Burning desire...

Way back in a time and place long forgotten, (wasn’t it 1984 at St Colman’s Primary School, Lambeg? Ed.), my older brother said, “No Hot Ashes. That’s a class name for a band. Why? Duh – look at that bin there, what does it say? See, every day for ever you’ll see No Hot Ashes written somewhere.

You’ll never forget them”.

And so it was. Almost every day since then I’ve thought about No Hot Ashes, without ever actually having heard their music.

Even at our granny’s funeral, more than a decade later, when the same brother was snickering at a “No Hot Ashes” sign stuck above the bins outside the crematorium, I was wondering about the band. Whatever happened to them, did they just pack it in after burning out the local circuit, did they dream of something more or was it all just a bit of craic?

The truth, as they say, is stranger than fiction. No Hot Ashes, it turns out, have just released their debut album after almost 35 years.

Formed in 1983, the guys - Paul

Boyd, Tommy Dickson, Steve Strange, Eamon Nancarrow, Niall Diver and Dave Irvine - were starting to make waves on the Northern Ireland hard rock scene and by 1986 they’d released a single, She Drives Me Crazy, moved to London and signed a record deal to become label mates of Motörhead and Hawk-wind. But then, for various reasons, it all hit the skids. The promised album never was released and by the mid 90s the band sort of imploded. A tough time, surely, but it made good material for singer Eamon’s memoirs...

Then a remarkable thing happened. Drummer Steve Strange became an agent for some of the biggest acts in the world including Coldplay, Eminem and Snow Patrol and organised some of the biggest tours in the history of rock.

But he never gave up his first love of beating the skins and after reforming for a charity gig in 2013, an idea began to foment – get the band back together. And being the sort of man to get things done, that’s exactly what happened. Five years on and NHA, that long-awaited debut album, is ready to hit the shelves.

Unfortunately it was just too late for bassist Paul who features on the album but lost his battle with cancer in January.

So it’ll be with mixed emotions that the guys take to the stage in Belfast’s Limelight 2 tonight. There’ll be tears, surely, memories, a little bit of triumph and a lot of loud guitars. No Hot Ashes, then. You can never really forget them.

LISA SAYS: Hannigan