HELLO GOODBYE
Microdisney was a meeting of minds until negativity begat negativity. Sean O’Hagan remembers it all.
HELLO DECEMBER 31, 1979
We were at a party in Cork. I’d been transplanted from Luton, I was working at this food factory, Swissco, where we made ravioli and lasagne in tins, and airline food. Cathal [Coughlan, singer] was at college. Back then, in the provinces, or in Ireland, the hippy thing hadn’t ended and you got a lot of heads. We were the only two people there who were vaguely not hippyish, and we fell into conversation and started to talk about music, The Pop Group, Scritti Politti, The Residents, things like that. We quickly decided to meet with words and very, very rash, rudimentary guitar ideas. I could play in those days but I didn’t really have any formed ideas, and Cathal, who was a very literary man, had lots.
He was much more plugged in about what was going on in Cork, and he introduced me to Five Go Down To The Sea, who were called Nun Attax in those days. They set the scene really, this resolutely working-class band who had these incredibly bizarre musical ideas. The ground rule they laid was, you didn’t actually have to have musicians, you just needed people who were like-minded, and the music would follow.
We started to rehearse in small community centres, above pubs, at my house. The band was the very punk, funky, scratchy, riffy music of the time, but we progressed when we rented a flat for £6 a week above this bar in the centre of Cork City. We had this little SK-10 Yamaha keyboard, I had an SG guitar and this little Korg drum machine, and we just wrote all day for months and months and formulated a plan. The name came from a song we wrote – I believe Cathal thinks it was the name of a type of LSD from the ’60s. We recorded in some strange places – several monasteries, and Eamonn Andrews’ studio in Dublin. My parents were confused at first, but they became less confused as the name started popping up, as we were managing to get on the telly, in newspapers and on local radio shows. When [Irish broadcasting legend] Larry Gogan played [1983 single] Pink Skinned Man, we were delighted. We’d arrived, and the next thing was, Peel and Kid Jensen were playing it.
GOODBYE JULY, 1988
We’d signed to Virgin, and [1987 LP] Crooked Mile had been reasonably well received. When we did [1988 LP] 39 Minutes we wanted to make something that was a little more of a ‘plastic’ record, that was the word we used. But it had become very apparent that there was no willingness within Virgin to extend their relationship with us. There were these bands like Danny Wilson and Hue & Cry, The Blue Nile, the Scottish bands, making fairly glossy, big money records. I think they hoped we’d end up like that, but we didn’t have the personalities for that, and we didn’t want to. I don’t want to be over-dramatic about this, but negativity breeds negativity. The negativity of the record company becomes the negativity of the music and the band, and we just didn’t think that was a basis to carry on.
We did one final show at the Dominion theatre on July 1, up there with Mr Bowie himself, with Tin Machine, and The Kronos Quartet. It was a difficult show. I think a week later, Cathal and I had a conversation on the phone. I was in Peckham, Cathal was up in Harringay, I guess. There was no massive discussion, fighting or falling out. We just said, “That wasn’t fun, was it?” We agreed it wasn’t. And we realised it hadn’t been fun for a while. And we said, “Let’s stop doing this.”
We would have met after that, to sort some bits and pieces out, take the rehearsal studios apart, all that lot, but yeah, it was the right thing to do. We both had to restructure our identities. You’re 29, or whatever, it’s a good time to do that. Then, it’s an eternity, a third of your life. Now I realise those years just flew by.
We did play at the National Concert Hall in Dublin and in London [in 2018], and in Cork and Belfast [in 2019]. There’ll be no more, absolutely definitely. But when I decided to make a record under my own name, I invited Cathal to sing on three tracks, so you will hear his voice on my tunes. The one person I did want to work with was him.
As told to Ian Harrison
Sean O’Hagan’s Radum Calls, Radum Calls is out on October 25 on Drag City.
“Now I realise those years just flew by.” SEAN O’HAGAN