvis was that kind of label: eccentric, a little scary at times, but very memorable and always rock and roll.
