Christy Dignam Presented With Original 1986 Hot Press Award

Christy Dignam of Aslan was re-united last night with the Most Promising Act Award, which the band won in the Hot Press Awards, all the way back in 1986.

That was the year in which Philip Lynott died – and to pay a special tribute to the legendary Dublin rock star, Hot Press commissioned artist David Rooney to produce a special limited edition piece of artwork, as the award that would be presented to winners that year.

"What David delivered at the time was a wonderful, iconic piece which captured Philip’s unique charisma brilliantly,” Hot Press editor Niall Stokes recalls.

Other winners at the 1986 Awards included U2, Paul Brady, Light A Big Fire, Christy Moore, Mary Coughlan, Steve Wickham and Blue In Heaven.

Aslan was chosen as Most Promising Act two years in advance of the release of their debut album Feel No Shame (1988). Sadly, the framed art-piece – the first accolade ever won by the band and one of the most important in their career – went missing, presumed stolen, shortly afterwards.

As fate would have it, in his guise as a singer-songwriter in the ascendant (his album Bound Together was released recently), David Rooney played support to Christy a couple of months back – and the fact that David had created the original award artwork emerged. Christy explained how gutted he had been when the award disappeared. Was there, by any chance, another one out there in the world anywhere? It was a good question.

David set about finding out – and discovered that, just maybe, there was!

“I hooked up with Christy last night and made the presentation,” David Rooney said this morning. "Inappropriate as it may seem, 'Reunited and it feels so good’ – the opening line from the Peaches and Herb hit from 1978! – was playing in my subconscious as I mounted the stairs to the ‘green room’ before Christy Dignam’s acoustic gig in The Bowery last night.

“It was a real privilege to be in a position to do it,” he added. “All of 31 years after Aslan’s ‘Most Promising Act’ of 1986 was presented – and shortly thereafter went ‘missing’ in the mayhem that was Aslan’s rock’n’roll existence – I got to give Christy the Philip Lynott lino cut limited edition print I created once more."

It was a special moment indeed. Both David Rooney and Hot Press want today a big thanks to retired NCAD printer Sean Sills, who gave up his own personal copy for this worthy reunion. And, of course, it is nice to know that we got it so right back in ’86. It was an award which Aslan went on to demonstrate that they thoroughly deserved. Long live the lion...