Showbands: 'Send them home sweating'

Transit vans. Country niteclubs. Crazed fans. Cover bands are today's answer to the showbands of the '60s, entertaining crowds around the country with their brand of rock entertainment. By Mike Stafford

Saturday night in Tullamore and the only distinguishable figure in the pub is a sweaty, inebriated fellow surfing through the crowd on his back. As the band Bluemoose finish their set in No 1 Church Street, a mood of sweaty drunkenness prevails – a job well done as far as the band are concerned. The crowd is already filing up the stairs to the adjoining niteclub, where the sanitised melodies of the latest pop hits will cloud their memories of what went before.

Not a problem, says Phil, Bluemoose's hirsute lead guitarist. "They will wake up the next morning and tell their friends they saw this amazing band. They won't remember any of the songs we played, but they'll remember that we were up on top of the counters and up on top of the bar and they'll remember that they saw a big spectacle and they had fun." Such is the lot of the Irish cover band – enjoyed intensely by the rabble, but why, exactly, the rabble cannot remember.

Two nights earlier, in Killarney, another cover band, Loaded, from Offaly, belted out cover-band staples by the likes of the Kaiser Chiefs, U2, AC/DC and the Killers to a sullen and indifferent crowd. The band's bassist, Pedro Mendoza, wasn't bothered: "Tomorrow night you could do the same set, the same show and they'd be hanging out of the rafters, leaping around, people running along the counter, fellas stripping. We had women stripping – we had the whole lot the other night up in Monaghan."

Showbands successors

Bands like Bluemoose, Loaded and their many contemporaries, such as Big Generator, J90 and Menace, command fees of between €600 and €2,000 a gig to act as a catalyst. Their modus operandi is to entertain, to lift spirits and to get people dancing – they are today's answer to the showbands of the 1960s. The cream leather bedecked superpubs of modern Ireland have replaced the Breezeblock Basilicas, the 'Hucklebuck' has been replaced by 'Fuck You I won't do What You Tell Me', but the basic premise is the same: "Send them home sweating."

At their zenith the showbands numbered over 600, with the most successful playing to crowds, often in their thousands, three or four nights a week. The scene made household names of Brendan Bowyer, Joe Dolan, Dickie Rock; made a millionaire of Albert Reynolds and his brother; sustained both a music magazine and a television show and unfortunately provided the stabilisers for Louis Walsh's first tentative steps in the music business. The fuse for Ireland's Baby Boom was to be found in many a 'Ballroom of Romance'.

The Ireland of today is a very different place from the conservative landscape in which the showbands prospered. Back then, Ireland's embryonic broadcasting service gave only the slightest hint of the social revolution that characterised the '60s for the rest of the western World. This ironclad cultural cocoon meant that Brendan Bowyer and the Royal, Joe Dolan and the Drifters and The Capitols with Butch Moore held a greater sway over the consciousness of the Irish youth than Eminem, Coldplay and Simon Cowell combined could dream of today.

None of today's cover bands can hold out any hope of being part of a Cover Band Era. The showbands operated in a time when priests still oversaw the "dry" dances, advising intertwined couples to "leave space for the holy ghost between them", and the young people still listened. In this age of Mickie Finns shots and wanton promiscuity what taboos are there left for cover bands to shatter? All the cover bands have is the music, and that's not even theirs.

No one is more aware of this then the bands themselves. After seven years fronting Bluemoose, Tony Ward views his job as just that. "The novelty value goes out of it. You start to take it more seriously when you get to our stage – this is our job, our career," he says, with no rancour. The grandson of legendary Limerick bandleader Donie Collins, Tony has no problem drawing comparisons between his job and that of his grandfather. "It's definitely modern-day showbands... This is what my grandfather did – getting in the back of a Transit with your equipment, turning up, playing a gig and getting paid."

Culchies getting their kicks

Playing in a cover band involves a lot of travelling, as Pedro from Loaded pointed out: "I often look at the weather, Martin King on TV3, and every town you see on it – Clones, Galway, Limerick, Kerry, Cork, Waterford, Wexford – I think, 'We've been there, we've been there, we've been there.' Every town that comes on we can say we've been there." Conspicuous in its absence from a cover band's tour itinerary is Dublin – the larger cover bands simply don't play there. The availability of quality original acts and subsequent low fees offered by Dublin publicans and niteclub owners makes the capital a no-go area for cover bands and provides another parallel with the showbands – an affinity with the rural.

Pedro has his own way of explaining away the disproportional popularity of cover bands outside Dublin – Gobshitism. "Down the country there still are culchies – and I'm a culchie – and they still just want to go out and leap and jump like fucking eejits. We've seen bands, a banjo and a fiddle, slaughtering songs 400 years old and the place is going baloobas. The lads can't even play the instruments and the place goes crazy. They love that shite. The better a band you are down the country, it's nearly worse for you."

His comments are indicative of the importance that is placed on the crowd – something that comes from playing another's music. "I liken the buzz and enjoyment you get from playing covers to a crowd that is loving it to playing your own songs to a crowd who know your stuff," says Bluemoose guitarist Philip.

However band members inevitably come up against a level of ill feeling for what they do, particularly from other musicians. "You get things like: 'You're a sell-out' and 'You've got no soul'," says Philip. "I'm out playing in front of 600 people every night and you're at home in your bedroom writing sad songs that nobody wants to hear. So what's wrong with what I do? He's working in McDonalds, playing in an original band and he thinks, 'I'm great. I've got the moral high ground on this bastard.'"

Mirroring pop culture

Showbands have been similarly dismissed as the antithesis of creativity by Bob Geldof and Bono. This is grossly insulting to a generation of musicians who introduced the electric guitar to Ireland and provided apprenticeships to the likes of Rory Gallagher and Van Morrison. Showbands were a mirror reflecting an embryonic pop culture. They were martyrs to a cause that had long since left them behind, thanks in part to the success of Geldof and Bono.

Today's cover bands are a reflection of our culture, where the "rock entertainment show" can hold sway over a crowded niteclub by expertly mimicking, "what's popular, what's commercial, what's working", says Pedro. "We're slaves to the industry, we're slaves to fashion." By catering to our hunger to consume what is fashionable they are following in the showbands' footsteps. They are accomplished musicians making a living doing what they love in a highly competitive, if less than glamorous, industry. But while they are descendants, they are not disciples – they have evolved. Something that is illustrated all too painfully by Joe Dolan and Dickie Rock's refusal to finally say, "Goodnight, God bless and safe home." p