Irish bands who made it here, but were good enough to make the grade elsewhere?

selous

Cactus World News, Blink.

Or did they make it anywhere,
I have the CWN album on vinyl and Blink on cassette,

Eugene Norman

The Pale.

Flint Fredstone

Richie Kavanagh. Genius.

Ezra Wibberley

ger vallely wrote:

I love Bell X1 and I cannot understand how they are not huge. They ought to be more popular than the beige Coldplay. Their lyrics are quite humorous by times and often bordering on mildly genius! I love their voices and I honestly think they ought to be far more recognised outside this country.

+1 on this.

Sure some of their songs don't have genius lyrics, but they have more than enough solid tracks on each album (six of them at this stage, with No. 7 to be released in 2016) to warrant being more successful than they are. Most successful bands have a few great tracks per album (sometimes just one, the lead single) and a few that are passable and sometimes a few that plain flop.

Bell X1 won't go hungry but likewise they'll "never be proper famous" to quote a line from one of their songs. Shame really, but at least it means I get lots if chances to see them play around Ireland.

Deagol

Can't believe no-one mentioned The Stunning yet?!

Kirk Van Houten

Agree on The Devlins and the previous poster on the Stunning.

Would add The Frank and Walters to the list as well.

brianblaze

Bell X1 and JJ72. JJ72 came close with Snow but can't wrap my head around why BellX1 aren't bigger than anyone else from here in the last 15 years.

GetWithIt

The Redneck Manifesto

mr_edge_to_you

On the basis of their Heartworm album, I thought Whipping Boy were going to be massive.

Still one of the greatest albums ever.

riffmongous

I never really gave Aslan any attention beyond crazy world but this thread made me finally give them a decent listening to and now I think they are great! What a sad story Christy has though

Said in an earlier post that I see no reason why anyone should expect a lot of the names being mentioned here would have any appeal outside of Ireland. I'm not dissing or slagging any bands here, I'm just pointing out that a lot of them are basically addressing Irish audiences from an Irish point of view. Love them or hate them, I just don't get it why anyone seriously can't understand why 90% of Irish music has zero appeal/relevance to record buyers in the US and UK.

Some slightly off-topic examples (non Irish). I love The Clash and The Jam. But in no possible way would I ever expect The Jam to be even remotely successful in America while The Clash remain hugely popular there even still to this day. Likewise I really love The Who and The Kinks, but never in a million years am I surprised that The Kinks never made it in the states, good and all as they are. The Who on the other hand made music (like The Beatles and The Stones) that didn't focus on their own local neighbourhoods.

A couple of Irish bands who I genuinely think could have been bigger abroad:

Therapy? OK, pretty big in the UK and playing 4 to 5 thousand capacity venues. But at their peak in the 90's I really thought they could do better in the US. I mean I'm not really into that kind of music myself, but I can at least agree that if you like the type of thing that these guys do then they do it really well. In my opinion they are certainly no worse than let's say Soundgarden who sold millions.

Whipping Boy. Did a really good performance on the BBC on Jools Holland which has a pretty big audience. Jools called them "a new band from Dublin" despite playing for seven years at that point. Anyway, most people seem to agree Heartworm was a great record, including Nick Cave. Whipping Boy started a huge tour with The Bad Seeds in support of Heartworm, except they got fukced off it shortly afterwards because of Fearghal acting the gom. Don't know what he was up to, but if it was enough to get guys like Nick Cave, Warren Ellis, etc so worried back in the 90's then it must have been bad. They lost momentum after that, got dropped by Columbia despite the reviews, and had already broken up as a group by the time their third album came out.

Golden Horde. Inexplicably stuck with Mother Records when Mother Records didn't do a goddamn thing for them in return. Took too many years to get the first "proper" LP out, got some big name producers in to do it, end result was just stunning, jaw droopingly brilliant album, but FFS it never went further than Larry Googan

Eugene Norman

[Deleted User] wrote: »

Said in an earlier post that I see no reason why anyone should expect a lot of the names being mentioned here would have any appeal outside of Ireland. I'm not dissing or slagging any bands here, I'm just pointing out that a lot of them are basically addressing Irish audiences from an Irish point of view. Love them or hate them, I just don't get it why anyone seriously can't understand why 90% of Irish music has zero appeal/relevance to record buyers in the US and UK.

Some slightly off-topic examples (non Irish). I love The Clash and The Jam. But in no possible way would I ever expect The Jam to be even remotely successful in America while The Clash remain hugely popular there even still to this day. Likewise I really love The Who and The Kinks, but never in a million years am I surprised that The Kinks never made it in the states, good and all as they are. The Who on the other hand made music (like The Beatles and The Stones) that didn't focus on their own local neighbourhoods.

Hmm. A lot of the Irish bands mentioned don't focus on local affairs and just sing generic love or political tunes.

Nor does that stop American rap. Where exactly is Compton?.

And in fact the cranberries reference 1916 in Zombies which didn't stop its success. U2 wrote Sunday Bloody Sunday.

So that's not the reason. It might explain why the saw doctors aren't going to go large but it's insufficient for the other bands.

Fr Tod Umptious

Breaking the US has a lot to do with luck.

There are thousands of radio stations catering to hundreds of local areas and demographics, getting heard and noticed on a national level is a real shot in the dark.

fiachr_a

The problem with most Irish bands is that they didn't do enough recordings. If The Fall were from Dublin they would have spilt up in 1981 after two albums, reformed in 1997 to release another two, and then end up doing one or two gigs each year, in Whelans.

jossys_giants

loyatemu wrote: »

They had a few hits and were on the cover of the NME, that's not bad for a novelty act.

what an arsey comment. Top band, and absolutely blistering live

loyatemu

jossys_giants wrote: »

what an arsey comment. Top band, and absolutely blistering live

I like the Sultans, but they were a novelty act - their biggest hit was about a jumper. It's not a diss, but they were never likely to end up playing stadiums.

Anesthetize

jossys_giants wrote: »

what an arsey comment. Top band, and absolutely blistering live

That's not necessarily a bad thing. They're a fun band with some fun songs. But at the end of the day they were a novelty.

selous

Weren't they (Sultans of Ping F.C) quite big in Japan, selling out a lot of venues.

Anyone mentioned Wilt yet, think I seen Kerbdog earlier, I thought Wilt were quite good though.

fiachr_a

selous wrote: »

Blink.

Or did they make it anywhere,

They've a new 'Best of' CD out called Catch that moment.

RayCon

Wormhole .....



... actually they didn't make it here either

Flatzie_poo

brianblaze wrote: »

Bell X1 and JJ72. JJ72 came close with Snow but can't wrap my head around why BellX1 aren't bigger than anyone else from here in the last 15 years.

JJ72 aren't really relevant here, they did better in the UK than in Ireland on most of their singles...

trashcan

Two Irish bands stood out from the herd for me. The Stars of Heaven and The Blades.(How the hell has no-one mentioned them yet )They both absolutely deserved more success then they had. Two of my favourite bands ever, from anywhere. Fantastic to see the Blades triumphant return over the last couple of years. Paul Cleary has promised a new album next year, which is great. Also wonderful to see Stephen Ryan return this year with they Drays. Long may they both run, international success or not.

Some of the other bands mentioned here I really dislike/d. Emotional Fish, Cranberries, Republic of Loose - Ughhh. A House and Something Happens I liked, they'd be in the next level behind the Blades and the Stars for me.

fiachr_a

Nordie punk band Rudi, though they did release a song going 'big time you ain't no friend of mine' so serves them right they never made it.

lewisdhead

trashcan wrote: »

Two Irish bands stood out from the herd for me. The Stars of Heaven and The Blades.(How the hell has no-one mentioned them yet )They both absolutely deserved more success then they had. Two of my favourite bands ever, from anywhere. Fantastic to see the Blades triumphant return over the last couple of years. Paul Cleary has promised a new album next year, which is great. Also wonderful to see Stephen Ryan return this year with they Drays. Long may they both run, international success or not.

Some of the other bands mentioned here I really dislike/d. Emotional Fish, Cranberries, Republic of Loose - Ughhh. A House and Something Happens I liked, they'd be in the next level behind the Blades and the Stars for me.

I mentioned Stars of Heaven on the first page of this thread. Other than that I agree with you about the Blades and also A House and Something Happens. Oddly enough, I also agree with you about Emotional Fish, Cranberries, Republic of Loose - Ughhh x 2. :)

trashcan

[QUOTE=lewisdhead;98115555]I mentioned Stars of Heaven on the first page of this thread. Other than that I agree with you about the Blades and also A House and Something Happens. Oddly enough, I also agree with you about Emotional Fish, Cranberries, Republic of Loose - Ughhh x 2. :)[/QUOTE]

Yeah my comment was referring to the Blades rather than the Stars. Nice to know I'm not alone.

Gmol

Relish, The Stunning(really poor production I thought), something happens,

UrbanSprawl

RayCon wrote: »

Wormhole .....



... actually they didn't make it here either

Same with Dublin Band Desperodow-I Found God' is a extremely under rated when people discuss the best Irish albums of the past few years.

weadick

Anesthetize wrote: »

That's not necessarily a bad thing. They're a fun band with some fun songs. But at the end of the day they were a novelty.

I recall Morty in an interview saying how frustrated they were at their record company marketing them as a jokey band, esp on their second album. They were all serious about music but got tarred with the novelty brush early on and couldn't shift it. Serious live band though even today. I think the Sultans were unfortunate in their timing in that they emerged around the time of grunge when rock became incredibly serious again.

Juniper another band that springs to mind. Had two great singles.

davyboy1975

Kerbdog and my little funhouse were great in their day and should have been a lot bigger especially funhouse but were dicked around by geffen records