The days of all-star ensembles gathering in a recording studio for some overblown and over-earnest effort in the name of charity are thankfully gone. In an interesting twist to the plot, a motley crew of underground, overground and barely on the ground singers and characters have just released a fun lovin', party poppin' and seasonally apt tune.
The fusion of Prince's '1999' with 'Let's Go Crazy' is a million miles away from the bombastic self-righteousness of many 'celebrity' efforts, but still strives to raise as much money as possible for Our Lady's Children's Hospital in Crumlin.
For anyone with even a passive interest in contemporary Irish music, the roll-call of scary monsters and super freaks is bound to raise an odd eyebrow. Paddy Casey, The Chicks, Iarla O'Lionaird, Aidan Walsh, Count Tornado, Johnny Pyro, Deko from Striknein DC, Ger Whelan, Damian Dempsey, Nina Hynes, Super Bad Brad, Elvis 3, The Sofas, Mick Tiernay, The Luvvies and Karl Hendrix are just some of the artists behind the project.
"For ages I've thought that Prince's '1999 'was such a great tune," explains project co-ordinator Dermot Doran. "I realised that there is absolutely fuck all out for the millennium as any means of celebration or commemoration. I was talking to Richie McDonagh and Paddy Dunning, and Paddy said he'll let me use the studio and Richie agreed to help me get everything together.
"I can say with absolute certainty that this was by far the easiest thing that I was ever involved with in terms of winning people's enthusiasm and support," he continues. "Anyone we asked just jumped at the opportunity and got going. The whole thing, from recording to finished product took only three weeks. I picked a launch date before we'd even recorded the thing. The idea was to have it out only for one month, just a great little one-off to raise money and have a lot of fun. There was no deep thought involved or arsing around. We did the recording alone in three days flat. Everybody got their lines spot on within two takes. "
The involvement did not stop at the rock glitterati usually found onstage in either Doran's or the Music Centre. Dermot wanted to produce half an hour of material so after a few phone calls to DMC Mixing Champion DJ Mek and Dublin techno stalwart Warren Kiernan it was of a case of "Superstar DJs! Here we go!", with not just one but four dance mixes, from a scratchtastic contrbution from Mek to Warren K's tranced out chimes.
"This is the first time Mek has released anything in over four years!" enthuses Doran. "Warren has never got stuff out there either. You could say that I am a persuasive guy! You have people like Aisha from Niki Taewan involved, who is completely unheard of, but she's an absolute genius. It'd be nice if a few of the people on board ended up going massive and this became a prized collectors' item. And with the likes of Paddy Casey, Neon, Chicks and Iarla O'Lionaird on the crew that is by no means unrealistic."
"We've already sold out 500 copies from the launch alone," continues Dermot. "The deal was that everyone coming to the launch party had to buy a CD because we were giving them free food and drink for three hours. So you had people like Dermott Hayes forking out their fivers. Even Huey (Fun Lovin' Criminals and old NYC buddy of Dermot's) handed over his fiver! We have another 1,500 copies pressed ready to be distributed in the shops or you can buy it direct either from Doran's or the Music Centre."
So what are the chances of the Christmas Number One slot?
"I don't know how many copies you need to get into the charts in Ireland, but all I know is that we are going for a realistic target of 2,000, so that's ten grand for the hospital. If it's Number One in the hospital that's all that matters. We proved that you can take what may seem like a naff idea and, by making it fun, you can make it work. This was so much fun that every year I'm going to get a few characters together and release a song for charity. It's all good." n
* Let's Go Crazy 1999 by the Temple Bar Allstars is out now in all good record stores.