Pub bands are lost in unreported scandal

LAST Saturday night my old Hot Press buddy Neil McCormick tweeted a picture of a band of blues rockers playing in his local pub in London, and I was transported to a better place — such things could be seen in Ireland too, once upon a time.

Maybe they weren’t blues bands as such, but they were bands of a sort, with at least three members, playing electrified instruments, and playing quite loud. I guess the excellent carpeting then in vogue in the lounge bars helped to absorb the sound.

Most parts of Ireland, indeed, had a lounge bar or two in which these good people could be seen and heard, banging out tunes like Pretty Woman and Needles and Pins and Bad Moon Rising, and a bit of Smokie — pop music, basically, though they would never refuse an invitation to play some country, or anything else really that the drinkers were demanding. They had names like The Breakaways and Gilt Edge and Revival.

They seemed to be particularly prevalent in the borderlands where I spent some of my youth — indeed I have powerful memories of pubs in the Dundalk region where it was almost unknown to get through the evening without hearing the voice of a singer “testing 1, 2, 3, testing” into an echo chamber.

And then kicking off with Sweet Caroline.

What happened to all that? What happened to that mighty civilisation that is now gone with the wind?

Meanness happened to it, for a start. Meanness of spirit and just meanness in general.

Because at some point in Irish pub history, someone got the bright idea that a fellow with an electric organ and a drum machine would be cheaper than the band — except it wasn’t such a bright idea, because these fellows were nowhere near as good as the bands, nor could they be.

No electric organ player could ever compete with the sound of a tight threepiece band playing Johnny B Goode, and eventually the publicans got the notion that the organ players were also surplus to requirements.

Which was understandable, except they replaced them with nothing, unless you regard soup and sandwiches as something.

By a strange coincidence, pretty soon the pubs of Ireland which had been fantastically successful for as long as anyone could recall, had no atmosphere, and were closing down all over the place — oh, I wonder why?

It is one of the great unreported scandals of the 20th Century.