Carraig na hÉireann

03 Sep, 2026

The Audio Version

Listen to the episode on Mixcloud

This is an audio show. I’d always say listen to the episode first. However, it’s always useful to have the written version to read, skim, delve further in to the links, listen to the songs, buy the albums and so on. So enjoy the article version below too.

The Article Version

In this episode

• Cryin' Shame – Cheap Freaks
• Beep Beep Teddy – The Deadlians
• Lovey – Burglar
• yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah – Guests
• Tapeworm – Marrowbone
• It's Fantastic – Burning Love Jumpsuit
• An aside on Heather Small
• 25 – Thumper

Cryin' Shame – Cheap Freaks

You know what’s a crying shame? These feckin’ jokers didn't send out the tape I bought off them. That's the Dubs for you. You just can't trust them, always out to pull one over on you¹.

Now, the missing tape could also be that these fellas disbanded a number of years ago and nobody mans the Bandcamp anymore. OR it's just those thieving Dubs. It could also be that I only paid 5 euro for that tape and they couldn't be bothered posting it. So who knows really what's going on.

That song is by the aptly titled Cheap Freaks from the album ‘Live at the Olympia’. There’s a good motorcycle-rock style going on there. Garage-punk is how they define themselves but sounds more early to mid-70s, bluesy, hard rock, dirtbag approach. Rock & roll even. I don't think punk swings? And some of the tracks on this album definitely do swing.

It's amazing how stuff from just 15 years ago has almost completely disappeared from the internet. Broken sites, dead links, the record label's gone so songs aren’t on streaming services. These guys must have been big on the scene? The Olympia is a good venue, can hold a few hundred people. There's a video of them live at Whelan's in 2009 on YouTube, it was uploaded in 2012 and it has 55 views. Meaning that video has a view rate of about 3.5 per year. And this is a tight as hell, popular, established, on the Irish scene, band. Man, showbiz is cruel.

There's more videos of them at Tower Records worth checking out. They are extremely skinny men in extremely tight-fitting black clothes with a kind of Paul Weller/Beatles bowl haircut (Grandpa Simpson voice, which was the style at the time!). It’s funny, the person who uploaded this video has a link in their bio to their MySpace and the band's website was on Blogger. Remember Blogger? Imagine talking about these sites to a young person, you may as well talk about the pyramids. Look as we delve into recession-era Dublin. What artifacts can we unearth from these immiserated people? The depths of the recession, maybe that's why these rockers were so skinny?

I liked this review of an album of theirs from Roctober magazine:

“Too often the reality (and appeal) of trashy, garage rock-adjacent bands is that it’s hard to tell them apart, or to say what makes them special – most of them just capture the vibe right and channel chaos. That is not the case with these Freaks. While this album is certainly trashy, fuzzy, nasty, and rough, it’s never able to hide theincredible writing, playing, and creative talents of its participants behind frayed edges. Guitar lines that channel blues, country, classic rock, punk and Pacific Northwest frat, hooks that could catch a great white shark, and genuine menace abound. These Cheaps ain’t no trick!”

This is from Maximum Rock and Roll, June 2011:

I bet the Guinness flows like fucking water when CHEAP FREAKS deliver their superb fuzzed-out garage jams to unsuspecting bar patrons around Dublin. Second release from this Irish quartet and it’s definitely a winner. Four trashy rock ‘n’ roll stompers sure to make denim-clad punks bounce off the walls and spill stout everywhere.

Alright, leaning in to the Irishisms a wee mite thick there lads, haha.

Now you're wondering, wait, if you don’t have the cassette, what are using for the audio of the episode? You had one job Fionntán & Tapes! You lied to us through songs. This is a fucking outrage.

Well, friends, I'm going to open the kilt, as it were, and reveal that I've done it once before. There was a previous tape on a previous show. I'd ordered it but it hadn't arrived yet and I wanted to get the show out so I just popped in ye olde .wav file instead of recording the tape.

Then maybe you're thinking, maybe he doesn't have tapes at all? Maybe this whole show is a sham, buying tapes is just some thing he cooked up.

Yes, that's right, I am Orson Welles in F for Fake wearing a cape and coming in on screen saying, it’s all a mirage…this is all a trick…. No hay banda! Il n'est pas de orquestra! Maybe this is just some Chinese kid who deepfaked Fionntán’s voice and is sitting in Shenzhen running QwenMax or whatever.

Friends, I will hold a steadfast rule that I will only play music that is from tapes I bought. I feel it's important I paid some money to the people for the music you will hear on this show. And I'll do as best as I can that it's the actual tape. That's my vow to you.

But in this episode we're rocking out, particularly with rock music, not always from Ireland, but of Ireland. Some connection to this fuckin’ dank swamp we call home.

I don't listen to rock as much as I used to. I would say I'm getting old but then rock is an old man's game now as well. Although there's plenty of young rock acts out there but I'm just not very clued in. I'm too far away up in these wet barren moorlands of Donegal – I don't know what's happening in Dublin and Cork and other cities. But listening to these different bands, putting this together, I did get nostalgic for that time in my life where I was seeing lots of bands regularly and just being very into new bands and going to shows and album reviews and the culture of it all. I guess there was a time where rock and the people who talked rock were put on a cultural pedestal. Record store guys, rock critics, their words would be taken very seriously.

Thinking about all this, I re-read High Fidelity, you know, the book. It was really good, it's more a relationship book than a music book, with North-London vibes. I did a search in the ebook for the word ‘tape’ and tape is in the book 55 times. Cassette is in there 14 times. What a bygone era. It's just gone, novels don't talk about tapes anymore.

But the rules for a mixtape are in the book. You've got to start on a stonker, and then you've got to amp it up even more, but then you've got to cool it off as well.

We started off our mix with some Dubliners, but we've got more Dubs now. Just wait for the organ solo on this, it's very nice, and some good beeps.

Beep Beep Teddy – The Deadlians

God damn, I love the Deadlians, I really do.

They’re good Dubs. Dubs come in many flavours. Some I like, some I…have different opinions on. There's a kind of Roddy Doyle/Diarmuid Ferreter type of person, they're slightly out of the city centre, but not too far out, they’re straight talkers, can sniff bullshit, no time for roundabout culchie talking or high pretensions either. That's a good Dub.

Anyway, the Deadlians are:

a Dublin based band with a cult following playing folk songs, punk rock, psychedelic segues. With thumping drums, a humming synth, evocative guitars and inventive vocal ornamentation, The Deadlians come together in catchy arrangements. They are looking to create their own identity in the alternative folk music scene. Their music is phenomenal. With melodic and rhythmic tunes, their sound evokes a faintly darker edge to a new generation of Irish alternative trad/folk groups performing today. Dublin man Sean Fitzgerald, singer, balladeer, songwriter, poet, storyteller and musician fronts The Deadlians started in 2017 as a four piece are now an Irish trad rock five-piece.

I think the Deadlians are great. They might be my favourite Irish rock band right now. They have an album called Rid the Land of Greedy Toads which is fantastic. Their first ever single was called ‘I don’t wanna ride yer aul one anymore’ which is probably the greatest rock song name of all time. Incredible tune as well. Also, 1.4 million listens on Spotify, which is comforting to know that there's that many people out there with great taste.

That song is on is a compilation tape A Litany of Failures: Volume V which is a collection of independent artists from across Ireland. It veers more towards the rock side of things but not entirely either. It's put together by Danny Carroll, Stevie Lennox, and Paul O'Connor. Naturally enough, there's there's four of these compilations previously and three of those are available on streaming services. It's a great way to find check out lots of irish bands, you will 100% find cool tunes there.

There's a fella called Eoghan O’Sullivan, he’s one of these people who just doggedly for years are dedicated to covering local music, new music, just getting the word about new artists out there. Real heroes, like journalist middlemen, that's Eoghan. He runs a podcast going since 2015 interviewing Irish acts The Point of Everything and it’s also on Substack.

He had the Litany of Failures guys on in 2023 to talk about the fourth volume. Where it came from, how the three of them got together, their own music as well. I really liked the part where they said why they made it and their answer felt like why I'm making this show².

Danny: I mean, I even feel now with Litany of Failures, the only reason it exists is because there's a clear and obvious void there. Like, it's an open goal. It seems obvious that this kind of thing should exist and it baffles me that nobody else who's more savvy does it. Because we're not very driven or savvy, it's very much one of many plates that is spinning in our lives.

There's also this great exchange about physical media.

Eoghan: Hopefully this doesn't come off as a dickhead question or anything but could it also have been a Spotify playlist as well? Why did you want to make something physical about it? Is it again just marking the year?

Stevie: I really have this romantic idea of someone thumbing through a charity shop in 20 years through all the the Perry Como records all disintegrated and they find this little Litany of Failures thing. And there's enough on the internet that exists about it for it to be researchable. I think we're all trying not to be as jaded as possible about the music thing but you have these lovely little things when you're a teenager that you aspire to and I think the idea of finding this actual item that will exist well until it gets trashed or scratched too much, maybe there's some perpetuities. It's a bit of a an old romantic notion, you know?

Danny: The artifact's important. I remember finding my aunts and uncles’ records under a bed in my granny's house in Scotland as a teenager and it being a window into all this music from the late 1970s and early 80s that I’d just hadn't heard yet. And I guess maybe it’s different, everything is accessible to people but at the same time I think it's important as well for the bands to have a physical document and artifact. For us, I think when we did the second Litany of Failures and we wanted to put it on vinyl, part of it was none of these bands have even been on a vinyl record before, ourselves included, and it's nice to have something tangible that you can hold in your hands.

Stevie: Definitely. The thing I love about the record experience, CD or any physical format, not that you can't actively listen participate in active listening with digital because i do it all the time, but there's something really nice about putting it on and making it the centerpiece of the of the music listening event, so you engage with it like going to the cinema or watching tv.

I like what they said about the importance of these bands having something in their hand where they can say, I was part of that, and that might turn up in decades hence. In a way, as we saw with the Cheap Freaks, that digital things just don't last that long.

On the music as a centerpiece. I did a wee live version of this show – and by wee I do mean wee. There was a few people there, I played tapes, did a presentation and there was a group discussion after. Big thanks to Gary at The Arcade Dungloe. It was great to just sit and talk and actively listen to music with people, with friends and talk about what we just heard.

Think about it, when did you last sit in a chair and listen to one recorded song and not be doing something else? No dishes, no driving, no nothing. Just listen to the song. And then, furthermore, when's the last time you did that with someone you know? Genuinely, it's probably been decades for most people, which is mad.

For me the tape is an instrument. It's an object that helps change the way listen to music in a better or more engaged way. I don't think tapes are the answer exactly, I feel something else is needed in future but maybe for now the tape asks the right questions.

Lovey – Burglar

Isn't that great? That's so good. It's so well constructed. Its bits fit so well together (not that a song is Lego), it just feels fresh, soft. That descending thing it does at the pre-chorus. 🎶 holding on to the tip…of your sleeve and everybody’s…watching🎶. That's dreamy songwriting. That's perfect. Perfect.

The band are called Burglar³. From their site:

Burglar is an alternative rock band based in Dublin, Ireland. Willow and Eduardo formed Burglar after meeting in college in 2021 and bonding over their love of alternative acts such as Stereolab and Smashing Pumpkins. Their backgrounds couldn’t be more different; Eduardo grew up around the punk rock scene in his hometown of Goiânia, Brazil, while Willow comes from the indie-pop scene in Dublin. However, their blend of inspirations has given Burglar a unique and addictive sound. Willow’s dissociative lyricism and Eduardo’s confessional style result in energetic and catchy songs with interchangeable vocal leads and omnipresent harmonic work, alongside distorted guitars and buzzing synths.

I did find out that Willow is Willow Hannon, daughter of Neil Hannon of Divine Comedy fame. Which is cool⁴.

I looked up the video for the song and it's directed by a Cathal Eustace. It's so funny and charming. Just the band having fun, dancing around in front of some green screen, in some flat with all these random videos playing in the background – spaceships, ants, old cartoons, some astronaut with the brazilian flag.

It reminded me a lot of another video, God I Iove it, although less charming maybe more slightly unhinged, but i've watched it so many times. It’s John Mayer’s New Light. Now, I don't know a lot about John Mayer, I think he's some kind of big, bland, mainstream guitar guy? But that video is probably one of the funniest music videos I’ve ever seen. Just deadpan, him singing this soft rock song and all these cheesy graphics in the background. Apparently he did it some random place that does music videos for birthday parties. I would bet my bottom dollar⁵ that Cathal Eustace saw the Mayer video, he must have. Well done to Burglar for making a New Light-esque video.

What's cool is where I heard this tune. It's on a compilation, BLAB. The BLAB 001 tape.

Who is BLAB? What is BLAB?

Well, BLAB:

BLAB is a new Irish music quarterly which brings together the physical music format, a print edition and two live music showcases to provide a unique, artist-centric platform for musicians in the Irish alternative scene. Curation, collection and connection are at the heart of BLAB’s mission; one which celebrates an ever-evolving but always urgent music landscape. Each quarterly BLAB edition consists of a:

• Limited Edition Cassette Tape featuring four Irish artists
• Limited Edition 24p Magazine with interviews, features and artwork
• Live showcase featuring all four artists
• Fringe showcase curated by the four BLAB artists

I'm on the email newsletter and when I got it I thought this is quite well written. Not in some stupid AI way, just in a professional, to-the-point way. So it made sense that it’s put together by a journalist. He’s Barry Landy, who's also a football reporter, mainly covers the League of Ireland I believe.

I was really surprised to see anyone putting out tapes, let alone something aimed at younger bands and the public. It’s great though.

This is from the cassette page:

They are tactile, tangible and crucially, relatively inexpensive. The click-clack of cassette case and tape deck is a sound that resonates with so many of a certain age. Increasingly, it’s appeal is reaching newer and younger audiences as listeners crave a closeness and connection to their favourite musicians that streaming simply cannot provide.

Coupled with our support of homegrown Irish artists, BLAB seeks to tap into these duel passions with the BLAB cassette tape. These quarterly editions will act as a living, breathing document of our alternative scene and a celebration of those musicmakers who thrive within it.

Again, I just want to say well done to well done to Barry and all in BLAB. Just really trying to make something, you know? I'm sure he has a regular day job of writing and regular life commitments and he’s schlepping from Louth to Dublin for gigs. Probably for no money. Just trying to help get these bands together, get people together and promote new bands. Real hero work.

I have the first two tapes from BLAB and I'm very happy to say I just ordered the third. They have a gig on in Dublin on September 28th that I'd love to get to. I'm happy to be the older folk hanging out at the back with a pint. People are like, is he organising it? Has he wandered into the wrong bar? But t’is a bit of a long road from Donegal to Dublin, so we'll see.

yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah – Guests

That is one of those very infectious but slightly off-kilter songs that just gets lodged in your head. I like it though, I really like it a lot. You'll be there a day or two after, you're hanging up the washing and it'll come back in your head and you try to say the lyrics:

Do you put your hands in your front pockets? Back pockets? Side pockets? Do you go out at night? What do you do at night? Do you speak to the public often? Do you know about the public speaking? Do you go out at night time? Do you put your hands in your pockets? Do you put your hands in your pockets? Do you carry things? Do you carry things? Do you carry things? Do you carry things around a long time?

Please, at home do an impression of it yourself. People more trained with English accents can probably tell, does she sound Manchester? There's a waft of a Coronation Street going on with her voice.

yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah is by a duo called Guests and they have an album called Common Domestic Bird which came out this year. What you hear is basically their approach, it's these really cool synths and sounds going on at the back and then her talking/singing poetry over those sounds.

This is a bit of an extended extract but I love the writing for it on the album page.

Guests is the home recording project of Jessica Higgins and Matthew Walkerdine. Vaguely named as such to avoid any problems with the poster if they pull out of a gig (which has only happened once, about a year and half before any songs were actually written to be fair) but also to capture a sense of reverse hospitality. That is, arriving at your door with a bottle of good wine (can’t turn up empty handed) or a fist full of savoury or sweet snacks (time of day dependant); oversharing at the afters (and then passing out on your couch); reading to your toddler while you make their lunch or put everything back where it was meant to go (only to get torn apart again). So, something about what happens when private worlds meet each other, making or having been made a space for. But at times, it’s a different kind of intimacy, a temporal or material one, like the feeling of crisp fresh sheets and abundant and soft, body-part appropriate towels in a hotel in a city you’ve been to before and love to go back to.

But Fionntán! Íosa Críost! Is this not a show about rock of Ireland? By and for only the truest of Gaels? And you're playing…English bands?? You, you… seoinín man?

Now, I’m not entirely sure what a Gael is. I mean, I like Gaels, I’m into Gaels but, well, you little Irelander, questioning me on the Eireanness of my choices. This lovely tune by guests is on a compilation cassette put out by an Irish cassette label: Diet of Worms. The name of the compilation is The Sky Was A Mouth Again and so all the tracks on it are very loose interpretations of that old song Louie Louie. You know the one, it's been covered a billion times –  🎶 Louie Louie! Oh oh! Ohhhh oohh ooohh…oh we gotta go! 🎶

It was first released by Richard Berry in ’57 and the tune is based on an Afro-Cuban tune ‘El Loco Cha Cha’ by bandleader René Touzet. Louie Louie is the world's most covered rock song on record with more than 2,000 published covers of it. But the group that made the most popular, most well-known, version is a group called The Kingsmen from Oregon in the USofA. They covered it in 1963 and made that real garage rock version.

And because the singer in The Kingsmen mumbles the lyrics and is trying to do a weird Jamaican patois like Richard Berry did originally, people completely misunderstood what he's saying in the song. They think he's singing about laying down with ladies and taking one home tonight and many other smutty innuendos. I mean, it's the 60s, people have no way to know what the original lyrics were. Rumours of the raunchy lyrics just spread through from state to state, there was no possible way to check. The FBI even had a version that they believed were the lyrics – entirely inaccurately. There were all sorts of bannings on the song and controversy in the States.

There's a good quote from this fella in Marion County in Indiana, the deputy prosecutor, Leroy K., he said:

The record is an abomination of out-of-tune guitars, an overbearing jungle rhythm and clanging cymbals. In fact, the record is an indictment of the taste of the American public. But I couldn't say one way or another whether the lyrics are obscene.

The song has taken on a mythic and iconic status of rebellion, disruption, a kicking against.

Diet of Worms asked lots of independent musicians to make their own version of Louie Louie and they put this compilation tape together to raise money for the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign. As they say:

Spanning genres from drone to noise, folk to industrial, this collection offers a radical reinterpretation of one of music’s most mythic and enigmatic songs.

And Gavin Duffy writing an article on The Thin Air site:

With The Sky Was A Mouth Again, we wanted to flip that legacy inside out – less reverence, more rupture. Rather than a tribute or covers compilation, this release brings together artists from around the world to pull ‘Louie Louie’ apart – reframing and reimagining it as a sprawling, unstable architecture of sound and resistance.

In a time of algorithmic outrage and fleeting attention spans, we hope The Sky Was A Mouth Again serves as a reminder that music – especially when it resists legibility – can still hold space for protest, empathy and defiance.

I wondered with the Guests song above what the Louie Louie connection was but if you do listen, that organ-synth sound in the background is doing the riff in its own slow way.

Obviously, of course, please do chip in to the cause. You can buy it digitally or donate, you can add extra money to your donation, get the files, the tape, whatever suits you. All money goes to Medical Aid for Palestinians and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency.

Tapeworm – Marrowbone

Man, very good, the end of that song especially when it hits the full hard, angular groove. It does everything I want from a rock song. I hope in the live version they keep that groove going for like 10 minutes with some insane squalling guitar sounds over it. That would be my dream. Basically, Sister Ray by the Velvet Underground. I always want people to do that.

As for the band, from their album page on Bandcamp:

Marrowbone is a 3 piece heavy experimental post punk band from Dublin. The tracks do weird shit at the intersection of dark, metal-tinged bass lines, jumpy basement rock, and caterwauling vocals. A clattering séance in the weirdo woods for anyone with wounds to lick, heads to bang, arses to shake, or fascist systems to give their two fingers to. First full length album, get in.

Shannon is on drums, Aaron is on guitar, and Meyer on vocals and bass⁶.

Add Meyler to the list of hard rockin’ lead singers who also play bass. There's not many. There's Lemmy in Motorhead, technically Kim Deal on Gigantic but she plays guitar in The Breeders and…for the life of me I can’t think of anyone else. Mastodon lead I think? Point being it's a short list. Except obviously you have the greatest Irish rock frontperson of all time with Phil Lynott, he played bass. You could say Paul Mccartney but he wasn’t your typical bass player, he was the main engine, song guy, guitar and piano producing man.

I think it's mainly that playing bass and singing is hard, especially if the bass has its own lines going on and they're different from the vocals. Plus you want to be back and hanging out by the drums and getting the rhythm right.

Anyhoo, Meyler, great bassing, great caterwauling.

It's Fantastic – Burning Love Jumpsuit

Burning Love Jumpsuit were:

an Underground Irish band of movie obsessive shut ins who had access to a computer. They were active between 1991 – 2002. A three-piece of proto-edgelords, (D.F. Dresden, Smiley, J. Bassetti) Burning Love Jumpsuit jammed and sampled their way to notoriety in the 1990s, making experimental music that was equal parts thought-provoking funk and stroke-inducing gunk. A penchant for sleazy Americana, obscure movies and exploitative daytime telly inspired a pool of samples to delight and disturb.

The tape I have is a compilation of their work called ‘Hell Banknote’.

Let’s upack these references.

Elvis Presley, we all know Elvis. Well-known man for a jumpsuit, right? A jumpsuit is like a single, big onsie, something an Elvis impersonator would wear, a big spangly white suit. And he only wore one ever red jumpsuit, one of the three pinwheel suits Elvis had. There is a picture of Elvis in this red jumpsuit on the cover of the 1972 single Burning Love and that is where fans got the nickname for this suit, which is the, you’ve guessed it, Burning Love jumpsuit.

You can view all of Elvis’ jumpsuits at this wonderful page with further backstory. His jumpsuits were all designed by one guy, Bill Bellew, who did stage costumes for lots of people: Ella Fitzgerald, The Jacksons, The Band. Bellew explained that they were inspired by Napoleon's wardrobe and that he chose them because they would frame and draw attention to Presley's face. But overall they’re just incredible, I mean in terms of music fashion it's probably the single most famous item of all time?

Hell Banknote also known as Hell Money. There's a custom in China and other Asian countries where you burn a replica of money as an offering to say may this person be debt-free in the afterlife. ‘Hell’ here is an okayish translation of the Chinese concept of Diyu – think more a labyrinthine purgatory than little red imps sticking forks up your butt.

You actually get a hell banknote with the tape which is cool. If I pass on and you want to wish me good tidings and a debt-free afterlife you can burn that hell banknote from this tape at my funeral and will wish me well.

As for the song itself. ‘It’s Fantastic’ – if you don’t recognise that film reference when you hear it then don’t talk to me about movies. Ever. I mean this is one of the great lines of the 90s, if not all time, comedy lines.

The tape was put out by Nyahh Records in 2024. Nyahh are based in lovely Leitrim.

A home for sound collectors, noise makers and music builders who love a good Nyahh.

Don’t we all.

An aside on Heather Small

There's something I want to swing back to. That Point of Everything podcast episode I mentioned earlier has something else I wanted to bring up. The Litany of Failure guys talk about an in-joke they have where they always list Heather Small, the lead singer from M People, as one of the people they want on the compilation.

Eoghan: Isn't M People 'Dreams Can Come True'? Isn't that them?

Stevie: That's Gabrielle I believe.

Danny: Heather Small, she's on the 1998 re-record of Perfect Day for Comic Relief.

Eoghan: Look at this knowledge!

Danny: She does the ‘You're going to reap what you sow’ line. I’m not gonna impersonate her, she's one of a kind. When myself and Paul met to talk about Litany of Failures Volume Two, I remember us writing out a long list and then coming away with it and the name Heather Smalls being on there. I was like, I've not heard her actually, who's that? And then I looked it up and he had slipped a little in-joke into the list of Irish bands.

Stevie: We have a spreadsheet, a Litany spreadsheet, and Heather Small is a constant, a guiding light. One day.

Shoutout to Heather – really distinctive, big voice.

But my question from Irish rock music history, an important question, is this. Were Heather Small and Sinead O'Connor friends, or even acquaintances, in West London back in the early 90s?

Now, hear me out.

I was listening to Sinead's autobiography soon after she passed. And it's great, first half especially, she's an amazing reader, she's so funny, she's such a legend. So many interesting, great tales, stories, great perspective. Definitely check out the audiobook version.

There's an early part in it where she's about 19, maybe 20. And it's where her fascination with reggae and Rastafarianism blooms. She hangs out at Portobello Market in West London and she goes there because her manager is the Boomtown Rats manager, Fachtna Ó Ceallaigh. He gets all his dub records from a friend of his, Leroy who has a stall there. So Sinead goes to Portobello Market and she sees all these young guys playing reggae records doing their own verses over the records but then there's also these Rastafarian guys there and she's fascinated by these older guys. She starts hanging around them, asking them lots of questions, what's your beliefs? What are your thoughts?

God knows what the lads thought but it sounds like (from what she says) they liked her vibe. I mean, who wouldn't like Sinead's vibe?

Portobello Market you may know from the movie Notting Hill. It did/does have a reputation for music and bands and artists around the area. The Clash were around there. Van Morrison was also a resident of the area – in Slim Slow Slider he sings 🎶 Saw you walkin’ down by the Ladbroke Groooove this morning 🎶. And, it's funny, I was reading High Fidelity and you know his posh, superly overconfident, ex-girlfriend Charlie? Played by Catherine Zeta-Jones in the film version. The main guy Rob gets back in touch with her: “She’s still living in London. I get her phone number from Directory Enquiries – she lives in Ladbroke Grove, of course”⁷.

My point being, Heather Marguerita Small. She's from Ladbroke Grove and she's obviously singing from a young age, a huge passion in her life. And she's just a year and a half, maybe two years older than Sinead O'Connor. And Sinead is working on her music and she's hanging around Ladbroke Grove and Portobello Market all the time. Heather Small's there, Sinead O'Connor's definitely there, they're the same age and they're in and around Ladbroke Grove.

I want to know, were they friends? Vaguely familiar? They must have been on the same train at least? Did they bump into each other? Did Heather pass by and be like, who's that little lady hanging round the Rastafarian auld lads? Does anyone know?

This is an important point in Irish rock music history! A formation point in Sinead's life that Heather Small may be witness to. That's my open question.

25 – Thumper

THUMPER will lead us out today.

THUMPER are a noise-pop sextet from Dublin, delivering bubble-gum psych through a wall of sonic death.

Sadly, they're wrapping up with their last show in the Button Factory in October. Not sure why yet. They've been going nine years as a six-piece, so that's a huge success. They had a great run, European tours, lots of radio play. I mean, fair fucks to them.

But my wee cousin David Campbell, he plays bass with them. He's the nephew of keyboardist Martin Campbell who played keyboard with Big Tom's band. Is David therefore a nepo-baby? Did Martin use his bigshot, showband, Big Tom industry connections to hook up David and THUMPER? Well, we'll never know for sure⁸.

Am I flagrantly using favouritism on this show? And the answer is yeah. Hell yeah! This is not a meritocracy. If I know you, if I’m friends with you, if I like you, if you're from Donegal, if I don't like you and you're from Donegal, then you're going right to top of the list. I have no qualms about that.

Speaking of Dún na nGall. I saw THUMPER in The Windmill in Brixton in London. And that's owned by a Donegal couple. They're legends, live above the place with their dogs. I bought this tape at The Windmill. I couldn't even play it for three, four years after because I didn't have a tape player. But now I do, and so I play it and enjoy it.

The tune does what I really like, there's a song and it hits in and there’s a catchy chorus and repeat but the middle point where they just go nuts and hit a groove and just keep at it for ages. I love when people do that. This one they recorded during lockdown and live-streamed it out.

But that'll do it. Rock on. Good having yous over. As my granddad used to say, call often but don't stay too long!

G’luck.