Back at the turn of the decade there were three mad bands from Downpatrick Vietnam, Lazer Gun Nun and Confusion. The first of these dropped the dodgy heavy metal element and became Ash. The second toned down the Stooges sound to give room for the Backwater experience. Two-thirds of the last act have come back to haunt us in the form of Griswold.
And here are the Griswold boys: singer Leif and bassist Kes, pulling cartoon faces and relating tall stories about blood-spillage, liquor and bad women. They are joined by drummer Andrew, the only Belfast member of the group, but otherwise a paid-up member of the scheme, described by their good selves as a a trio of morons, half-witted, putrid, vile baboons .
They re wearing ill-advised Hawaiian shirts, their vocalist has lucious green hair and their recorded history contains such epics as Just Fuck Off , Pissed Forever and their latest single, Let s Pretend We re Gay . You d be tempted to suppose that Griswold isn t an entirely serious project. But the guys are instantly agrieved at such an notion.
Rock n roll and good times and high living and fast cars and beautiful girls . . . Andrew rants, we re very serious about that. Is Jack Nicholson serious? He does his work and he likes to party hard at the end of it. And that is what we do.
They copped the band s name while drinking cheap whiskey from a bin one famous night, watching National Lampoon s European Vacation on television. The Chevy Chase character was called Clarke W. Griswold and his hopelessly good-time style seemed to fit.
Leif was born in Montreal and was raised in Toronto until he was 14. He moved to Ireland with the family, found work here and decided to stay on when his mother and step-father recrossed the Atlantic. As a kid, his favourite comedy came from Saturday Night Live and the Second City revues.
After school, he sold mobile phones before finding gainful employment as a guitar tech for Ash. That s Leif you hear at the end of Ash s Live At The Wireless album, bellowing Get away from the dial! like a rum one.
He doesn t want to talk about his Ash connection, suspecting that Griswold will be portrayed as some kind of pet band. However, it s fair to say that 97 was a busy time for Tim Wheeler s lot meaning that Leif had to put his own music on ice. Hence the added incentive for Griswold to rock plenty in 98.
This year, Andrew bets, will imprint us on the minds and hearts and underwear of all and sundry.
Yeah, Kes agrees. We re like that wild bear on the Discovery Channel that kept getting shot in the arse with a tranquiliser. We don t give a shit anymore.
On the single, Leif sings about shopping, watching videos and keeping away from girls. He claims that gay can mean as much or as little as you want it to, although he stresses that he has an open mind about the subject and isn t knocking people of that persuasion.
If someone comes up to me and says, I find that offensive, I just say, well, fuck off and write your own song then. Don t come to me with your shit problems.
punk aesthetic
Later that day, you get the chance to speak with Mark J, the boss of Smile Records - the current holding pen for Griswold. Smile may be a pretty modest deal thus far helped into being by the Springboard enterprise scheme and relying on funding for the first release but Mark reckons that there s potential ahead.
He once produced a fanzine of the same name, and became mates with Griswold when he started taking carry-outs over to Leif s place in Belfast. He also buys into the punk aesthetic, and is aware that the appetite for this kind of music abroad has turned little American labels such as Epitaph into very large ones.
I wouldn t confine the bands on Smile to Northern Ireland, he reckons. One of the things that persuaded me to do Griswold was the fact that if they d come from San Francisco or wherever, they would have been signed, no problem, and would probably be selling quite a lot of records by now. I want to get that sort of a band from here noticed. A band that has merit and wouldn t get put out on the average label.
Saturday evening reveals another fun enterprise in the form of a new club night run by those ever-intriguing tykes from Tunic. Named Ski Bunny after a Boss Hog song, the weekly location is a pizza parlour with no name (next to Vico s in Brunswick Street), which has been transformed into a promising joint.
The vibe is a mixture of 70s fou-fou and a cheap, skanky indie. The checkerboard decor seems less oppressive once a few beers are consumed and the fond bleatings of Belle And Sebastian get an airing.
A few beatniks, band members and media sorts are nodding as the playlist wanders into a Mo Wax kind of territory, drops off Teenage Fanclub singing Gram Parson s Older Guys and then encounters Beck and the imperial rumble of Jonathan Fire*Eater.
Some punters are raving about the Richard Thompson gig earlier that night at the Waterfront, and that s acceptable too. The music is more fiesty now, warming up for the Motown and northern soul time, when hot dancefloor action is a possibility. Behind the punters, Mark Tunic is cueing up a cine camera, lighting up the wall with his uncle s Caribbean holiday movie from 20 years ago. Groovy.
It would be patronising to say that this was an innocent kind of a night, but it might be mentioned that at this very moment, there are bloody, fatal scenes at the steps of the Space nightclub, on Talbot Street, less than a mile away. There are people in this town with not nearly enough fun in their hearts. n
Griswold and Smile Records: contact PO Box 362, Belfast BT7 1AY.