Archive News
Smiths’ music gets a new lease of life with These Charming Men
Date Published: {J}
The Smiths were one of the most revered bands of the 1980s, a quartet whose influence is still felt today. Fans of their music check out These Charming Men when they come to the Róisín Dubh this Friday, March 18.
The tribute act has been playing together since 1995. Their formation sounds like it could have come from High Fidelity, Nick Hornby’s novel about music obsessives.
“Basically, I’m a huge Smiths fan,” says Gavin Murphy, who plays the guitar parts written by Johnny Marr. “The band has always been a labour of love – my brother [Des] is the bass player, and we’d always be jamming the songs together.
“I used to collect Smiths’ vinyl and there was a record shop in Dublin and the guy that used to own the shop put me on to Dick Cullen [the band’s first singer]. He became a good friend and he could sing quite well. I told him the idea that there was no Smiths tribute band around, myself and the brother knew all the songs and we were looking for a singer.”
In 2005 Lee Brady stepped into the Morrissey role, and Gavin is quick to praise These Charming Men’s lead singer.
“First of all, you’ve got to be a fan,” says Gavin. “You have to have a bit of musical talent as well. Lee, I always knew he was a good singer, but it did take him a while to master the voice, there’s no doubt about it. It’s not an easy voice to mimic; Morrissey has a very distinct, original voice.”
These Charming Men have put in the hours to do The Smiths’ music justice and it has paid off. Since 2001, they have been invited to play at the annual Smiths/Morrissey convention in Los Angeles.
“It takes place in the Henry Fonda Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard,” says Gavin. “It’s a gathering of huge Smiths fans, and over in the States they’re very fanatical. To the point that a lot of the fans have tattoos of Morrissey on their back, on their arms . . .”
“Two thousand people would show up to the convention, he continues. “There’d be non-stop Smiths music, there’d be a disco and they’d be selling memorabilia and rare vinyl. We would be the act of the night, the main entertainment.”
Lee’s attention to detail is such that it caused devoted American Smiths’ fans to party like it was 1985.
“It would almost be like being at a Morrissey concert, where you get fans running on stage to hug the singer, reaching out to shake his hand,” Gavin recalls. “The show that we do, Lee does costume changes and he has all the props that Morrissey used to use. Like the banner for The Queen Is Dead and the hangman’s noose for Panic.”
The documentary Is It Really So Strange? investigated Morrissey’s popularity in LA’s Latino community – something Gavin has also witnessed at first hand.
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
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