Grown men wept…

The US military once spent countless millions of dollars attempting to build a sonic weapon that, through manipulation of frequency and pitch, was capable of inducing blackouts and debilitating nausea in large groups of people. One wonders if they had heard ‘Zombie’ by The Cranberries, would the investment have seemed entirely necessary? Because if anything is guaranteed to cause mass demoralisation, it’s a pop song about Belfast.

To wit: ‘Belfast’ by Boney M – wherein confused geo-political musings (“Belfast, it’s a country that’s changing/cause all the people are leaving”) do the cha-cha with some prime German, cruise-boat Disco. ‘Belfast Child’ by Simple Minds – can you wave lighters during a tin whistle solo? And, of course, ‘Zombie’ itself - a song notable for Dolores O’Riordan’s uncovering of the hitherto secret history of “tanks” on the city’s streets.

Richard West of arts collective Factotum has his own favourite.

“‘Through The Barricades’ by Spandau Ballet,” he says. “Dreadful. But when you hear Gary Kemp talk about it, he considers it to be the best song he ever wrote – his crowning achievement. He talks about how he’d been inspired to write it after a trip to Belfast while, I think, he was living as a tax-exile in Dublin. Apparently, when they played it at gigs in Belfast, grown men would weep. Which I can fully believe.”

Alongside cohort Stephen Hackett, Richard is responsible for editing Belfast Songs, a selection of essays and musings that take a jaundiced look at some of the grim litany of tunes that have concerned themselves with the place. As the introduction to the collection points out, the word Belfast appears in the title of more songs than Dublin and Liverpool. However, it’s best not to assume that this ‘Belfast’ will bear any resemblance to the real one. Over the years, and for a perplexingly diverse series of musicians (I’m not sure Elton John and Crass share subject matter too often), the city has been appropriated as a convenient shorthand to signify everything from agit-pop seditionary cool, to post Live Aid worthiness. The results have, often, been atrocious. So, is Belfast Songs a way of getting our own back?

“On one hand, it is a way of putting the boot into crap songs about Belfast,” admits Richard. “But it’s also partly about enabling local people to break the assumptions that exist about the place where they live. We want artists to write about the place – it’s a place that if people write honest songs about, then brilliant. The problems arise when they just fall back on lazy, and dangerous, assumptions and clichés. But we didn’t formulate that much about what we thought ourselves. We had a broad brief, and we relied on picking good contributors.“

The submissions range from an article on the gruesome folk tune, ‘The Ballad Of William Bloat’, to pieces on ‘Belfast’ by Orbital, and Shock Treatment’s ‘Belfast Telegraph’. There’s also a surprise appearance from one of the poetry world’s premier league.

“Paul Muldoon only came on board after we offered him the right song,” says Stephen. ” He turned loads down until we asked him to write about ‘Alternative Ulster’.”

Muldoon’s article is an obvious attention-grabber. Reading one of the English language’s most audacious acrobats turning his hand to music hackery (and along the way, comparing Stiff Little Fingers to John Donne) is worth the price alone. But surely he was too old to be a punk.

“Completely,” laughs Stephen, “and you can tell by the way he writes – ‘high voltage thrashes’. I think he’s a Dire Straits fan. But he was aware of punk, he was working at the BBC at the time it was all going on.”

A CD of remixes that accompanies the collection makes great sport chewing up the old songs and spiting them back out, and for every photograph in the booklet showing The Clash or Joan Jett (!) poncing around beside murals and peacelines, there’s another image – usually from the vaults of Belfast Exposed – that gives a more recognisably mundane view of the city. Maybe from somewhere in the middle of these things, the new batch of songs bearing witness to the city will come. Listen up.

For a copy of Belfast Songs contact [email protected]