The band headed for record success – 20 years after splitting up
WHEN Mark Sherlock got the message, he thought it was one of his old bandmates playing a trick on him.
But the note left on his YouTube channel was legitimate — around 20 years after they split up, someone was interested in putting This Certain Kind down on vinyl.
Mark, along with fellow This Certain Kind members — singer Anthony Cully, guitarist Des Connaughton and drummer John Shortt — spent years trying to get their big break.
‘Dessie was the first out of us to be in a band,’ Anthony explains. ‘He was in one with his brother called Life and Soul. Then all of our cool friends joined bands and we were a little bit jealous. So we decided we wanted to do it too.’
In fact, being in a band was the only reason Mark picked up the bass guitar in the first place, teaching himself how to play so that he could get in on the action.
‘I only bought a bass guitar because I wanted to be in the band with my mates,’ he says.
‘The first thing he mastered on it was Ceremony by New Order,’ remembers Anthony. ‘He’d be there with his tongue sticking out, which he had to do to concentrate.’
The firm friends were in their early twenties and working away while following their dreams of making it big in the charts.
And practice made perfect so Des was allowed to bring This Certain Kind round to play and write at his home in the Dublin suburb of Tallaght.
‘We used to go up to Dessie’s,’ Anthony says. ‘His mam had a garage at the side of the house which was soundproofed.
‘We would rehearse and play and have a bit of a mess there.’
‘We were the stereotypical garage band in the sense that we started in there then progressed to the rehearsals studios,’ Des adds. ‘Not everything we wrote was good but we sifted through it and the longer we played, the set got stronger.’
It was a cottage industry as Des, who was then working as a printer, knocked up posters for the gigs while the lads drove around sticking them up on walls, in shops and pubs and anywhere else that would allow them.
Things began slowly but then ‘The Kind’ as they were known to their fans, started to gain a following.
‘We started in Tallaght playing Bridget Bourkes which is where the Old Mill is now,’ Anthony says. ‘We played in Molloy’s pub too and one night we played the Belgard Inn with Stars of Heaven. That was a big gig and we were on the bill so it gave us the confidence to go into Dublin.’
This Certain Kind played their first city centre gig in The Underground where they grew to have regular slots. They played The Baggot Inn, The Rock Garden and all the cool hangouts that were popular with music fans in the early 1990s.
A demo was recorded and even got aired on Dave Fanning’s radio show.
‘We wrote songs in batches,’ Des says. ‘Maybe out of four songs we would record three of them. Studio time back then was really expensive — around £300 punts a day so we had to really work fast.’
And for a while that big break seemed to be on the horizon.
‘Eamon Carr mentioned us in the top bands section of the Evening Herald’s end of year review alongside Power of Dreams and An Emotional Fish,’ Mark says. ‘I still have that at home in a frame.’
And there was interest in the band from a record label too but sadly it never came to anything.
‘We used to gig a lot but we always seemed to be in the right place at the wrong time,’ Des says. ‘We were quietly confident and we were as good as anyone else.’
And in 1998 the band decided to call it a day.
‘I think the thing has a certain shelf life if you are in a band and you don’t get the breaks,’ John says. ‘There was a bit of an economic upturn then and in our jobs everyone started to get a bit busier.’
‘Life gets in the way of your dreams and the draw for the band got a little bit less,’ Anthony adds. ‘We had to become adults I suppose.’
So there were weddings and children and this year the lads all turned 50. Mark and Anthony both run ventilation businesses, John is a courier while Des is now semi-retired and runs his own music studio.
Des and John, though, both kept all the band’s recordings and a few years ago Mark decided to put some tracks up on YouTube.
‘One day I got a message from a record company in Germany. The person contacted me in the comments under the video saying “Is this band still going?” and asked for a member of the band to get in touch. I told him ‘It’s my band.”
‘To be honest at first I thought it was a joke. I thought I was being wound up by the band because we always used to do that kind of thing to each other.
‘And then when I contacted him the message that came back was too detailed.’
Now two tracks by This Certain Kind will feature on Live At Leamington Spa Volume Nine by German record company Firestation.
‘Unfortunate is the track on the record and they also chose Make Your Heart Bleed as the bonus track,’ Mark says.
The album gets released today and for the members of This Certain Kind, it’s going to be a very special moment.
THE record label specialises in 80s and 90s indie tunes and it was maybe the tags I put on YouTube that led them to us,’ Mark says. So what happens next? ‘We are open to offers,’ John says, laughing. ‘It’s just been totally out of the blue but it’s nice to have that recognition.’
More than anything though, the songs being put on vinyl are a solid reminder of four firm friendships that have stood the test of time.
‘It’s very nice to have it, to have an album to hold in your hands,’ Anthony says. ‘It’s a great memory and a great memento of a fantastic time we all had together. And we had a ball.
‘For us it wasn’t just being in a band, it was our football team and our social club. It was a fantastic few years and to have it recognised like this is great.’
Live At Leamington Spa Volume Nine is released on Firestation Records today. See firestationrecords.de