Archive News
Happy memories for Dublin’s Squarehead as Galway gig looms
Date Published: {J}
Indie pop trio Squarehead have taken the Dublin music scene by storm in their first 12 months together, having penned one of the most critically acclaimed songs of 2010 and featuring prominently on the inaugural Popical Island compilation last summer.
The band bring their contemporary brand of 60s surf pop to Galway this weekend when they take to the stage of the Róisín Dubh for a gig on Saturday, April 23 supported by fellow Dubliners We Are Losers.
The road to Galway is one paved with happy memories for singer/guitarist Roy Duffy and his band mates Ian McFarlane and Ruan van Vliet. It was on their way to a gig in the Róisín last December that they received a phone call to tell them that Squarehead’s irresistible single, Fake Blood, had been voted song of the year on the online music blog, Nialler9.
The accolade capped a fantastic year for the group during which they fortuitously coalesced and embarked on a skyward trajectory that has seen them emerge from anonymity to become one of the most promising bands currently in the Dublin music scene.
“We were on a bus to Galway when we got a call telling us that we’d won single of the year on the Nialler9 blog,” recalls Roy. “That was really cool. Fake Blood has definitely turned out to be a major breakthrough for us, although we never really thought that it was any better or worse than the other songs we recorded when we started.
“A little over a year ago I was doing a solo acoustic set and I decided that I wanted to record a couple of songs with a few others. I got together with Ian, who I live with and have been friends with since we were 16, and Andy Walsh from I Heart the Monster Hero; and we recorded Fake Blood in some room and we put it on the internet.
“It started to get a lot of attention online and James Byrne from The Villagers, who also runs Any Other City Records, heard it and thought that we might have something there. We started handing out Fake Blood CDs at gigs and it just gained popularity from there,” says Roy.
The song has become the flagship track for Squarehead and has been covered by a number of other artists as its popularity continues to grow. It also featured on the Dublin music compilation Popical Island #1 when it was released last May.
The single’s almost viral popularity helped to bring the band and their other songs the attention that they were due. Their star has continued to rise throughout last year and 2011 to date as their rejuvenated surf-pop sounds attract a growing fan base.
Squarehead’s music is upbeat and energetic, funky and retro; echoing the summery sounds of the surf pop scene from the 1960s.
“The surf pop influence came from Ruan really,” explains Roy. “He has played in so many pop and rock bands, and he has a really eclectic knowledge of music and the 1960s scene – he introduced us to a lot of that. His drumming kind of suits that stuff as well.
“We’re all into very different kinds of music: Ian is big into funk and slappy bass, which is really the exact opposite to me. I was into poppy rock stuff when I was younger when the others were into heavier stuff but I listen to everything really. At the moment, I’m listening to loads of lo-fi American bands, Neil Young, the Beach Boys. Anything really.”
Squarehead was originally the name of Roy’s acoustic one-man band until he got sick of playing solo and decided to bring Ian and, eventually, Ruan into the fold. He had toured Eastern Europe with his solo act in the company of Hands Up Who Wants to Die in 2009, when he says he ended up “playing wimpy pop to crusties” that was only sometimes well-received.
“It isn’t as much fun playing acoustic on your own,” says Roy. “That’s the main reason I stopped that. If you play a really good gig, there’s nobody to turn around to and say ‘well done’. You can’t really give yourself a pat on the back. It’s a lot more fun playing with other people.”
The success of Squarehead over the course of their first year as a group has placed a greater demand on Roy’s time, and earlier this year he quit playing with Hands Up Who Wants to Die in order to concentrate on his own band’s fortunes. He had recorded an album with the rock band in Frankfurt, which was released last February.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
People’s living conditions less than 100 years ago were frightening. We have come a long way. We talk about water charges today, but back then the local District Councils were erecting pumps for local communities and the lovely town of Mountbellew, according to Council minutes, had open sewers,” says Galway County Council archivist Patria McWalter.
Patria believes we “need to take pride in our history, and we should take the same pride in our historical records as we do in our built heritage”. When you see the wealth of material in her care, this belief makes sense.
She is in charge of caring for the rich collection of administrative records owned by Galway County Council and says “these records are as much part of our history as the Rock of Cashel is. They document our lives and our ancestors’ lives. And nobody can plan for the future unless you learn from the past, what worked and what didn’t”.
Archivists and librarians are often unfairly regarded as being dry, academic types, but that’s certainly not true of Patria. Her enthusiasm is infectious as she turns the pages of several minute books from Galway’s Rural District Councils, all of them at least 100 years old.
Part of her role involved cataloguing all the records of the Councils – Ballinasloe, Clifden, Galway, Gort, Loughrea, Mountbellew, Portumna and Tuam. These records mostly consisted of minutes of various meetings.
When she was cataloguing them she realised their worth to local historians and researchers, so she decided to compile a guide to their content. The result is For the Record: The Archives of Galway’s Rural District Councils, which will be a valuable asset to anybody with an interest in history.
Many representatives on these Councils were local personalities and several were arrested during the political upheaval of the era, she explains.
And, ushering in a new era in history, women were allowed to sit on these Rural District Councils – at the time they were not allowed to sit on County Councils.
All of this information is included in Patria’s introductory essay to the attractively produced A4 size guide, which gives a glimpse into how these Rural Councils operated and the way political thinking changed in Ireland during a short 26-year period. In the early 1900s, these Councils supported Home Rule, but by 1920, they were calling for full independence and refusing to recognise the British administration.
“I love the tone,” says Patria of the minutes from meetings. “The language was very emotive.”
That was certainly true of the Gort Rural District Council. At a meeting in 1907, following riots in Dublin at the premiere of JM Synge’s play, The Playboy of the Western World the councillors’ response was vehement. They recorded their decision to “protest most emphatically against the libellous comedy, The Playboy of the Western World, that was belched forth during the past week in the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, under the fostering care of Lady Gregory and Mr Yeats. We congratulate the good people of Dublin in howling down the gross buffoonery and immoral suggestions that are scattered throughout this scandalous performance.
For more from the archives see this week’s Tribunes here
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
SLIGO 0-9
GALWAY 1-4
FRANK FARRAGHER IN ENNISCRONE
GALWAY’S first serious examination of the 2013 season rather disturbingly ended with a rating well below the 40% pass mark at the idyllic, if rather Siberian, seaside setting of Enniscrone on Sunday last.
The defeat cost Galway a place in the FBD League Final against Leitrim and also put a fair dent on their confidence shield for the bigger tests that lie ahead in February.
There was no fluke element in this success by an understrength Sligo side and by the time Leitrim referee, Frank Flynn, sounded the final whistle, there wasn’t a perished soul in the crowd of about 500 who could question the justice of the outcome.
It is only pre-season and last Sunday’s blast of dry polar winds did remind everyone that this is far from summer football, but make no mistake about it, the match did lay down some very worrying markers for Galway following a couple of victories over below par third level college teams.
Galway did start the game quite positively, leading by four points at the end of a first quarter when they missed as much more, but when Sligo stepped up the tempo of the game in the 10 minutes before half-time, the maroon resistance crumbled with frightening rapidity.
Some of the statistics of the match make for grim perusal. Over the course of the hour, Galway only scored two points from play and they went through a 52 minute period of the match, without raising a white flag – admittedly a late rally did bring them close to a draw but that would have been very rough justice on Sligo.
Sligo were backable at 9/4 coming into this match, the odds being stretched with the ‘missing list’ on Kevin Walsh’s team sheet – Adrian Marren, Stephen Coen, Tony Taylor, Ross Donovan, David Kelly, David Maye, Johnny Davey and Eamon O’Hara, were all marked absent for a variety of reasons.
Walsh has his Sligo side well schooled in the high intensity, close quarters type of football, and the harder Galway tried to go through the short game channels, the more the home side bottled them up.
Galway badly needed to find some variety in their attacking strategy and maybe there is a lot to be said for the traditional Meath style of giving long, quick ball to a full forward line with a big target man on the edge of the square – given Paul Conroy’s prowess close to goal last season, maybe it is time to ‘settle’ on a few basics.
Defensively, Galway were reasonably solid with Gary Sice at centre back probably their best player – he was one of the few men in maroon to deliver decent long ball deep into the attacking zone – while Finian Hanley, Conor Costello and Gary O’Donnell also kept things tight.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
images/files/images/x3_Courthouse.jpg
Families queue up for school’s offer of free house
West has lower cancer survival rates than rest
Galway minors continue to lay waste to all opponents
Gardaí and IFA issue a joint appeal on summer road safety
Marathon Man plans to call a halt – but not before he hits 160 races
