Horslips - June 26

Less a rock band than a Stonehenge-sized landmark in Irish cultural mythology, Horslips emerged from the late '60s freak scene proffering a fascinating hybrid of traditional Irish music, prog rock, glam flash and pretty much everything but the Withnail and I kitchen sink.

The band’s debut Happy To Meet, Sorry To Part was the fastest-selling Irish album in years, but their second album The Táin was the masterwork: a concept album/song-cycle based around the Irish saga (translated by Thomas Kinsella some years before), which contained the song that would become a de facto national anthem, 'Dearg Doom'.

They were huge in Ireland, but incessant touring failed to break them in America, and they split after a series of legendary Ulster Hall gigs in 1980. They weren't forgotten. Indeed, seldom has a band's reform been so strenuously demanded by the fans. Thus, after a lengthy battle to regain their publishing, they re-released their back catalogue and reformed for a Late Late Show appearance in 2005, followed by an Other Voices set and a spate of shows in the O2 and Odyssey Arena last year.

Now, they finally return to their old stomping ground of Cork, for what will doubtless be a highlight of Live At The Marquee 2010.

DID YOU KNOW?
• One of the band's mid-70s National Stadium concerts is immortalised in Pat McCabe’s novel The Dead School. The stage adaptation reproduced the concert in a shoebox.
• At the band’s Whitla Hall show in Belfast, captured on the live album The Belfast Gigs, Charles O’Connor marked the end of Act I by tossing his fiddle into the audience.
• AC/DC’s Malcolm Young has named Horslips as one of his favourite bands.
• In March 2004 three Horslips enthusiasts, Jim Nelis, Stephen Ferris and Paul Callaghan, mounted an exhibition of Horslips memorabilia in The Orchard Gallery in Derry. It was opened by the band, who played five songs unplugged, their first public appearance in 24 years.
• In 2008 original drummer Eamon Carr published The Origami Crow, Journey Into Japan, World Cup Summer 2002, part travelogue, poetry collection, Basho homage and sports commentary.