2005: The year that Cork came alive

A chilly Friday evening in October, and the Cork Rocks mini-festival is in session, at An Cruiscín Lán, fast emerging as the city by the Lee's premier venue. Local band Eve Of Mind are onstage, delivering a set of wired, menacing hard rock.
In the audience, a slim, blonde 20-something is leading the dancing, waving her arms from side-to-side, surfing on the tide of the music. An unknowing bystander might think this is merely an enthusiastic punter, but it is in fact the event’s organiser, Francesca Brown.
“Whenever I go to see a live gig, I love to dance,” she later explains, with a smile. “Most Corkonians prefer to sit and relax and enjoy the music. In my opinion, whatever makes you happy – you should do it!”
It's a philosophy that Francesca has been busy putting into action. She set up the Cork Rocks enterprise as a monthly showcase to give the city’s brightest young bands something to dance about – namely, a stage on which they strut their stuff, the better to attract the attention of both fans and the powers that be in the business. And it's working, bolstering Francesca’s conviction that many of these new bands have what it takes to go all the way. “I think that of the Cork bands that get signed, about 20 of them have the potential to go on and do great things. There's bands here who could dominate the world's music scene, if they got the breaks,” she predicts.
At one point, however, Cork music’s future looked far less rosy.
“When we started out, there wasn’t much here, in comparison to Dublin,” states Paul Linehan, singer and bassist with local indie stalwarts The Frank And Walters, one of the biggest pop success stories to have emerged from the area. “We were the first band in a long, long time to get a record deal. Before us, there was only Rory Gallagher in the '70s, then Microdisney and Five Go Down To The Sea in the early '80s.” Slim pickings indeed.
Linehan and Ashley Keating, the two principal members of The Frank And Walters, are chatting amiably over dinner at a Cork restaurant owned by Paul’s parents. Recently-added guitarist Kevin Pedreschi is absent, and while the duo speak highly of him (“as cool as a breeze, and a pleasure to play with” according to Paul), it is clear that the partnership forged by these two old friends represents considerably more than just two-thirds of the band.
Indeed, they seem to complement each other rather well, both possessing an ability to look back on their eventful history with a dry sense of humour.
“When the band started, Cork was twinned with Coventry, San Francisco, Cologne and Rennes,” drummer Ashley recalls. “We said that we were going to play the four of them, and we did. But Cork and Beijing were twinned last year, which was a right spanner in the works. So, for the laugh, we sent a couple of CDs into the twinning committee. They liked them, and they invited us over to play Beijing in February.”
The story seems to sum up the band’s relationship with their city perfectly. While they have a genuine affection for Cork, they have always been worldly enough to know that they must look further afield to find greater success.
“When we first moved to London, we had no money and no manager,” Ashley explains. “We slept in squats and lived in YMCAs. I don’t think people realise that what we did was fairly brave. If you want a worldwide audience, you’re going to have to go to London or Los Angeles.”
However, the group’s most difficult period was still to come – a bleak three-year hiatus, from which they are only just emerging.
“My brother (Niall) left the band, and we were dropped from Setanta Records,” Paul explains. “Our morale was already low, and when Niall left it was a real body punch.”
However, the Franks’ salvation came from an unlikely source.
“I met Glen Hansard in Wicklow town, a couple of years ago,” Paul recalls. “He was saying, 'you don’t need a label, you can do it yourself'. When he said that, it was a turning point for me. He told me how they had done it without a label, and it just opened my eyes. Before, I thought that we were never going to release another record.”
Now operating under the FIFA Records banner, the band’s creative juices are flowing, and their mood is resolutely upbeat.
“I can’t see the band ever splitting up,” smiles Paul. “I want to be still playing when I’m 60 or 70. I’d hate to give up – it’d kill me. It’d be like Roy Keane giving up playing soccer.”
The Franks are also enthusiastic about their city’s crop of young musical talent, although they offer some cautionary words of advice about the difficulties the new breed of Cork bands are likely to face.
“The great thing, and the worst thing about Cork, is that there’s no real music industry structure,” Ashley explains. “It’s a bad thing, because it’s very hard for bands to get spotted. It’s a great thing, because bands are allowed to develop their own style, at their own pace. If you’re a London band, there’s a good chance an A&R guy will see you early on. He’ll tell you what he thinks, and you’ll do as he says – and that’s often why bands split up. I know a few Cork bands that definitely have the talent and the camaraderie – but it remains to be seen if they want it badly enough.”
At the opposite end of the spectrum, the young bands playing at Cork Rocks seem game for the challenge, and are excited about their city’s burgeoning relevance.
“A year and a half ago, there was nothing here, but now Cork is really starting to pick up,” enthuses Paul Scully, keyboardist with opening act My Corduroy, purveyors of intense, electronic-tinged rock. “Hopefully, we can use nights like this as a stepping stone, and move on to get more gigs in Cork – and beyond.”
“Cork was rocking in the early '90s, but dance music killed it,” opines Keith Jones, bassist/vocalist with pop-tinged dark-metallers Defect, visibly on a high after a rapturously-received set. “Now, there are so many quality live venues – Cork is getting better all the time.”
Of course, the one possible downside of any boom is that it could make it more difficult for individual acts to grab the attention. Mark Flavin, drummer with fun-loving pop-rockers Tidal Suns, will have no truck with that argument.
“I think it makes it better,” he states. “There are more gigs going on, and the more people that start going to gigs, the better. If they go to one or two and like it, then they’ll go to another two and really get into it. It’ll just get bigger. That's the way it's heading at the moment.”
Ger Buckley, vocalist with Cork Rocks’ regulars Eve Of Mind, believes that all the Cork scene now needs is a spearhead: “I think there will be one band that will be signed first, and you’ll have seven or eight people right behind them,” he predicts. “People will see that there’s at least ten or fifteen other bands here that are sign-able. We are on the verge of something here.”
The most striking feature of the city’s scene is how disparate it is – from the grand Doors-ian ambition of Eve Of Mind to the intimate late-night atmospherics of The Waiting Room, few Cork acts sound alike, and there is no signature Cork sound. Francesca Brown puts this down to the Cork person’s in-built desire to be different.
“I think Corkonians are very original in the way they approach things,” she explains. “They don’t care what other people think of them, and they don’t follow trends. I think that shines through in the music. Cork is not going to be like the Seattle scene, where there was an actual new genre created – there will be several different genres.”
Matthew Shallow, bassist with Ten Past Seven – a powerful instrumental rock band, slavered over by many of the locals – feels that his band are taking part in the making of one such 'Cork genre'.
“When we moved to Cork, there was a big instrumental scene going on,” he explains. “The bands I know, like Rest and Giveamanakick, who are from Limerick, have a melodic style to their music. But there’s also this heaviness to some of the bands here, including Ten Past Seven, that comes from Cork, that isn’t really up in Dublin anymore.”
Stanley Super 800’s eccentric banjo-led electro-punk seem to characterise a contrary Cork streak, that goes back to Five Go Down To The Sea, Stump and Fatima Mansions. After taking in their Saturday night set at the Half Moon Theatre, I quizzed them about the eclectic nature of the city’s music.
“Nobody can be arsed doing something the same as anyone else – there’s no point,” explained vocalist Stan O’Sullivan, relaxing backstage after the gig. “Because Cork is so small, no bands want to sound like each other, which is a good thing.”
“It’s the People’s Republic of Cork, so it wants to be an individual city,” laughs Paul Linehan. “Then, that boils down to your neighbourhood within Cork – you want to be from Bishopstown, and you hate everyone else around here! Then, eventually, it boils down to the individual. There's a lot of pride in Cork. It’s the rebel nature, and we’re a rebel people. It probably comes from the Vikings.”
The important thing is that the rebel spirit is now being channelled into rock'n'roll. "There's something happening here that's very special," Francesca Brown says. "There's a lot of creative energy among Cork bands that's going to run and run."
Expect to witness Cork bands raiding your area in the very near future.