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Amongst the many half-baked explanations for Dublin band Something Happens’ inexplicable lack of global success, back in 1990, with the superb Stuck Together With God’s Glue is one that focusses entirely on lead singer Tom Dunne’s paisley shirt collection.

There may be some truth to it (take a look at the video below), but it’s an unfortunate theory, because the paisley shirts actually revealed a deeper truth. Something Happens were one of the bands that, in the ’90s, ushered in the ’60s’ most important conquests to Ireland - Sex and Pop.

The sexual revolution had passed the Republic by back in the ’60s, thanks to a Catholic-minded legislature that made sure that foreign filth like the pill remained foreign. It was only in 1979 that a bill was introduced allowing chemists to sell contraceptives, and even then only on the presentation of a doctor’s prescription certifying that the said items were for bona fide family planning purposes (not, God and Government forbid. for the purpose of pleasure!). A new bill, hotly contested by the hot and bothered, was introduced in 1985 allowing for the sale of condoms, by chemists, to adults. 

In 1990’s economically depressed Dublin condoms were, as they say, a bit thin on the ground. And it’s against that background that the Happens’ second album came out - a potent mix of pop tunes marked by Ray Harman’s ‘electric’ guitar playing and Tom Dunne’s way with words. And while the album will be chiefly remembered for the hits ‘Hello, Hello, Hello, Hello,Hello (petrol)‘ - listed by the NME that year in their top fifty singles - and ‘Parachute‘ - a light hearted love song floating on a wing and a creaky metaphor, the song that keeps me coming back is The Devil in Miss Jones - the song that most aptly sums up this album driven by lust and catholic guilt.

The Happens were the first band to make me realise that having guitars on a track didn’t have to make it ‘heavy’, in fact - as with most of their songs - the opening chords here are giddily light. When the keyboards and lead guitar kick in seconds later it’s like an explosion of colour (back to the paisley shirts then) and the mood is good. You’d be hard put to realise that the song’s title is taken from / shared with a ’70s porn film, as opposed to the 1941 Oscar nominated The Devil and Miss Jones (directed by Sam Wood). But it is, and there’s the rub.

“From the guy at the back with love
to the girl up there
to the devil in miss Jones
even if I only stare”

The greatest things about this song (in no order of preference):

1) It has a melody so brilliant that they didn’t bother to have a sung chorus

2) The lyrics -always under-rated, perhaps because the band were always so tongue in cheek - are stunning. They managed to mix melancholy and frustration with a mischievous glint in the eye. Genius.

3) The song builds up to a rocking frenzy that  Onan would be proud of - the song takes on the subject matter, and runs with it

4) Related to the above - this is the sound of tight band pushing and over-reaching. The rhythm section of Alan Byrne and Eamonn Ryan  up the ante of the song perfectly to its logical conclusion.

Perhaps the best song on what is certainly one of the most under-rated albums ever.

(couldn’t find a video for it, unfortunately - so here’s the video for Hellox5 Petrol instead)

The anniversary of Phil Lynott’s death is a strange one, in that it already has a clear and established mythology and ritual associated with it; one  set out by the singer himself. In the song King’s Call, the Irish songwriter ostensibly talking about the death of Elvis, prefigured how he would himself be remembered.

The first bands I remember seeing (and liking) on Top of the Pops as a kid were Abba and Thin Lizzy, but it would be a lie to say that I was a die-hard lizzy fan while Lynott was alive. In fact, like many of my contemporaries, the announcement of his death on January 4th 1986 was not something felt particularly deeply at the time. It was a footnote, a talking point, but little more. 

Later, though, discovering more and more of Lizzy’s records, with their melodies that seemed to resonate from somewhere deep in the Irish spirit (despite the fact that the majority of Lizzy’s guitarists were not Irish), and their romantic lyricism, I would do exactly as the song suggested and stay in with close friends drinking and listening to the albums over and over again.

It’s a habit I’ve grown out of - but let’s do it virtually today together with this brilliant track from the much over-looked early album Shades of a Blue Orphanage.  No need to explain why it’s so good - just listen to it, and enjoy.

The artist Robert Luxemburg, in the thought-provoking Steal this film II (freely available through bit-torrent - download it, watch it, pass it on), talks about the absolute fear that record companies and the film industry have that the average consumer will, with the aid of cheap technology, morph themselves into producers. With the aid of filesharing and sampling software, the idea goes, we’ll be able to see that the Emporors really have no clothes on.

Where does that fit in with this brilliant tune from a Dublin vanished-without-a-trace band called  Moneypenny? Well, it’s a song that encapsulates that moment when admiration mutates into inspiration, when a band finds a voice of its own.

The local health authorities can attest to the fact that during the mid-late ’90s Dublin had the highest infestation level of singer-songwriters in the English singing world. Turn a corner in the Hibernian capital, and you were likely to run into an angst-ridden, seldom-washed troubadour busking their latest sparse offering claiming some direct connection with Rimbaud, or Van the Man at least.

Against this backdrop, a blues guitarist/singer Dave Murphy bravely held an open mic night in Dublin’s decidedly dingy International bar. The open mic (or lack of mic, in reality, as the venue was so small it needed no amplification) dragged both the best and the worst songwriters out of the woodwork, and every tuesday night you could hear the sublime (Mundy, at the start of his career), the ridiculous, and a collection of dirges that would have been better off remaining in the bedsit where they were composed. On various occasions, though, a truly special song would shine through, and become week in and week out an anthem. Moneypenny’s ‘hangin out with excellence‘ easily became one thanks to its immediate melody, its lightness of touch, and its limpet-like ability to stick in your mind.

“Hang out with Einstein, he knows it all
Hang out with Jesus, if your name is Paul
Hang out with God himself, he gets it right
Come to the International Bar, on a Tuesday night”

Self-referential without being arrogant or elitist (they cast themselves very much on the ‘hanging out with’ side of the equation); passionate without being earnest, and clever without being either calculating or slick, this is a perfect pop-song (it clocks in at just over 3minutes) which captures the uncertainty and longing of a band’s first faltering footsteps

One of the other reasons I love this song is because it has become that rare thing, a song that stands on its own, uncontaminated with images of the band that produced it. Ask me to tell you something about Moneypenny, aside from the fact that they crafted this genius of a song, and I’ll draw a blank. Blame it on the fact that there’s a richer American band of the same name, perhaps. Search for information on the band, and you’ll be dissapointed. I saw them, at most, two times, and yet the chorus of their song burned in the back of my mind, until, thanks to the charity of file-sharing, I stumbled upon the song and managed to get a copy. Now it’s a regular in any playlist - holding its own in the company of excellence