One of few boons brought by a regular purchasing pattern of Hot Press magazine in the late 1980s and early 1990s was that a Westerner, a country bumpkin, got to be familiar with the Dublin apsirant social scene of that time, just as surely as if that same son of the soil was in fact hanging around the Baggot Inn, Whelan's, Bad Bob's and all those other joints. One could effect a Bono-esque drawl and talk all night about the incandescent genius of Simon Carmody, Gavin Friday, Man Sneezer - there was an artist part of that gang as well, wasn't there? Gucci, or Bobo, I think. They might have called him Number Seven after Denver Pyle's mule in Grizzly Adams, for all I know - and about how the pop world was waiting to be conquered by Tom Dunne and Something Happens.
One didn't, of course - affectation is frowned upon in the country, and it's hard to effect a Bono-esque drawl after one's teeth have been punched down one's throat by a local who didn't care for a post-modernist structuralist deconstruction of Willie Joe Padden.
And rightly so. If a few of those bucks got the swift shoe in the hole and told to get off to the Bank and get a right job they would have been better off. In fact, I often wonder what happened Simon Carmody - for all the bollocks written about The Golden Horde in Hot Press, Lost in Time, the duet with Maria McKee, is one of the greatest ever Irish pop songs.
But An Spailpín digresses once more. What put Hot Press into my head was that is suddenly occured to me that something called a Paddy Casey is all over the radio and media all of a sudden, I have no idea of what it is a Paddy Casey does or is meant for.
The Frames are much easier to understand. The Frames are the beloved locals who will never cross the M50 or the Irish sea, just as Toasted Heretic were as Galway as Tí Neachtain's and knowing how to pronounce "Powell's." But Paddy Casey - man, I just don't get Paddy Casey.
Googling didn't do me much good, either. He seems a strictly local phenomenon, but the reason for the outbreak I can't seem to trace. I don't think we'll see Dustin Hoffman and Cuba Gooding, Jr., booting around the city looking for a cute little monkey that they need to save Rene Russo's life, as in that awful movie of a few year's back, the monkey providing the key to why so many people seem to be bitten by this Paddy Casey bug. Who is the bum? Where is he from, and when, in the name of God, is he going back? And when he goes back, will he please take his perfectly awful song with him? It's driving me nuts!
I said I'd write a song
I said I'd write a song
I knew it wouldn't take too long
For me to write a song
If I can repeat a line
If I can repeat a line
I'll be done in half the time
If I can repeat a line
You'll get a nice pork chop for Sunday dinner
When you're a record spinner
Even when it's as cook as this
Nobody listens to the words
Nobody listens to the words
They think it's all for the birds
Listening to the words
I'm just glad I'm off the dole
I'm just glad I'm off the dole
And me mot has got parole
But I'm just glad I'm off the dole
You'll get a nice pork chop for Sunday dinner
When you're a record spinner
But it's hardly what a song should be, now is it? I mean, for God's sake.
