Jesus, 16 years ago, i feel old! I was at that show to see the Youth and remember thinking Nirvana were far more exciting. Must play “Nevermind” today.

I was also at the Top Hat that night but my story is fairly pathetic. I spent most of Nirvana’s set trying to pour a bottle of buckfast into two pint glasses in the toilets. I think Joe Carroll has a touch of “U2 in the Dandelion Market” about this concert; they were just another support band.

Neutral Milk Hotel played support to Sparklehorse about ten years ago in Whelans. I bet Jim Carroll has a story about how he knew they were a revelation…..

Ian – i think the blog era has re-enforced the importance of filters – there are certain blogs you build up a trust in and they’re the ones you go to when you want to find out about new music. What i’ve found of late, though, is that many, many blogs all carry the SAME new music – for example, all linking to the same Animal Collective leaks or Devendra MP3s. It’s the ones which go out on a limb which I admire.

Ray the Overfriendly Concierge – see, this is what happens when you drink buckfast. You dont get the name of the person you’re trying to sneer at right (I’m not so sure who the Joe Carroll you are refering to is) and you get all bitter and twisted because you’ve a bad hangover instead of memories of the gig. And no, I’ve never seen NMH live. I was at that Sparklehorse show though.

Was at the top hat gig in question,i was working and i don’t remember it being all that special at all.
The top hat was a pain to work in and had all the charm of the dirty room it was.
I wasn’t drinking although another member of the Irish Review indusrty BP fallon was having the time of his life across the road in the Purty loft.
What’s probably a more interesting story is the day Mr.Kobain was found dead they were supposed to play the Point and very few people returned there tickets so no refund,oh and that gig had been re-scheduled about three times from an original date in McGonagles in south anne street.
C

cormac – nirvana had a chequered history with irish shows. they were due to play McGonagles in Dec ‘91 but this got canned and they eventually played the Point in June 1992. It was the RDS which they were due to play in April 1994 on the night that Kurt died (but if i remember right that gig had already been pulled).

“I think Joe Carroll has a touch of “U2 in the Dandelion Market””

Yeah, that John Carolan with his ‘Off the Record’ rantings, has his rose-tinted spectacles firmly on. I remember when Joe O’Carroll was just a pup. Now look at Jake Carling, writing for the Irish Times. That James Campion really takes the biscuit with his nostalgic yearnings for gigs in the Dublin suburbs. Down with Josh Curley and that sort of thing.

Yours sincerely,

Jim Carroll

I was too young to see them in the Top Hat, missed them in the Point and had tickets for the RDS. As a 17 year old, I was a bit disappointed that the Cobain fella died.

13 years later, I really have to say I don’t feel like I missed all that much, another whiny millionaire telling kids on the breadline his life sucks in the key of G minor 7th.

Boo hoo.

Sorry Jim (Try Joe for a day, you may like it). Not meant to be personal but I stand by my Buckfast Haze. I think that hindsight can cloud judgement. Every 18 year old, like I was, generally used the support band as a training session for the moshing and stage diving for the main act. How many support bands can people really remember? I do remember that a far better concert around the same month or so was Babes in Toyland in Charlies on Aungier Street; it was on at about 3 in the afternoon and they were amazing….well until a few years later when I discovered that all their songs were about killing or dismembering ex-boyfriends. Anyone go to this concert or am I really that old??

Touché Jim, but I was still in short pants back then.

Although in Green Day’s defense, they didn’t try to fool anyone with their aptly named major label debut.

Concierge – its a day for the grunge memory banks here at on the record!

yes, green day played in dublin on a Sunday afternoon many years ago but I dont recall much else about the gig. It was a benefit gig which Niall McGurk’s Hope Promotions people put on in The Attic (which was above what is now the White Horse Inn on Burgh Quay). I think i’ve always had a soft spot for them because they did that gig.

I remember Radiohead playing to 50 people in the rock garden in ‘92 for reasons I won’t really go into here (!) – but i’m fairly sure they were headlining.

I dont recall Gibby Haynes coming to town.

My fave gigs from that early 90s era include the Beastie Boys in the Tivoli (i just remember it as being so much fun), manic street preachers on a saturday afternoon in Charlies (long before they become the bloated rock dinasours they are today), That Petrol Emotion (loads and loads of great gigs, especially the New Inn) and Fugazi (Mcgonagles).

See, getting old IS fun.

This nostalgia is great. I’m loving this thread. I was at the gig but was there to see Sonic Youth. I never got the Nirvana thing at the time. Mind you I was watching a documentary about them the other week and it was great.

Who remembers the support bands? I do. The Donnelly Brothers, The Power of Dreams, Mexican Pets.

I didn’t think that I’d be reading about Hope promotions here. Pet Lamb, what a bunch. I was only having a chat the other week with Dylan from Pet Lamb about the shitty venues that we used to play back then.

This thread is the internet equivalent of sitting on the porch chewing tobacco. Great stuff.

Oasis in the tivoli,
Tom Tom Club McGonangles

Old but still in the memory somehwere

Here, I thought it was only kids and young folks who read blogs? Market research is WRONG!

cormac – thanks for reminding me of that Tom Tom Club gig. Other McGonagles ones i remember include the wedding present (1989), house of love (1988?), dinasour jr, the Youth and the mighty Jonathan Richman. I’m sure there are more.

I missed that oasis gig – thank god.

Sinead – the tivoli used to be such a cool dive for gigs. The Breeders were amazing there (supported by Grant Lee Buffalo in masks – think it was halloween). The reason why they dont put on gigs there is to do with venue politics and the like – i do know a lot of new dublin bands have played there in the last six months or so.

Fugazi also played in the SFX and, talking of venue politics, niall mcgurk could probably tell u some great stories about how Hope ended up there!

That Nick Cave gig in the SFX – i think whippig boy supported him then.

Rock Garden – you think Sheep On Drugs were bad? If i could only find my gigging diary, i’d probably see you Cud and raise you Neds Atomic Dustbin. On the other hand, I did see Pavement and Spiritualized there.

I have an odd feeling that i have opened a large can of worms with this thread

Too late Matt – and mrs ontherecord has just reminded me of the City Arts Centre venue. Tad played there once during a power cut (the 2 facts are not related) and i also remember a Flowered Up gig. Yeah, those lads with the fella dressed up as a flower.

Still, mark, it’s younger than Hot press

There are dance gigs in the Tivoli again this autumn. Plus around the time I first started going to clubs week in week out it was being run by Influx and had decent stuff every weekend.

As far as I know it still has that big soundsystem etc in there. And possibly the same carpet, which is actually rank if you saw it in the cold light of day!

As for why gigs aren’t on there anymore, the story that generally goes around which may be what you mean by “and the like” Jim, is that the dude who owns it is let’s say, a very, very sane and extremely sensible, well balanced individual.

Not sure if it’s the same owner nowadays but it looks like it’s replaced TBMC as the independent dance venue for a time.

Ronan – be interesting to note what happens now with clubs nights at Cargo under its new ownership. I hear the indie club runners are out which, of course, means an opportunity for someone else to capitalise on.

The capacity will be bumped up to 750 and there will be the same seating arrangement – ie some gigs seated but most gigs standing.

Yeah, i’d say that prediction has legs. I think its a mistake myself running the indie promoters out of there because, as both John Reynolds and Eoin Foyle both learned from their other ventures, the indies have smarts. After all, both POD and Ri-Ra had their cycles with and without the outside promoters and we all know which ones worked best.

True Jim, maybe they should do an insert with the Old Lady of Record to attract a younger audience.

Heavens, this thread is making me feel old – I was 16 in September ‘91, just after Nevermind came out, so this all happened half my lifetime ago. As I was saying to Sinéad earlier, my friend’s brother went to the Nirvana/SY Top Hat gig but we didn’t go because we weren’t big enough fans of Sonic Youth to make the trek all the way from Drumcondra to Dun Laoghaire. If only they’d played McGonagles instead, we’d probably have gone along. We knew about Nirvana – my cousin had taped me a copy of Bleach, but I wasn’t hugely impressed, so they weren’t a draw. I did go along to the Point gig the following year, but that was mostly to see the oh-so-1992 support line-up, Teenage Fanclub and the Breeders!

I too have very fond memories of early ’90s Tivoli gigs – it was a great venue for the, um, shorter gig goer because you were never too far back from the stage and there were those raised bits at both ends. The Beastie Boys were brilliant, as were Spiritualized, the Boo Radleys circa Giant Steps, Elastica (still have the Vaseline t-shirt I bought at that one)and the Breeders (I think you’re right about it being Halloween). I saw Oasis’s first Dublin show, just after Supersonic came out (I was young and sucked in by the hype – I didn’t realise that they’d probably reached their musical peak in their first single) but they were very boring – rather like their entire musical output. Oh yeah, and I entered an NME reviewing contest with a very histrionic review of that Suede gig. I seem to remember it included phrases like “deviant glamour”, but I was very proud of it at the time.

Anyone else go to the big Sunstroke gig in Dalymount Park in ‘93? Sonic Youth, Belly, Sugar and the Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy? Faith No More were the headliners, but I think we left when they came on. It was on the weekend after my Leaving Cert ended…

stellanova – Good call on those extra Tivoli gigs and Sunstroke. Had completely forgotten about that one. While they were mostly metal/rock, Sunstroke did book some interesting hip-hop stuff, like the Diposable Heroes and Ice Cube played in ‘94 with Hole, Helmet, Frank Black, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Lemonheads, Rollins. Soundgarden, Therapy, Terrorvision (yes, Terrrorvision) and My Little Funhouse.

Talking of fests, there was the one-day Longest Day/Big Day Out which MCD ran in the late 90s pre-Witnness/Oxegen in Galway with Beastie Boys, Garbage, Cardigans, Massive Attack, Charlatans etc as well.

Ian – glad to see this thread hasnt frightened all the young people away!

On the Cargo tip – it is definitely NOT going to have permanent seating. I’d love to know where this is coming from because i’ve now seen it mentioned in a few places. It will be the same as it is now – some seated gigs, some standing gigs.

Jim, I only attended the first Sunstroke but I could listen to the following ones as the sound carried a couple of miles up the road to my house (this is also how most of the Drumcondra area experienced the U2 Croke Park gigs in the late ’80s. Ah, the days before sound regulation…). Has Dalymount been used for any more big gigs since then?

Re: the Tivoli, I just remembered that the last gig I attended there was the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion in, I think, about 2003 – it was the first gig I’d been to there for years, and I haven’t seen anything there since. It seemed to have totally changed inside.

I have fond memories of the first Big Day Out in ‘96 – Radiohead, Divine Comedy and the Cardigans. Even though it took place in a muddy, featureless field in what felt like the middle of nowhere.

It is kind of astonshing how much our ways of discovering new music has changed in less than 20 years – hell, in ten years. I made most of my musical discoveries in the late ’80s/early ’90s (my teenage years) through the NME and my older sister, and while I do still get some recommendations through the latter, I haven’t been able to take the former seriously for a very long time. Thank god for the internet…

I thought the longest day was a Dublin thing. The Radiohead/Massive Attack/Teenage Fanclub gig in 97 on June 21st was billed as the longest day.

Sinead- Sheep on Drugs. I remember them..they were to 1993 what Birdland were to 1992 in the NME. God, in the days before hearing bands on My Space, I bought some amount of rubbish on the back of Melody Maker/NME/Sounds reviews.

Jim- Neds Atomic Dustbin? I own both a Daisy Chainsaw album and a New Fast Automatic Daffodils album-
it’s taken me 15 years to admit it.

Does anyone remember the venue on the northside of the quays; I think it’s where all those Italian/Wallace restaurants are. Unsane played there around 1995/96 and I think it was knocked down soon afterwards.

I have a bootleg of Nirvana’s gig in Sir Henry’s and it’s striking to hear the indifference to the tunes from Nevermind, people continually shouting out for the likes of ‘School’.
Maybe it was my imagination, but when I listened to it I got the impression that the band were digging their heels in a little, standing by the new tunes, and trying not to bow to the heckling – a little ironic given that they’d later go through a spell where ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ wouldn’t be played at all. Does it say something about the nature of audiences?

http://www.corkdjs.com/nostalgia.html

Scroll right down to the bottom for a picture of some of the Henry’s Nirvina show and event flyer.

yeah of course they hyped stuff, it just was kind of different. nme is probably more successful now than it was then.

Concierge/Sinead – If you are interested in updating…
Sheep on Drugs are playing in VooDoo Lounge on September 7th….alive and kicking!

Can anyone mail me their stories about the Top Hat please

Aaah yes, Conceirge that venue on the quays was indeed the Ormond Multimedia Centre, saw Radical Dance Faction play there with Paranoid Visions supporting back in the early 90’s. Jim-the Ormond Hotel was & is furthur up on Upper Ormond Quay.
The Top Hat-I remember seeing Faith No More playing there with New York hardcore band Prong doing support slot back in 1990. FNM came on late so the DJ entertained the crowd for about 11/2 hrs playing tunes from the likes of Living Color,Fishbone etc. waiting for them to arriave.
By the time FNM finished it was after 11.30 with the last DARTs well gone back then leaving everyone in sundry with long walks home on that chilly Tuesday night….memories indeed!

des blair, the cork sy/nirvana promoter, told me a few months after the gig that he was offered nirvana as a headliner on their european tour and that, because he had given them some extra money after the henrys show they\d do the gig at a discount from their by then astronomical fee but even with the discount a cork show would still have been too risky, such was the (discounted) fee they were on at that point.

aahh, Sonic Youth. A memorable gig for me was Sebadoh and Pavement supporting the Youth sometime in the 80’s in Berlin (‘88?). Didn’t know Pavement and Sebadoh at the time, but thought they were both brilliant (wasn’t even sure after the gig which was which). Had cause to remind Lou B. about it a while ago in Munich, and he remembered the concert well. Must have seen the Pixies in Munich around the same time too…

Brian – I have a feeling that the very tall man – did he look a little like Samuel Beckett? – may well have been Fachtna O’Ceallaigh who was her manager at the time. He was also an ex-journo (Evening Press)