HOW WAS IT FOR YOU?

RE-MAKE, RE-MODEL

1993 WILL hardly become a by-word for musical innovation, since even the best of the year’s output (Auteurs, Radiohead, Revenants etc) were merely fine remoulds of previous retreads. In fact, what was happening within the music industry was often far more captivating than what came out on disc, whether it was George Michael’s massive law-suit against Sony or the circus surrounding Michael Jackson’s alleged predilection for young boys.

On the home front we had Warner’s Peter Price gamely trying to justify the high cost of CDs on the grounds that companies needed the profits to re-invest in new talent. Well, it certainly wasn’t being invested in Irish talent. Warners’ own roster of home-based acts amounted in 1993 to An Emotional Fish (since departed), Enya (who released nothing) and Christy Hennessy. Not that their rivals fared much better, and the cream of this year’s Irish crop (Revenants, Mick Hanly, Afternoons, Lir, Mary Black, Altan etc.) came out on small Irish labels or were recorded by the acts themselves, a healthy trend of which we should see more in ’94.

Cassette piracy, with its alleged connection to paramilitaries in the North, continued to dog the industry, no doubt exacerbated by the widening gulf between the decreasing cost of duplicating a tape and the actual retail price. Meanwhile rumours spread that, with both DCC and Mini-Disc formats dying a death, the industry might have to kill off one format, as they had done with vinyl, in the hopes that the other might thrive.

The younger Turks in the business eventually got fed up with the dominance of ‘Jurassic Hits’ radio and when the Jobs In Music campaign turned the spotlight on the anti-Irish elements in Irish radio there was a welcome and constructive response from many stations, while with others, sadly, it seemed to be more a case of Headless Chicken Syndrome.

Elsewhere in Irish radio, Cathal McCabe’s Bosnian-style ethnic music cleansing of Radio 1 took RTE a step further away from its entitlement to a license fee (as did RTE’s stultifyingly stupid carry-on over Head To Toe). Fortunately, radio fans of Irish and specialist musics could turn to BBC Radio Ulster for sustenance.

Predictions for 1994? 1) More questions to be asked the role of multi-national companies in Ireland, and not only in the entertainment business and 2) The Saw Doctors will not go away.

• Jackie Hayden

MACK ATTACK!

IT MAY be intangible, but I can still feel that elusive thing that made 1993 such a great year every time I listen to That Petrol Emotion’s Fireproof.

I remember the girlish rush of excitement I felt as Steve Mack walked onto the stage in the backstage Sin-É tent at Féile and am reminded that the Petrol’s performance that night renewed my passion for music, and restored my faith in the power of musicians to instil the most ordinary of Friday or Saturday nights with an overwhelming sense of occasion.

Among those acts who turned what might have been standard pub-bound nights into events to be cherished are Rage Against The Machine (a gig beyond description), The Cranberries (simply exquisite) and Engine Alley (better than they’ve ever been given credit for) all of them made the Tivoli feel a downright magical place.

Pearl Jam and Therapy? both brought out the fan beneath the critic with spectacular performances at Slane and Féile respectively and Vedder and co’s second album – proved that talent and not hype itself – breeds hype.

Most importantly – and most dramatically on my home turf – 1993 proved that for alternative music, the only way is up. The fact that alternative acts are encroaching on more typical Top 40 forms must in some way signify that value systems are changing and that the future of music will not be left to watered-down r&b, lowest common denominator love songs and techno techno techno.

Along with the increased prominence of alternative music has come the heightened profile of women working in that arena. Belly, Juliana Hatfield, The Breeders, Bjork, The Cranberries and Smashing Pumpkins all feature women and, at long last, Gina Arnold, an American rock writer consolidated women’s place in serious rock criticism with the publication of her superb book about Kurt and Co., Route 666: On The Road To Nirvana.

Roll on ’94.

• Tara McCarthy

TREADING WATER

OF ALL the epitaphs that could possibly be ascribed to 1993, perhaps the most accurate – and depressing - is ‘The year that rock ‘n’ roll finally ran out of ideas.’

Hopefully the next 12 months will prove me wrong and you can all have a good old snigger as some new bunch of six-string revolutionaries arrive on the scene to blast through the mediocrity but, if it’s the likes of Suede and the Lemonheads you’re looking to for salvation, you could be in for a rather long wait.

At least Jean Genie has the good grace to admit that he’s ripping off ‘Ziggy’-era David Bowie wholesale, Suede preferring instead to dress the misappropriated riffs and vocal inflections up in a spot of 90’s attitude and pass it off as their own creation. Strangely enough, it’s our colonial cousins who’ve blown the whistle on the scam, America’s refusal to clasp the band to their bosom suggesting that if Andy Warhol was right about this 15 minutes of fame lark, Suede are now entering the dying seconds of injury time.

It’s normally during dark days such as these that we look to the underground but what did the indie charts give us when we needed them – bleedin’ Riot Grrrl! Quite apart from the political naiveté and inverse sexism which makes their so-called ‘manifesto’ read like something out of a third form debating class, all Huggy Bear and their kiss curl compatriots have to offer musically are the sort of regurgitated punk rock cast-offs that even the UK Subs would turn their noses up at.

As it happened, it was the dance community who bleeped in to save the day. Orbital and Ultramarine both proved that, shock horror, rave culture does have its intelligent side and US3 borrowed from the past to create something that’s fresh, funky and, most important this, fun!

On the home front it was interesting – and perhaps telling – that the only bands to make a significant breakthrough overseas came from beyond the pale. The Sultans, Franks, Therapy? and D:Ream in the UK and The Cranberries in the US all demonstrated how effective treading an independent path can be.

Finally, I can’t let this opportunity pass without at least referring to the travesty and tragedy that was England’s premature exit from the World Cup. As a member of Graham Taylor’s now demobbed Red, White & Blue Barmy Army myself, I graciously accept your condolences and, ahem, wish Big Jack and the boys all the best in the States!

• Stuart Clark

BLANDING OUR

SO, THIS was the year in which all else was vanquished by V.R. Technology. Was it heck.

You didn’t need goggles or a Dataglove to experience Virtual Reality in 1993. You could flick on RTE any night of the week and there it was: A Cyberzone from Hell. Extra Extra/Mailbag/Ryantown/The Lyrics Board/Winning Streak etc. etc. it goes on and on until one cannot eat enough to vomit enough. Someone should find out who it is that actually makes the decisions in Montrose and then break every single bone in his or her head.

Musically, I’m sure 1993 will have its adherents – it really is hard to please none of the people none of the time – but to this pair of ears it was nothing special. For one thing, I’m glad the locals are sleepless in Seattle. It serves them right. In fact, I hope that they never have another peaceful night’s rest as long as they live.

This Grunge monster that they spawned is a horrible and obstinate beast that just will not lie down and die. It has given us nothing this past twelve months but fourth-rate Nirvana clones and absurd Kurtoon characters. Eventually, we might forgive but we should never forget.

Alternative music, as once we knew it, seems to be a thing of the past. The only genuinely worthwhile album from “left-field” that I heard was American Music Club’s Mercury. Most of the rest of the indie faves appear to have merely genned up on the Coles Notes to being Indie Faves and have little to offer but a smattering of quotations and references. There was probably more innovation and subversion per square inch of Kate Bush’s The Red Shoes than there was in the entire year’s catalogue from either Creation or Alternative Tentacles.

My prediction for the year ahead is that Australian tribute bands will finally see the light and turn their sights towards that deepest and most fertile seam of material, Irish pop/rock from the 1970s. Forget the Australian Pink Floyd and Bjorn Again, surely what is needed is the Australian Gina, Dale Haze and the Champions or The Lookalikes Soundalikes or even Born Again (a celebration of the excellent Eileen Reid – a woman whose spectacular Christian rebirth has this year brought many of us back to church, to roll in the aisles if nothing else).

Finally, while Aimee Mann, That Petrol Emotion, Altan, Black ’47, Terence Trent D’Arby, The Revenants and Paul Weller all did their best, my award for Song of the Year must go to Mindless Drug Hoover for a little ditty entitled simply ‘Fuck Off’. Truly, this man is a Cole Porter for the nineties.

Now, as the Hoover himself would say, “Get out of my fucking flat!”

• Liam Fay

TRIED AND TRUSTED

The best releases of 1993 came from those people who have already proved themselves genetically incapable of producing anything other than great records: Sugar, American Music Club, Buffalo Tom, Grant McLennan, Robert Forster and Crowded House. Suede’s debut was impressive, although inevitably the singles provided its highlights. Predictably, their nancified shenanigans didn’t quite set the US ablaze, and the new eight-minute epic single, due early next year, is cause for a bit of concern. Epic single? It’s a contradiction in terms, lads.

No new band could possibly recreate the excitement that S**** engendered last year, but Grant Lee Buffalo came close with the masterful Fuzzy. Elastica managed to stir up a bit of furore through the simple expedient of shagging indie pop stars and only pressing 1000 copies of their, admittedly very impressive, single, and on the Irish front, The Divine Comedy’s Liberation was one of the finest albums of the year.

Single of the year though, and I’m not open to argument on this one, was ‘Screamager’ from Therapy?

Other good stuff came from The Harvest Ministers, Afghan Whigs, The Palace Brothers, Moose, Juliana Hatfield, The Lemonheads, Bjork, Belly, New Order, The Auteurs and Matthew Sweet. And it was heartening to see Stephen Ryan back in form with The Revenants’ excellent Horse Of A Different Colour.

On the live front, well, God knows. This was the year I more or less gave up the whole nasty ordeal, except for Buffalo Tom, Lemonheads, Suede and Crowded House, all of whom were wonderful. Féile was a blast. Sunstroke had a line-up that looked great on paper, but sadly, the bands weren’t playing on paper. They were playing in a bloody big field and, though it hurts me to say this, Sugar were shite live. There I sat, pre-gig, all tender enthusiasm and shivering excitement, and then had to watch helplessly as Bob Mould proceded to rip the melody out of his perfect songs.

Ways to make 1994 a happier year: provide Colm O’Callaghan with proper editing facilities for No Disco, say “oh no” in a stupid Geordie accent a lot (try it, it really works!), and er, plant a tree. Or dig one up. Jesus, I don’t care.

• Lorraine Freeney

LOCAL HEROES

1993 wasn’t a bad year for music at all and it was great to see a new Irish band selling records for a change instead of merely being labelled “promising” or “hopefuls”. Congratulations to The Cranberries. Great Irish singles too came from Something Happens (‘CC Incidently’), Aslan (‘Crazy World’) and The Revenants (‘Marry Money’).

Becoming a dad in January of this year meant working the night shift which was made a lot more pleasant thanks to Mike Moloney’s midnight show on 2FM and his utterly compelling Desert Islands Discs type “guest slot”. Other radio highlights were Joe Duffy’s Media Show on Radio 1 and some welcome non-patronising community radio from Anna Livia FM.

Concert highlights were mainly the big ones: Neil Young at Slane, Jerry Lee Lewis’ and Joe Ely jamming with Bruce Springsteen at the RDS and hearing three of my favourite songs of all time performed on a sunny evening in Tramore: Jimmy Cliff’s ‘Many Rivers To Cross’, Van Morrison’s ‘Brown Eyed Girl’, and the great Ray Charles performing ‘Georgia On My Mind’. Biggest disappointment was U2 at the RDS - the sound was appalling from where I was standing and the visuals didn’t do it for me. Bring back those primary colours and no more zoology please!

Coincidence of the year – flicking the buttons on the car radio and hearing the same song on four different stations at the same time! (It was 4 Non Blondes ‘What’s Going On’). Give the people choice, that’s what I say!

TV highlights of ’93 included Roddy Doyle’s The Snapper and the Rock Doc’s series on BBC 2 who showed some great old documentaries from the seventies especially the one with Rod Stewart and Britt Ekland showbizzing around London in ’76.

Bargain of the year for me was picking up a brand new copy of Fat’s Dominos 4 CD boxed set They Call Me The Fat Man in Greenwich Village, New York for $14 (reduced from around $60!). It keeps the house warm too!

Biggest regret? Not investing my life savings in Garth Brooks tickets. I could’ve retired happily on the proceeds?

• Colm O'Hare

A CAT YEAR

MY CAT died. It started pissing everywhere. I’m sat typing. Poking out corrections in the middle of a Yellow Pages-thick manuscript-pile when a muffled scrabbling sets off the piss-alert and I’m lurching off to grab the furtive feline before it saturates the place in urine-stink.

1993: a year of Pussy. The (prematurely ejaculated) end of the century. End of male-centred phallo-centricity too. Rap/Hip-Hop shits out of foul mess of Gangsta gun-crazed misogyny only half-salvaged by its Spinal Tap-dancing ‘CB4’ Movie send-up. Apache Indian and Hanif Kureishi (Buddha of Suburbia) meanwhile open up more positive cultural collisions of new vitalities.

Doctor Who is thirty – going on seven hundred.

Frank Zappa and Anthony Burgess leave sizeable gaps . . . and I’m in Leeds for a gig. Last time round this was a Polytech, now – at the stroke of (mis)Government whim – it’s a Metropolitan University, an ineptly Orwellian exercise in altering perceptions of reality by a dazzling confusion of labels. Only the sleaze, the grime, and the ultra-violet glare igniting your whites with a Chernobyl glow remain the same. Breeders make it all gleamy-fresh new, though. Rock, from bombs to bombast, is losing its balls, and rockin harder wit new wit and intelligence as a result. Riot Grrrls? I’d love for it to happen bigger than Punk. To have top Ten singles chart full of angry young girl bands.

I’m back-stage at the Irish Centre with ex-Mott Ian Hunter. A dressing room full of Swedish-speaking musos like rejects from Bjorn Again slurping Aqua Pura and chomping complimentary Caribbean Mix, while Hunter – in a voice like he’s been sucking car exhaust pipes – regales with scandalous anecdotes about Freddie Mercury, Bowie, Dylan, and how the grizzled old Glam-Rocker once broke into Graceland while a gun-crazed Elvis was home. A high night.

But that’s part of the problem as well as part of the vinyl solution. It’s a question of history. The reason Manic Street Preachers don’t convince despite their most extreme attempts is that we see every angry young male rock band since the Who and the Pistols imprinted in their genetic DNA. Rock needs a newness that their gender is no longer capable of.

Belly. P.J. Harvey. Elastica. Voodoo Queens. They are flesh in an age of machines. Love in the domain of cold intelligence. They’re ragged and rough with RPM, BPM and PMT in more-or-less equal measure. And burning for the moment. It was their year . . .

And then my cat died.

• Andrew Darlington

GOING LIVE

“When it’s time from work to go/And in my boat I row/’Cross the muddy Ohio/When the evening light is falling . . .” These are the opening lines of ‘Ohio River Boat Song,’ from The Palace Brothers, and it’s my favourite single of the year. Their album, There Is No One What Will Take Care Of You, also happens to be my favourite album of the year. (The single isn’t on the album.)

1993 was a great year for live albums. First off we had Neil Young’s Unplugged, then Nick Cave’s Live Seeds, then to top it all, The Velvet’s Live MCMXCIII. I never tire of listening to The Velvets – they just seem to exist on a totally different plane. They’re out there, beyond the realms of definition or categorisation. As, of course are Neil Young and Nick Cave.

Bob Dylan’s World Gone Wrong is a great album of obscure Blues and Folk covers. The man still has the spirit. Other albums I got great joy out of were: Scrawl’s Velvet Hammer, Lungfish’s Rainbows From Atoms, Tindersticks Tindersticks, Lydia Lunch’s Crimes Against Nature, Marxman’s 33 Revolutions Per Minute, Umar Bin Hassan’s (Last Poets) Be Bop Or Be Dead, Flaming Lips Transmissions From The Satellite Heart, Madder Rose’s Bring It Down, Mercury Rev’s Boces and Girls Against Boys’ Venus Luxure No. 1 Baby.

Ice T is coming. Ok, it’s with his trash/metal Body Count outfit, so we’re not going to hear what in my opinion is his infinitely superior rap work, but it’s still Ice T. Unfortunately, this year’s Home Invasion wasn’t a patch on his previous rap masterpiece Original Gangster. Not to worry, live he’s a killer. So I’m told.

Many will say it was U2’s year. I suppose it depends how you measure things. I’ve tried to like U2 and I respect them for plugging Ireland in in so many ways. But Zooropa left me unmoved. The music – virtually connected or not — still retains that U2 stadium grandiosity, while Bono’s lyrics are his usual juxtaposition of opposites – “You can’t even remember/What I’m trying to forget” – and vague philosophical statements.

Gil Scott Heron finally got here and gave what was my favourite performance of the year. Close behind were The Palace Brothers, Henry Rollins, The Last Poets, Neurosis and Lungfish. Whipping Boy, Flexihead and Nine Wassies From Bainne gave some brilliant live performances too. Watch out for them in 1994. My favourite Irish album this year comes from, of all places, Mullingar. Raw Novembre’s Disturbed has passion and anger, something sadly lacking in most Irish pop and rock music.

1993 was another good year for music. Not your Nirvana or Suede or U2 hype, but music you had to do a bit of searching for. As the new millennium draws ever nearer, film and video remain at the cutting edge, but rock ‘n’ roll — or whatever general label you want to give it — is still holding its own and re-affirming its position as one of the great art forms of this century. Digest that now!

• Gerry McGovern

WEIRD AND WONDERFUL

1993? Weird as any other year.

DYSFUNCTIONAL FAMILY: The Jacksons.

CHARLES MANSON PERPETUAL TROPHY: David Koresh and the Branch Davidians.

GROOVIEST MEN IN DRESSES: John Lynch in The Abbey’s Hamlet Project; Evan Dando.

RIGHT TO CHOOSE ROSETTE: Juliana Hatfield.

ALBUM: Come On Feel The Lemonheads.

TV HEAVEN: Have I Got News For You?; Later With Jools Holland; The Buddha Of Suburbia; Absolutely Fabulous; Northern Exposure.

LIVE: Henry Rollins at the Olympia; Zooropa at The RDS.

SHIT I MISSED ’EM: Neil Young at Slane; Iggy Pop; The Breeders.

SILVER SCREEN: Passion Fish; The Grass Arena; Jamon Jamon’ L627; The Piano.

HYPES: Jurassic Park; Eurovision.

UPPER: Naomi Wolf and Fire With Fire, Mary Robinson (again).

DOWNER: River Phoenix’s death.

MIND BOGGLES: Bosnia, Northern Ireland, The Jamie Bulger Murder, The Thorp go ahead.

REASONS TO BE CHEERFUL: A good, nay a great year for women with or without guitars. Bjork’s Debut was an utterly beguiling mixture of eccentricity and sensuality, trilled, fluted and snarled over infectious Pop-Dance tunes.

Become What You Are not only had a great title but pop songs of both delicacy and punch revealing Juliana Hatfield as a riot grrrl with a heart and a hippie chick with a brain.

With Whatever, Aimee Mann offered a selection of gratifyingly intelligent Pop-Rock songs in a voice pitched somewhere between Karen Carpenter and Chrissie Hynde.

Kim Deal and her sister Kelley got serious with The Breeder’s Last Splash while former Breeder and Throwing Muse Tanya Donnelly showed there was fire in her Belly with Star. P.J. Harvey with Rid Of Me and the 4 Track Demos dragged the pain from the recesses of her mind and screamed it in our faces to the sound of grinding guitars while Liz Phair in Exile in Guyville rewrote the Stones classic Exile On Main Street from the perspective of a female slacker in ’90s Chicago, producing a debut that is by turns sweet, tough, obscene and poignant.

As if that wasn’t enough, this time next year Dolores O’Riordan will be a household name.

• Cathy Dillon

PROMOTION HOPEFUL

IN SPRING I decided to put my money where my mouth was (I’m always slagging Galway promoters) and put on a gig. I needed a partner so I chose Des, the guy who runs Naked and a good friend. I needed a suitable venue so I chose Vagabonds in Salthill. Most of all I needed a band so I chose Blink, whom I reckon to be one of the best live acts in the country.

Des and I booked the band, had flyers and posters printed up and organised loads of publicity. Hell, we even made the sandwiches for the rider. We were totally confident and we were young, beautiful and cleverer than the rest. We were also going to clean up.

But, of course, we didn’t. Things went horribly wrong on the night (bad weather, power cuts and basically every single one of Murphy’s Laws) and we didn’t get nearly enough people in. Blink played an absolute stormer to a half empty hall and Des and I got extremely drunk and enjoyed every minute of it. After all, it was costing us about £500 each . . .

In summer I went to Cologne to see Zooropa and got into a row with a (non-English-speaking) German security man with a big dog. Needless to say, they won but U2 were great anyway. I got back to Galway just in time to see Blink play to about 1,000 people during the Arts Festival. It hurt but at least I didn’t have to pay in.

Autumn’s musical highlight wasn’t really musical at all. It came when Naomi (my 16-month-old sister) finally managed to say my name in that gurgly way of hers. Well, sort of anyway. She calls me “Offal.” The rest of my family have now adopted the name.

• Olaf Tyarensen

IRELAND BOYS HURRAY!

Amid all the tales of doom, crushed hopes, cancelled contracts, homogenisation and the criminal lack of airplay given to Irish music on Irish radio, I still can look back on 1993 confident that I heard a preponderance of music that easily matched the best created in any year during the history of pop/rock.

Maybe the masterpieces were fewer than last year but flicking through a list of the albums released since last January one can only be cheered by the consistently high quality of work produced in Ireland in particular.

Abroad we had immediate rock classics like Bjork’s Debut, P.J. Harvey’s Rid Of Me, The Spin Doctors’ Pocket Full Of Kryptonite, Blur’s Modern Life Is Rubbish and The Lemonheads’ Come On Feel The Lemonheads. New country also continues to soar with Dwight Yoakam’s This Time, Clint Black's No Time To Kill, Willie Nelson’s Across The Borderline, Deborah Allen’s Delta Dreamland, Carlene Carter’s Little Love Letters producing almost perfect crossover hits.

Buddy Guy’s Feels Like Rain, John Lee Hooker’s Boom Boom and the recently-deceased John Campbell’s Howlin Mercy also kept blues fans happy. Similar lists could be drawn from the worlds of Jazz, Soul Dance, Roots music. Yet all these forms together in one year was Irish music, which produced at least ten magnificent albums that deserve more than a little mention.

During a year when Bono set his voice alongside pop/country greats such as Sinatra and Johnny Cash, U2 continue to blur genre divides in rock. A difficult and bravely innovative post-modern soundscape which proved to be a challenge to even the most blinkered fans of the group, the fact that Zooropa still went to number one in most charts across the world proves that where U2 lead, record buyers will follow.

Zrazy’s Give It All Up was no less revolutionary than U2’s album. An irresistible blend of funk, soul, Celtic and dance music which acts as a backdrop for lyrics that quietly subvert most stereotypes in rock, Zrazy sing of lesbian love and sexuality in its most primal form. The real test for broadcasters this Christmas will be to see who has the guts to play tracks from this album, particularly 6794700.

Marxman also had their problems getting airplay for ‘Sad Affair’, their rap-reinterpretation of ‘Irish Ways And Irish Laws’. Its political power and terrible beauty is matched by the single ‘All About Eve’ which radio programmers also shied away from because its subject is violence against women. They should be forced to play songs like this – indeed the whole of Marxman’s fine debut 33 Revolutions Per Minute.

Balancing political commentary with humour in a way that is as defiantly Irish as this album, Christy Moore delivered in King Puck an album that is only flawed by the inclusion of the thirteen minute long ‘Me And The Rose’, a song which clearly works better in concert. Apart from that it’s song-poetry all the way in tracks like ‘Giussepe’ and ‘The Two Conneeleys’.

Mary Couglan’s Love For Sale and The Stunning’s Tightrope are two albums which capture both acts in their natural habitat, feeding off an audience and bouncing back that energy more forcefully than either previously managed to do in studio sets. Coughlan has never sounded more focused and likewise Michael D. Higgins, at least when he rolls into the second half of his poem The Mountain, with The Stunning.

One of the best live shows I saw this year was when The Hothouse Flowers launched this album in Dublin. The performance was powered by so much spirit that all musical criticisms are rendered null and void. The same, happily, applied to Songs From The Rain.

Another live highlight of the year was the version of this album’s ‘Careless Child’ An Emotional Fish performed with the Irish Chamber Orchestra, at the recent Church and General Celebration Show in the National Concert Hall. It was a long way from tracks like ‘Yeah, Yeah, Yeah’, which the band partly designed as a backdrop for video games. Clearly as the excellent Junk Puppets showed An Emotional Fish are at home in both worlds. But then with a name like that they would be, wouldn’t they?

The Fat Lady Sings’, Johnson is a superb song-cycle that begins, as songwriter Nick Kelly has pointed out, with the narrator screaming “bring me oil/Let me boil” and ends with him crawling from his “arc of doubt”. What makes me boil with rage, however, is the question of how on earth poetic and incisive music such as this doesn’t sell by the truckload when Michael-ugh Bolton does.

Number Ten? You pick the tenth best Irish album of 1993. What will it be? The Cranberries, no doubt. But then they just may be the Irish band of 1994.

• Joe Jackson

NO COMPLAINTS

IN MANY ways 1993 was a good year: Man. Utd. won the inaugural Premiership, I finally got around to buying Arlo Guthrie on CD, and on a purely personal level I really have little to complain about. Many things annoyed me, however, the disgraceful abandonment by RTE of all of the roots programmes, the failure yet again (The Cranberries being the notable exception) of Irish bands do make the longed-for breakthrough abroad, and the passing of people like Gerry O’Grady and Frank Zappa from a world lamentably short of real characters.

On the credit side, I visited Texas for the first time, for South By Southwest, and the food and the music, particularly a band called Hamilton Pool, were absolutely top notch. Never have I packed so much into such a short time.

Other highlights include Mary Chapin Carpenter’s gig in the Olympia, and seeing Robert Earl Keen play a stormer just after the All-Ireland Final finished. A week on the road with Frankie Lane in June provided more laughs than I’ve had in the last 10 years (thanks Pte. Chong!) and just two nights ago my life was changed, probably permanently, when Greg Trooper (watch closely for him in 1994) gave me a tape of a Bostonian called Hug Moore, who is, if natural justice prevails, going to be huge.

Over the past couple of years, one of the most encouraging trends in music has been the emergence of an increasing number of women performers. On the home front, artists like Zrazy, Máire Bhreatnach, Eleanor McEvoy and Marian Bradfield come to mind, while on the international scene people of the calibre of Wendy Matthews, Rosanne Cash, Iris De Maní and Kate Jacobs prove conclusively that women have, if anything, as even more articulate voice than their male counterparts.

Hopes for ’94? Well, firstly that the IRTC, under its new chairperson, will provide the necessary kick in the pants of those people in commercial radio who still believe that their only function is to make money. Then perhaps, we could begin to provide a developmental base for all those bands who are not U2, and also for the promotion of our rather superb ethnic music.

Finally, though I suppose it will go unheeded, my greatest wish is for peace in Northern Ireland in ’94.

• Oliver P. Sweeney

HUNTING HIGHS AND LOWS

IF SELF-sufficiency is a buzz word in green circles it might equally be applied to the home produce that’s hogged my sound system for the past 12 months. All manner of life is there.

The alien dobro snuck its way into Gael Linn’s catalogue under Frankie Lane’s 10 gallon hat and charmed the pants off the legions who heard him in his myriad incarnations. Meanwhile, Cooney and Begley, that dastardly duo from the Dingle peninsula via Port Philip Bay, spat and shuffled centrestage on the back of a rake of crazed gigs that ran the gamut of audiences from the suave sophisticates of Whelan’s(?) to the more able-bodied hoofers of Ballinskelligs. Their hijacking of the Bringing It All Back Home tour sullied their reputation none either. A marriage of tradition and imagination, it proves to be an ever-more harmonious arrangement.

Cooney’s fellow Yarra-siders, The Killjoys, managed to finger the dizzy romantic sensibilities with indescribable ease. A Million Suns has more hooks than a Japanese trawlerful of poached tuna, and G.W. McLennan proved that there is life there (after the Go-Betweens) – and mercifully it’s not as we’ve ever known it.

But the cherry on the cake, the jewel on the crown of the entire year has to be that beauteous virginal offering from The Cranberries. Everyone Else is a pristine Prefab Sprout-ish sideways glance at love and lust and life captured through the rainbow-bright prism of Dolores O’Riordan’s chink-filled larynx and Stephen Street’s considered production – music to moan, sigh and sing to (and with). It’s melody to strum to. It’s frankincense and myrrh in docs and leggings. It’s a beauty that’s fast being beheld by many an eye and ear.

With the highs come the occasional lows. Crowded House and Tim Finn both managed to disappoint with the fruits of their studio sojourns, though Finn’s Before and After held a few gems embedded amid the Polyfilla.

The smart money says Bob Dylan and Nick Cave were in better shape than ever. Didn’t quite get the chance to lend an ear though – yet. Best of ’93? Can I get back to you on the 31st?

• Siobhán Long

JOHNNY LYONS

TOP 10 HEAVY METAL ALBUMS – 1993

1 COVERDALE PAGE Coverdale Page (EMI)

2 THE BATTLE RAGES ON Deep Purple (BMG)

3 CORE Stone Temple Pilots (WEA)

4 THE SPAGHETTI INCIDENT?

Guns N’ Roses (Geffen)

5 A REAL DEAD ONE Iron Maiden (EMI)

6 I HEAR BLACK Overkill (Atlantic)

7 LIVE AND LOUD Ozzy Osbourne (Epic)

8 GET A GRIP Aerosmith (Geffen)

9 sound of white noise Anthrax (Elektra)

10 SUNRISE ON THE SUFFERBUS

Masters of Reality (Def American)

PHEW! ROCK ’N‘ ROLL

I CAN’T be bothered to check how I introed this corresponding piece last Christmas but I’ve a funny feeling that it may have been something along the lines of ‘perhaps not a classic year by any means but there were certainly sufficient beacons of light to enable the faithful not to lose hope’.

The only really unsettling aspect on the local scene was the dramatic scaling-down of significant activity on the live front. I’m loath to believe that people would rather get E’d up and go to a rave than satiate their egos by forming a band but I’m afraid I’ve not had too much evidence to the contrary this year. Outside of the Hardcore scene which has inevitably mushroomed in the wake of Therapy? (although few have incorporated Therapy?’s grasp of Pop hooks amid the carnage . . . old heads sometimes know best) it’s been down to The Revenants, Something Happens! (both in acoustic and electric mode), Sack and Into Paradise to provide sustenance on a regular basis.

And if you’d told me this time last year that Aslan would have been on the cover of Hot Press within twelve months I’d have started taking odds on which one was most likely to die. Back from the dead with a vengeance, a hit single and one of the most emotional gigs I’ve ever seen at the Olympia. It got pretty emotional at the Tivoli a few times too, with the honours going to Suede (Gig of the Year), Paul Westerberg, Teenage Fanclub and That Petrol Emotion, while the 100 or so of us who saw Radiohead play a stormer at The Rock Garden won’t forget that show for a while.

Albumwise the year belonged to Aimee Mann, whose Whatever offered iron-fisted lyrics cased in velvet-gloved melodies while The Revenants gave us a DIY collection which still resonates with the beauty of the basics of quality songwriting. Pale white boys (those of us who can’t relate to Hip Hop that is . . . the white critics’ burden more than ever as time goes on and people have to work really hard to justify misogynistic meatheads like Onyx and Snoop Doggy Dogg) could wallow knowingly with Suede, Radiohead, The Auteurs, American Music Club, G.W. McLennan, The Harvest Ministers and Blur (wildly misunderstood for their choice of image but with Modern Life Is Rubbish they emerged as a potentially great English band). Matthew Sweet, The Posies, The Loud Family and Teenage Fanclub took care of the American jangly Pop business (well . . .) while Pet Shop Boys and M People ensured that your brain and your boots can indeed be in constant communication.

Great singles Dept: Suede (‘Animal Nitrate’), M People (‘Movin’ On Up’ and ‘One Night In Heaven’), 2 Unlimited (‘No Limits’), Pet Shop Boys (‘go West’), Aslan (‘Crazy World’), Something Happens (‘CC Incidentally’), Take That (‘Pray’), Sack (‘What Did The Christians Ever Do For Us?’) and Therapy? (‘Screamager’ from the Shortsharpshock EP).

Other than that, well apart from the most unpleasurable distraction of travelling by private jet to see Neil Young in Germany and Shamrock Rovers storming to the top of the Bord Gais National League in stupendous style . . . oh alright, 1993 wasn’t the worst!

• George Byrne

METAL MACHINE MUSIC

THIS YEAR heralded the return of two acts whose previous releases had garnered 20 million sales between them – Nirvana and Pearl Jam. However, bettering the formula of Nevermind and Ten respectively, proved a cross which neither outfit was able to bear. The Nirvana opus In Utero suffered from overproduction, with the resultant sanitisation of their sound. Meanwhile, the imaginatively titled Vs from Pearl Jam enjoyed immediate success with two million sales from advance orders, but the album lacked cohesiveness, with a multiplicity of styles being adopted but none mastered.

Coverdale Page issued the best platter of the year with their eponymous debut. With the digits ringing in at 2.75 million units shifted, it proved that authentic blues rock has a future, contrary to Robert Plant’s musings that such rock should be left in the 1970s. Ironically, Plant’s Fate Of Nations plunged into the depths of obscurity after charting at No. 1 in the U.K. The Battle Rages On from Deep Purple also served notice that the older metal bands were still a force to be reckoned with, though Scorpions did their best to refute that notion: Face The Heat wasn’t bad, just predictable. Meat Loaf satisfied the craving for nostalgia with Bat Out Of Hell 2, verifying the old adage that there is still life in the old dog yet.

The best new band were Stone Temple Pilots. A mixture of crunching vocals and scintillating guitarwork, Core provides a revealing insight into the darker human forces, depicting individuals moulding our destinies by appealing to the lowest common denominator in us all, i.e. the use of force to obtain our way. Other newish Stateside acts to the fore included Smashing Pumpkins with Siamese Dream and Blind Melon with their eponymous offering. Aerosmith mocked their imitators with Get A Grip, which achieved multi-platinum status.

Two excellent live albums celebrated the end of Bruce Dickinson’s stay with Iron Maiden, revealing that the line-up could still teach some of the younger bands a trick or two. It was pleasing to see their penultimate farewell concert at The Point but Pantera earn the accolades for gig of the year after their heart-warming, barnstorming efforts at the S.F.X.

Domestically, it was a quiet year but congratulations must be extended to John Kenny and Marcus Connaughton, mainstays of The Metal Show on 2FM every Sunday night, a long-awaited and much-needed addition to our national programming. Therapy continued on the upward spiral while local acts to keep an eye on in the New Year include Kerbdog and Untame, who both performed stunning sets at the Tivoli.

• Johnny Lyons

SUN MOON AND STARS

THERE WAS a delightful sting at the tail end of the year, the incomparable The Cowboy Junkies’ Pale Sun/Crescent Moon arriving to start ‘94 off on the right tracks. Otherwise emerging from the depths of my forays into Chinese hieroglyphics, there was Un Coeur En Hiver with the brilliant music of Ravel, Carax’s Les Amants du Pont Neuf and IP5 as films of the year.

Events of ‘93: Jean-Jacques Beineix and Peter Greenaway at the I.F.C; Channel Four’s season of John Cassavetes films; The Breeders supported by Grant Lee Buffalo at The Tivoli (where an old local man of the area, on seeing the length of the queue for Kim Deal’s cohorts asked me what was goin’ on and said that he’d never seen the like of it before. Neither had I); The Harvest Ministers at Whelan’s of Wexford Street creating impossible little streaks of sunshine amidst the deluge of modern bric-a-brac; Huggy Bear on Dave Fanning; Toni Morrison and William Gaddis again; Allen Ginsberg in Dublin’s Liberty Hall; Ossie Ardiles; the continued emergence of a refreshingly different perspective to that of male rock and roll through the likes of Huggy Bear, Bjork, Juliana Hatfield, Natalie Merchant; P.J. Harvey recalling the ghost of Patti Smith; Courtney Love and Nirvana proving that rock music has finally grown up but not become any less exciting because of that.

Joke of the Year: the Pope’s Encyclical Veritatis Bollocksgalore and Youth Defence. Disappointment of the year: Rep. of Ireland’s constipated Catholic Constitution; Unionist MP’s response to recent events in the North; The Republic Of Ireland’s poor football style and performances.

Album of the Year: Bjork’s Debut. Other highlights were The Fall at The Tivoli and Boy George at The Olympia. Juliana Hatfield’s “My Sister”. Finally, once again, The Breeders’ Last Splash is the perfect intoxication for the Yuletide festivities.

• Patrick Brennan

Thanks to the groundwork laid by Therapy?, local and foreign ears alike are now cocked in this direction, listening for quality music.

The quality of what’s happening here now is well reflected in the number of indigenous independent labels which have sprung up to cater for the hardcore/spiky-pop market. Closest to my heart – naturally, since I have an involvement – is the existence of Blunt Records and the release thereon of two fine Pet Lamb EPS in ‘93. Then there is the excellent Flexihead single (on Voiceboxpox Records), the imminent Wheel single and the prospect, in the new year, of an In Motion single (on Cork-based MS Records) and a Puppy Love Bomb single (on the D4 label). And let’s not forget the ever-expanding Wallcreeper label in Belfast, as well as the new kid on that block Demon Boyd Records who have an excellent Tart-Buzzkill split-single under their belts.

Bands on your hit-list for ‘94, apart from the above, would have to include the wayward and incendiary LMS, Golden Mile and Joyrider from the North, and down here Female Hercules, Jam Jar Jail (still), Crossbreed, Wormhole, Groundswell and probably a load of others that you could tell me about.

Top gigs this year: Teenage Fanclub, Young Gods, The Voodoo Queens, Huggy Bear.

Top Films: Reservoir Dogs, Romper Stomper, True Romance, The Piano.

• Dan Oggly