I CAN ATC CLEARLY NOW

THE RECENT and ongoing spate of band break-ups and ballast shedding by record companies begs the question – is there life after major label luxury? Musicians, by and large are a sensitive lot and understandably don’t take kindly to having their creative and artistic endeavours ignored – especially by someone wearing a suit!

Being “dropped” after tasting a little of what-might-have-been, is a traumatic enough experience for most aspiring megastars and there is probably a strong case for some sort of ego replacement therapy for those suffering from the more manifest symptoms.

Some, it has to be said, turn bitter and resentful, blaming everyone but themselves for their premature downfall and take to muttering “I could have been a contender,” to anyone who’ll listen. Most, however, wisely take stock, dust themselves down, and have another go at life – this time with the benefit of hard-won experience and hindsight, gained from their brief flirtation with fame.

Towards the end of 1990, Martin Clancy – a founder member of In Tua Nua – found himself in such a position. The band – once one of the brightest hopes for international success in the wake of U2’s triumphs – had fallen apart amid bitter recriminations. A lengthy legal wrangle had kept them off the road for the best part of a year following the completion of their third album. In the end, personality clashes among the various band members proved irreconcilable, copper-fastening the band’s demise.

DANCE RHYTHMS

As the youngest in the band, Clancy felt the trauma of the break-up even more than the others. “I had been involved with In Tua Nua since I was sixteen,” he says, “and I knew nothing else. Anything that I might have considered as a career had passed me by at that stage and the last thing I wanted to do was to dive into another band and do more of the same.”

Four years on and Clancy has at last found some sort of permanent direction in his life. As education and marketing manager of Advanced Technology College, an independent educational establishment specialising in training people for careers in the media, computers and technology, he has finally discovered an outlet for his talents. Outside of that, he also directs videos, produces albums and along with David Constantine was responsible for the much-praised Serious Women, project, which came to fruition in the excellent 38 SCR album.

The relative failure and break-up of In Tua Nua still brings back bitter memories and Clancy hesitates to open old wounds.

Following the In Tua Nua split Clancy decided to make some use of the lessons he had learned during his tenure with the band.

“One of the benefits of the whole In Tua Nua affair,” he offers, “was the fact that I learned a lot about the ins and outs of the corporate side of the music business. I got to know about recording contracts and publishing deals, so I had a certain expertise in that area.”

Clancy had also expanded his creative knowledge during the seven-year existence of In Tua Nua, particularly in the audio-visual area.

“Had I not gone into the band I wouldn’t have learned about video and television,” he says. “I had worked on storyboards for some of the band’s videos and found it interesting, so I decided to go down that route. I got involved in the making of a documentary on Sean O’Casey and I did a few videos for bands – The Four Of Us was one example, I produced their video for ‘The Baby Jesus’, another one I did was for a band called Wilder.”

At around the same time, Clancy procured a small recording studio in Howth and along with former In Tua Nua drummer, Paul Byrne, got into computers and began dabbling in dance rhythms. That project eventually developed into Sugar Candy Mountain which looked like doing the business, before being distracted by a charity campaign.

“We got sidelined when we became involved with Childline who were doing a fund raising campaign at the time,” he says. “We recorded the song but were keen not to be seen to be launching ourselves on the back of a charity single. I spent about four months in total, working on the project and it became complicated with a video with animation and that kind of thing. It got very confusing in the end – we were trying to market the single without marketing the band and I found myself doing all the corporate things that I had been through with In Tua Nua.”

GOING STRONG

He cut his losses and went back to the drawing board. Clancy had been sharing a flat with David Constantine, a musician with a particularly singular artistic outlook. They decided to make an album together.

“The idea was to de-construct the whole process of recording,” explains Clancy. “For example, if you were supposed to use a certain microphone technique – we did the opposite. It was a maverick operation, recorded at home and I found it a thrilling experience. David has a pure vision of what he wants to do and the 38 SCR album, as it became known, has now become semi-legendary with a unique marketing campaign to go along with it.”

The position Clancy now occupies at Advanced Technology College came about through a mixture of fate and intuition.

“It’s the only job I ever applied for,” he laughs. “They were based at 38 Harcourt Street at the time and I was living at 38 South Circular Road, so I felt there was something significant in that. I applied on a whim, went for the interview, and was successful. ATC had an outline of what they wanted to teach but they wanted someone to structure the course and write the syllabus and I had a lot of ideas to put to them, so it worked out well for both of us.”

ATC offers a number of post-leaving cert, mainly one-year courses which include computer programming, electronics, radio production, TV/video production and sound engineering. The emphasis is on practical, hands-on tuition which is designed to prepare students to be fully equipped to enter employment on graduation.

Working at ATC has given Clancy an opportunity to impart some of the knowledge he has derived from spending over ten years in the music business.

“It put me in touch with a lot of eighteen and nineteen-year-olds who I found very bright and enthusiastic,” he says. “Though I tend to play down the In Tua Nua thing and make sure not to bore them with what I have been doing myself in the past. I never say things like, ‘when I was having a beer in LA with so and so’ – that wouldn’t be cool.”

This year the college is planning to run Ireland’s first multi-media course which will involve several of the departments in the college coming together to combine their activities. “I think it’s the thing of the future,” says Clancy. “I’ve already had companies phoning me up looking for graduates, and I’ve had to tell them they’ll have to wait until next year, so the potential is good.”

Meanwhile, Yellow Moon, the recording studio in Howth, is going strong and Clancy is scheduled to work on no less than five separate projects over the coming months. “It’s the icing on the cake for me,” he says. “I only do it, if it appeals to me on a creative level and that’s the way I intend to operate from now on.”