You Better, You Better, U-Bend

It s sex und drugge und rock n roll as The Shanks, Cork s infamously mischievous DIY agitpop combo, embark on their second tour of Germany and Holland. But after five years toiling manfully at the cruel coalface of indiedom, is time running out for the japesome three-piece?
So there we are in the back of the van, right, all completely wrecked after Amsterdam, and all of a sudden there s these French customs fellas pointing big guns at us and screaming at the tops of their voices. They must have reckoned we had a load of stuff on us . . .
But we did, like . . .
Niall and Stan, two-thirds of Cork s longest-established independent hopefuls The Shanks, are reminiscing about their first ever European tour and their multiple and varied scrapes with the continental forces of law and order.
Having escaped lengthy incarceration by the skin of their teeth, the band went on to play several dates in Germany and Holland, some wildly successful, some not.
We played in this absolutely huge place in Willheim and there was, like, one strange fella stood in the middle of the floor looking at us, recalls Niall, head-in-hands as the dismal memory comes seeping back.
Yeah, it was real introduce the audience to the band stuff, adds Stan. We had a bad feeling about that one from the start cause when we walked in we saw it was absolutely massive, the size of Connolly Hall and we re gong fucksake, we re not The Waterboys .
And then there was the squat party in Amsterdam . . .
We ended up, somehow, in this huge old warehouse building and there s hundreds of wasters falling around the place off their minds on drugs. It was a fairly good gig, actually. We went down a storm . . .
As we speak, The Shanks are just about to hop into a van and set off on a second European odyssey. Veterans of the Irish gig circuit, and the shoddy facilities it can entail, The Shanks quickly warmed to the star treatment that s meted out by rote in Europe and they re anxious to head back for more.
Everywhere we went, people kept giving us beer and drugs and hotel rooms, says singer Stan, and we re going ta very much , stunned. We were getting well used to the superstar buzz but then we had to come back to Cork.
The Shanks have been coming back to Cork for more than half a decade. Thanks in no small part to the trojan efforts of their manager Jim, a worthy contender for the title of The Hardest Working Man In Show Business, they ve played countless gigs and released several EPs and mini-albums. One of them, Is Like A Dog , even managed to scale the lower reaches of the Irish Top 30.
But how long can they continue on such slim pickings? When will it all end?
We really might have to move out of Cork at some stage, says Stan morosely. We re doing some new recordings but, you know, at this stage some fucking thing has got to give.
The Shanks would probably have given up the ghost long ago if they weren t boyhood buddies who get along like the proverbial house aflame. For a time, the three members (Mick, still in bed, is sadly absent from today s inquisition) even shared a Monkees-style home beside Cork s art college. Unfamiliar with the heady concept of bill-paying, they eventually found themselves without electricity.
We ended up having to run an extension lead in from the house next door and we plugged the amps and shit into that and sat round playing in the dark. It was fairly spiritual really, in its own way, says Stan.
Such other-worldly inspirations mean that The Shanks seldom run low on fresh ideas.
We re forever knocking new stuff together, says Niall. We ve got a batch of new songs that we re really into. What helped a lot is the fact that we sort of took the summer off in an attempt to break out of our old formulas and it seems to have worked.
Small things can give you a lot of heart, adds Stan. After our summer holiday, we did a homecoming gig in The Lobby and as well as the 40 or 50 fanatics who always show up, there were plenty of new faces around. That s a real help. It means there s still a chance to really push things and see what happens with a new crowd. We re not going to give up just yet . . .