Back in their terrifying heyday, they threw pigs’ heads around on stage, covered themselves in muck, provided Marilyn Manson with a career and wrote ‘Community Games’ for Aidan Walsh. Having escaped the clutches of a sinister born-again Christian turned transvestite, they’re now making movies with Neil Jordan, dining with Damien Hirst and consorting with Tony Blair. All in all, it’s been a long, strange trip for The Virgin Prunes
The future in nifty twelve-point type, summoned for you out of the ether by the Oracle of Hot Press, the redoubtable, all-powerful, spookily omniscient, scarily prescient, frighteningly knowledgeable but really quite friendly when you get to know him, Old Hayden. Read it and live better
Lazy, hazy days indeed. While The Master of the Universe made his glorious presence felt in Dublin, Stock, Aiken and Waterman belched out a ghastly amount of dirge in London, working puppets like the god-awful Rick Astley to the bone in an effort to combat the wave of hip-ho and house music that gripped the city in the summer.
THE SUBTONICS are young, gifted . . . and angry. Having made a name for themselves through their guerilla promotional tactics, they now tell EAMON SWEENEY that we re coming close to the end of rock n roll in Ireland.
Fun Lovin' Criminal, pizza joint owner and garbage mogul – Huey Morgan is a man of many talents. To that you can add a film stealing cameo as a psycho-tranny in Shimmy Marcus' beleagured but proud drug mule caper Headrush.
I’d always have said that Irish people were good at huddling. Our history and our climate, not to mention the controlling influence of the Roman Catholic Church, had tended to give us an inward-looking aspect. We had a thing about bars, matter a damn how dark or gloomy they might be. What we wanted, it seemed, was good place to whisper and to hide.
LIAM FAY investigates the strange phenomenon of the RAINBOW PARTY, a pseudo-democratic movement dedicated to the abolition of politics and politicians , and meets its leader, the enigmatic RAINBOW GEORGE.
Between near-misses involving oncoming mobile libraries and a post-9/11 funding collapse, it’s taken six years for Shimmy Marcus’ drugs caper to make the transition from award winning screenplay to theatrical release.
A disquieting true-life tale of family intrigue, child abuse and inept judicial proceedings, capturing the friedmans is one of the most compelling and acclaimed documentaries of recent years. Tara Brady talks to the film’s director, Andrew Jarecki.
It’s the guide Ladbrokes, the Central Bank, Mystic Meg and Mark Lawrenson turn to at the start of each year – Jackie Hayden’s cultural, sporting and political forecasts for the forthcoming twelve months.
Exclusive: Kevin Shields, the missing presumed lost genius of Irish rock, re-emerges to tell the truth about sandbags and barbed wire, the making of Loveless, early Dublin days with Gavin Friday, Liam O Maonlai and U2, and his Bafta-winning work on Lost in Translation.
Aside from “boosts for the whole country”, “taking our place among the greats” and all the other woolly notions which surrounded the Republic qualifying for germany, Stephen Roche winning the Tour de France and U2 finally cracking America, 1987 will hardly go down as one of the most memorable of rock’n’roll years …
While 1987 will of course be recognised as the year U2 conquered the world, spare a thought for those whose careers begin beneath the shadow of ‘The Joshua Tree’.
Dermot Doran tells Eamon Sweeney how the most unusual collaboration of the year was born, how its going to raise some much-needed Christmas cash for Our Lady's Hospital Crumlin . . . and of course . . . why its time to party like it's 1999!
30th Anniversary Retrospective: From indie flicks to Hollywood classics, Irish gems to world cinema masterpieces, Tara Brady here selects the top 101 films of the past 30 years.
YOU CAN’T KEEP a good man down dept. Having found not one but three new homes, Aidan Walsh returns to action on June 16th with an over-18s blow-out at Dublin’s Sallynoggin Inn.
