IRISH BANDS REUNITED

From Toasted Heretic to Sultans of Ping FC, Irish bands are following the global trend and pulling themselves back together. Kevin Courtney reports.

Breaking up is hard to do, but getting back together can be a real pain in the ass. Just ask The Velvet Underground, who reunited after 20 years apart, but broke up again because Lou Reed and John Cale still couldn't get on. I guess not enough water had passed under the bridge. Or Mötley Crüe, who have not aged well, and whose guitarist Mick Mars now has to hobble stiffly onstage due to a recent hip-replacement operation. Or Pink Floyd, who required a phalanx of lawyers to negotiate the return of Roger Waters to perform with his estranged bandmates at Live 8.

But, hard as burying the hatchet may be, there's an obvious benefit to legendary bands reforming. Ask any grizzled old rocker why he's agreed to share the stage again with his sworn enemy, and he won't tell you it's for the money. He'll spout some guff about "forgiving each other", "letting go of grudges" and "doing it for the music" but the bottom line is there's gold in them thar reunion tours. Since they reformed last year, Pixies have made more money than they ever made during their short but very influential career. And Queen have been raking it in, despite the fact that their lead singer, Freddie Mercury, is dearly departed. Although why they didn't get gay metalhead Rob Halford from Judas Priest instead of blues shouter Paul Rodgers from Bad Company to take over lead vocal duties is beyond me.

If money is the spur to bring big bands back together, though, what is motivating Irish bands to reform? In recent times, there has been an inordinate number of Irish bands going back on the boards, from The Undertones to Kerbdog, from Planxty to Horslips, and from Toasted Heretic to Sultans of Ping FC. Are they doing it for the money, or to relive past glories? Or is it just a sheer, bloody-minded refusal to give up the ghost, even in the face of complete public indifference?

"Well, our motivation might not be the same as everybody else's," admits Julian Gough of Galway indie legends Toasted Heretic, who have reconvened for a performance at the Galway Arts Festival on July 23rd, 20 years after playing their first "guerilla" gig on the back of a lorry. "We never actually officially split up, so in a way it's not quite a reformation - we just happened to have not done anything for a decade and a bit."

Friends since schooldays, Toasted Heretic recorded their first two mini-albums, Songs for Swinging Celibates and Charm & Arrogance, on a secondhand four-track, and released them on cassette. They had a brush with superstardom when Gough had a brief encounter with Sinéad O'Connor at an airport, and wrote a song about it called Galway and Los Angeles. But superstardom was not to be theirs, and Julian decided it was time to put away the ironic lyrics and become a novelist. His first novel, Juno and Juliet, was published in 2001; with the completion of his second novel ("my masterpiece") Gough is ready to toast a few more heretics. The band are re-releasing their first two mini-albums on shiny new CD format to replace those cassette copies which have long since disintegrated, fallen into the bath or been chewed up by cheap car stereos. Once again, we can swing to the sounds of Sodom Tonight, Very Naughty Party, LSD (Ain't What it Used to Be) and Love Theme from Yeats: The Movie.

And it's not just Toasted Heretic who have been lured back into action by the idea of capturing the glory that got away the first time round. Wacky Cork punks Sultans of Ping FC plainly still haven't found the jumper they lost back in 1993, so they'll be revisiting a few old haunts just in case said woolly garment has been handed in during the last decade. Once again, the prospect of dancing at the disco bumper to bumper and singing along to Where's Me Jumper? looms large and loud.

You probably won't see the words "Back by Popular Demand" on the posters for Toasted Heretic and Sultans of Ping, but when The Stunning regrouped in 2003 for just one month of gigs, demand was so high, the sold-out shows could have gone on another six months. Raytown legends The Blades also got back together for a one-off gig in the Olympia a few years ago - if you were there you would have witnessed grown rock journalists cry.

This year, The Fat Lady Sings got back together for two shows, one in Dublin and one in London, to celebrate the release of their retrospective album, The Fat Lady Singles. Reports that they had to widen the stage to accommodate singer Nick Kelly's delighted grin are completely unconfirmed.

Alas, there's little to smile about with the travesty that is the reformed Thin Lizzy. Guitarist Scott Gorham insists that it's a tribute to the memory of Phil Lynott, but we, to quote a classic Lizzy song, "don't believe a word". At least The Undertones had the manners to ask (the still-alive) Feargal Sharkey if he wanted to join the reunion. He declined, but the frontman slot has for the past five years been ably filled by Paul McLoone.

For many reformed bands, getting back onstage is like getting back up on a bicycle: a few quick rehearsals just to refresh the memory, maybe tune down the instruments a tone 'cos the singer can't hit the high notes anymore, and slow down the beat a tad so as not to aggravate the guitarist's arthritis. The idea of writing and recording new songs rarely comes up, although when Horslips got back together for old times' sake, they decided to re-record a selection of their finest songs while they were at it.

For the nostalgists who will come out to see their favourite cult bands performing once again, however, it'll be enough to hear such homegrown classics as Dearg Doom, Half Past Two, Where's Me Jumper?, Arclight, Teenage Kicks and Ghost of a Chance.

Let's face it, if - like Julian Gough - you'd written such timeless lyrics as "The sun goes down on Galway Bay/ The daughter goes down on me", then why would you bother writing any new songs? So which Irish bands would we like to see reform? Step up to the plate Microdisney and Rollerskate Skinny.