Peasant in The Big City

Dublin is a city full of magic
Dublin is a city full of Light
Dublin is a city full of wonder
Dublin is a city full of shite
But what it means to me the most
Dublin is a city full of ghosts.
Mike Scott, City Full Of Ghosts (Dublin)

I CAME to Dublin in search of fame and fortune in January 1991. Recent Anglo-Yank attacks on Iraq jolted me back to the week I made the move the same week the Gulf War broke out. Discussing this with Liam Fay once, he dryly asked me if I left home out of fear of an Iraqi strike on Enniscorthy.
Fact is, I can t really figure out why I chose that week to migrate all the elements were against it: we d just started a new band at home, the weather was hostile, and I was broke. Nevertheless, a change had to come. I was in danger of getting snared in a loop of FAS schemes, pissant bands and state-subsidised drinking sprees. My mother prevailed upon me to remain at home, maintaining, in so many words, that I was a penny-foolish retard who could scarce feed or clothe himself without parental guidance. I also suspect the poor woman was dreading the dullness of life without a constant parade of famished rock n rollers traipsing through her kitchen every other night. Either ways, it was the end of something. The salad days in the south-east had been well and truly picked clean.
Mark, the Tipperary born bass-player in the new band, decided to move up to the city at the same time. We both hauled our bags onto Pear s bus, and 110 minutes later, disembarked at O Connell Street, shuffling into a new life. The transition was made much easier by the fact that we didn t have to go through the pesky flat-hunting process; an ex-girlfriend of mine, Gail, was moving out of her bedsit in a building on Upper Abbey St. and had arranged for me to take up the lease. Mark had commandeered her friend Natalie s room, making it doubly convenient.
Here was my new home. Enter through a gammy chubb-locked front door to be greeted by the smell of clothes spin-drying in the hallway. Hit the light switch (set on such a stingy timer that the lights inevitably cut out before you got halfway to your room). Bound up six flights of stairs to the top floor. Unlock the door to Flat 9. Enter. To the left, jutting into your elbow, a shower/bathroom area about the size of a large cupboard. Facing you, approximately 12 square feet of living space, crammed with kitchenette, bed, and a small table and armchair. At the other end of the room, a large, well-insulated window granting a panoramic view of the grim office block opposite.
By the time I d moved my papers, books, tapes and clothes in, there wasn t room to swing a cat, if you had a cat, and on some nights when I was starving or given to other cravings of the flesh, I wished I did. But the lack of space didn t bother me, I wasn t planning on entertaining. This was the first time in my life I d had my own domain, and I wasn t about to share it. Besides, the people in the other flats kept pretty much to themselves, although returning home late one Friday night I surprised Gary from No. 2 as he was about to give a mate of his a blowjob in the hallway beside the spindryer.
When I remember those first few weeks, I think of cold nights, toasted cheese sandwiches, soup and instant coffee, of days spent wandering around Dublins 1 and 2, or just sitting in the flat. I toasted the first Friday night in my cell with a couple of beers bought from the pub across the road, an outrageous extravagance, and sat there in my cheap leather jeans listening to Iggy s Lust For Life album, drinking alone, a pitiful sight. Subsequent nights were soundtracked by Daniel Lanois Acadie, the Twin Peaks soundtrack, Julee Cruise, The Pixies, Nick Cave.
It was a lonely time, not to mention cold (there was a half-decent fall of snow that Winter, and, in time-honoured fashion, Mark and I insulated our Doc Martins with Dunne s Stores plastic bags) but it was also incredibly emancipating, getting by in a strange city, an invisible entity with no money, no trade, and, to all intents and purposes, no identity. And although I missed the cushy life renting movies from the Xtravision in Enniscorthy, or sipping a thick pint of stout with friends by the fire in the Bier Keller I wasn t so much homesick as timesick, hankering after a past that was rapidly erasing itself. But one chance encounter convinced me that I was doing the right thing mere days after moving into the flat, I met Daniel Lanois ambling out of the Lighthouse cinema. We chatted for a moment, and it gave me heart you didn t exactly run into the likes of him in the market square in Enniscorthy every night. No, for better or worse, this was home.
For the first while, Mark and I busied ourselves by trying to sort out Dublin gigs for our band, travelling back down to Wexford at the weekends to rehearse. It didn t last. Soon the band had split, leaving some uncomfortably realistic chores to be dealt with, like finding storage space for my drumkit, getting my dole transferred, and applying for rent allowance, which meant dragging my carcass around various dole offices, health centres and government buildings, signing statements, filling out forms, spinning yarns.
My local health centre was across the other side of Capel Street in the Liberties. On the last Tuesday of every month I d trudge down to the office and queue up for my allowance. Once in the money, I d buy my spuds, vegetables and tobacco off the hawkers on Moore and Mary Street, the rest in Dunne s. My food budget stretched to a fiver, a tenner if I was feeling extravagant.
Initial attempts at any kind of home cooking were a disaster. I remember trying to heat up a steak and kidney pie on the ring of the electric cooker and waiting the best part of an hour for the damn thing to change colour. Eventually I got the hang of boiling chicken I d hubble, toil an trouble the hell out of the unfortunate bird until the room was thick with plumes of supernatural steam billowing off a broth-bubbling cauldron, cackling and jigging wildly, rubbing my hands together and drooling in anticipation of a great pagan feast of meat and spuds.
When the Gulf war did break that early January, I stayed up listening to those stark raving mad all-night CNN broadcasts, American journalists hiding under the tables in their hotel rooms, broadcasting the fact that they were hiding under the tables in their hotel rooms. The night Desert Storm kicked in, I went to see The Frames in McGonagles for the first time. Glen s declaration of, If this is the end of the world, we re the last band you ll ever see! stuck in my head like shrapnel as I made my way back to the bedsit that night, where the radio was squawking impending doom. When I woke the next morning, new words had appeared in the dictionary, phrases like Scud and Smart bomb and collateral damage .
By February I d begun my walking odysseys around the city, and I slowly made sense of the place, connecting districts, discovering short cuts, learning the names of streets.
It was a tranquil and dare I say it holy period, illuminated by early excursions along the canal, spying on the swans nests, ending up at the statue of Paddy Kavanagh near Baggot Street bridge. There I d sit beside the stony Monaghan bard, have a smoke and try and recall the verses of his Canal Bank Walk poem as I d learned it eight years previously in school, thinking about my old classmates, my English teachers, tempus fled. I could scarce believe this was the same place he was talking about. Not that it wasn t beautiful, just that it was there. About that time, a friend turned me onto another Kavanagh poem, the grey and gorgeous If Ever You Go To Dublin Town :
On Pembroke Road look out for my ghost,
Dishevelled with shoes untied,
Playing through the railings with little children
Whose children have long since died.
Some mornings, rambling back towards Grafton Street, I d stop into Bewley s for coffee, a tonic for seven o clock drowsiness. I loved seeing the city before anyone else, I developed my own furtive dawntime relationship with Christchurch, Rathmines, Wexford Street, even the Phoenix Park. Once I attempted to steal some bread and milk from outside a Baggot Street eating house, but only got a couple of hundred yards with it before becoming consumed with guilt, and trotted back to return it.
Dublin changed my attitude to a lot of things, including music. After the patchouli days in Wexford, the city demanded dirty realism. Woolly-headed rural idealism just wasn t appropriate in my new life of rags, roll-ups and rent allowance. I was listening to a lot of Warren Zevon at this time, particularly Sentimental Hygiene, and also Green On Red s Here Come The Snakes, the first Velvets album, Lou Reed s New York and Tom Waits Raindogs. Books were good company: Joseph Roth s The Legend Of The Holy Drinker, Chet Flippo s biography of Hank Williams, Your Cheatin Heart, Peter Maas Serpico and King Of the Gypsies, and loads of Bukowski I devoured The Most Beautiful Woman In Town and Tales Of Ordinary Madness in single sittings. Days were spent in the Ilac library, or poking around the dozens of second-hand book shops and record stores, the George s Street Arcade, trading stuff in Freebird, keeping busy doing nothing.
My primary purpose for moving up to Dublin was to play music. After all, this was the city of 1000 bands, many of them, as I d soon discover, abominable. I put a notice in the musicians contact section in Hot Press, listing my interests as the Velvets, The Stones, David Lynch, Kerouac and The Doors. Pretentious, but it got some attention.
By mid-February, somebody put me in contact with a guy called Harry Geogheghan who was looking for a drummer. This customer was connected, I heard, bankrolled by some Dublin school of music, could be a soft gig to land. I rang the number I was given and arranged to meet him and his course supervisor. I showed up at the address at the appointed time, an old Georgian building on the northside, and rang the buzzer. The tutor, a ruddy-faced character by the name of Hickey, met me at the reception area and accompanied me to his office, where I was introduced to young Harry. One look at him told me I was barking up the wrong tree. He might ve had funding from FAS, unlimited access to recording gear and rehearsal rooms (and also, the grottiest drum kit I d ever seen in my life), but Harry also had one of those spiky-on-top, long-at-the back mid-80s mullet haircuts, stonewashed jeans and a dodgy waistcoat. Dubious. Hickey began his pitch.
We believe in Harry s abilities as a songwriter, recording artist and performer, he started in on me, almost before I had a chance to sit down. The position as drummer in his band would be a pivotal and prestigious one. We ve opened all our rehearsal and recording facilities to him, and the band would have the opportunity to evolve in the most professional environment. At the end of a three month period, the group will be expected to put on a showcase gig, whereby we can assess their progress.
Now, if there s one execrable concept in rock n roll, it s the Showcase Gig. By my compass, a band either gets up and does their thing, or they don t. Warning bells were starting to go off.
. . . and we feel that he could go all the way, Hickey was saying. He s got the talent, the drive and the . . . commitment.
Oh fuck, I thought. I knew he d use the C-word. Alan Parker had a lot to answer for. Ever since the director had rolled into town the previous summer and held open auditions for the film of Roddy Doyle s book The Commitments, every asshole who could string two chords together and many who couldn t thought they were bound for glory. Roddy himself would ve gotten a great sequel out of the effect the film had on Dublin musical circles, although that might ve been a bit too post-modern for comfort.
Do you have a tape of the stuff? I asked.
Sure, answered Harry.
But first, continued Hickey, we d like to make it clear that this is a golden opportunity for any young musician, and we have to know now, before we start, that you ll be committed to Harry s music. I m positive that it would be a mutually beneficial.
Eh, do you mind if I bring the tape home and have a listen, and I ll drop back in a couple of days?
Sure, agreed Hickey. We ll talk some more then.
I took the tape home. It said Harry Geoghegan Project on the inlay card. That didn t bode well. Any fucker who calls his band the Harry Geoghegan Project needs a thrashing. I tried to imagine telling the lads back home:
I m in a new band.
Oh yeah? What s it called?
The Harry Geoghegan Project.
I d have been run out of town.
Back in the flat, after a cup of instant, a smoke, and a good brood, I put the tape in the ghetto blaster I d permanently borrowed from my sister, and pressed play . Within seconds, I knew I d gotten myself mixed up in some woeful trouble: cheesy synths, horrible Eddie Van Halen hammer-on guitar solos and screechy Bon Jovi style vocals. I don t even want to discuss the lyrics. It was the worst demo I d ever heard in my life. I couldn t believe a school of music had put their faith, time and money into this tripe. To be honest, I was kind of relieved at least there was no doubt this way. It would ve been so much worse being in a great band called the Harry Geoghegan Project than a crap one with a cool name.
A couple of days later, back in the office, I was barely in the door before the two boyos started their pitch again. We had gotten as far as Madison Square Garden when Harry saw something in my face and interrupted his svengali with, What did you think of the tape?
Eh, it s not my cup o tea, I replied.
Their faces fell.
Perhaps it ll grow on you, Hickey suggested.
No, I don t think so.
Have you given it a good listen?
I have, I played it three or four times.
Perhaps it s a bad mix of it.
No, it s not the mix. Well, the mix isn t great, but that s not why I don t like it.
Well then, what is it you don t like about it?
Eh, it s just not to my taste. Sorry.
We have a lot of faith in Harry, Hickey snorted. We think he s going to go all the way.
I know, I said.
Harry was turning scarlet and squirming in his seat. This was excruciating, but Hickey wouldn t leave it alone.
What exactly didn t you like about it?
The songs. The playing. The singing.
Well, what kind of stuff do you listen to?
Everything, really. The Stones. Lou Reed. Stuff like that.
Well, we think Harry could be as big as those artists.
I know, and I appreciate that. But I d don t think it s the band for me.
Well, there s nothing we can do about that. But are you sure you wouldn t like to try a rehearsal situation? We ve listened to your tape and we think your playing is adequate.
Listen, I m sorry, but I think it s the worst demo tape I ve ever heard in my life. I have to go now, okay?
I left the two of them sitting there, in a cloud of gloom. Halfway down O Connell Street I folded up with an attack of the giggles. If this experience was anything to go by, cracking Dublin was gonna be harder than I thought. n