In the annals of slang, ‘massive’ lives somewhere in the grey area between mahousive and gigroncous – it’s cool, but no so cool as to give itself a big head. Somewhere in the very centre of this musical middle ground sits Waterford techno/trance outfit You’re Only Massive.
Andrew Hamilton caught up with the Maebh and Megan from You’re Only Massive as they go searching out costume for their 32 county tour.

AH: When I heard that you were going to be costume shopping I figured I’d dress up too. So I’ve gone as Bob the Builder on laundry day; high-viz jacket and a child’s cycling helmet. Not bad ha?

Maebh: Ya, sounds great. Well done on that, we fell so honoured.

Magan: Ya, love the enthusiasm.

AH: Are costumes important for you? Are they a big part of your gigs?

Megan: Well ya. Dressing up is really fun for the gigs. It helps to make it feel a bit special, you know, just the same as if you were going out somewhere.

AH: So Your Only Massive, how did it all get started?

Maebh: We started last year when we were both playing at a techno night in Waterford. I saw Megan and asked her to DJ and we just took it from there. Simple as that…

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THE product of a musical mixed marriage including boy bands, hip-hop and heavy metal – Kiernan McMullan is a very atypical singer songwriter. Born in Hong Kong and raised for 13 years in Boston, he had already lived a little before he came to Killaloe as a teenager. Words by Andrew Hamilton
“My dad’s from Belfast and my mom’s Australian and they both wanted to live in Ireland. I was in boarding school in Limerick and I’m not really sure how it happened but I somehow ended up living here in Killaloe,” said Kiernan.
“I started playing piano when I was about six years old. I started off with classical and I wasn’t really feeling that in the same way as the other six-year-olds. So my teachers brought me out a book of old ragtime pieces and blues and jazz and basically teach me how to improvise.
“I have to be honest though – when I was nine years old I listened to
boy bands like the Backstreet Boys and N’Sync. No shame though…

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Thirty years after Inflammable Material single-handedly launched the Irish punk scene Andrew Hamilton chews the fat with the granddaddy of Irish punk - Stiff Little Fingers’ Jake Burns.

For the preachers of anarchy, self-destruction is an accepted and inevitable bedfellow. Few in those angst fueled days in the late 70’s – when punk took it’s first raucous steps into the world spitting bile and fury – could have seen much farther than “get pissed, destroy”. The future was simple, there is no future.
And so it seemed in the summer of 1983. After six years of hell-raising, the music public had moved on. The New Romantics, bands like Spandau Ballet, Ultravox and Culture Club had risen with a university-minded since of the world, and to be part of the angry working class – to be a punk – was no longer an accepted option.
But where do punks go after the party’s over. Sitting in his west London bed-sit, the young Jake Burns struggled with that same question. Betrayed by his music, rejected by his fans and alienated from his band, there was really only one place left - oblivion.
As creative arguments turned to fistfight and fistfight turned to all out brawls, it was starting to become dangerous for Stiff Little Fingers to be in the same room together.
“We just couldn’t stand each other. When we first started playing together we were all 18 years old, and by the time we split we were all 23 or so. You do a lot of growing up and changing in those years don’t you? In our minds we were still 18 years old and we reacted to pressure just like an 18 year old would. At that stage, ya, we had fractured very badly…

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What’s in a name? Well, according to Derry troubadour Joe Echo (aka Ciaran Gribbin), everything really. Words by Andrew Hamilton.
After hanging up his front-man shoes and embarking on a solo fling early last year, the former Leya lead singer needed something to mark him out from the crowd.
“When I left Leya I really wanted to experiment musically. So I decided to reinvent myself. The last thing I wanted to do was come across as just another boring singer songwriter,” he said.
“It just made since to go down that road. The name Joe has been very close to me for a long time. It was my grandfather’s name. The Echo comes from an old beat up acoustic guitar that I still have, it just made since to me.
“There was definitively a since of shedding my skin and reinventing myself. I want to be an artist that is not labeled, like Moby or Bjork or someone like that. I have a real problem with artist being pigeon holed. People don’t want that – people can go from Dr Dre one minute to Christy Moore the next. That’s what I want to do in my music.”

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Far from the drums of the Frank and Walters, Ashley Keating has a second, secret musical life. Andrew Hamilton chats to the Fifa Records co-founder about musical poverty, Russian electronica and being shafted by Fight Like Apes.

MARCH 7, 1983 should have been a great day in Manchester. After five year of musical swashbuckling (but commercial suicide), the boys at Factory Records had finally struck gold.
New Order’s Blue Monday was a song with a soul, all seven and half minutes destined to change music and alter the fortunes of the original Indie label. Wilson, Saville, Erasmus and Hannett had always played by the rules of rock and roll and now, it seemed, the almighty dollar was finally to be their reward.
That would have been nice, fitting almost. But, as in all the best stories, nothing ever really seems to fit and a nice happy ending never rings true. And so it was for Factory, as Peter Saville’s record sleeve for Blue Monday was so expensive that the label actually lost money on each of the million-plus copies sold worldwide.
In business terms, a moment of unthinkable madness but, in the annals of rock and roll, it is the stuff of pure tragic legend.
And so, 25 years later, we come to Fifa Records. Founded by Ashley Keating from the Frank and Walters, along with Killian O’Flynn and Pat Doyle, Fifa is a label without contracts, where the music comes first and the bank balance is an all too unwelcome distraction.
“With the Frank and Walters, we worked with seven different labels and four different publishing companies. The best experience that we ever had was when we were with Setanta Records and everything was done on a handshake…

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In the first of the Clare People’s new Unseen Sounds series, Andrew Hamilton chats to Kilrush singer-songwriter Aileen.

ASK any budding musical talent about the importance of commercial success and shifting ‘units’ and you’ll likely as not get an answer lifted straight from the streets of the Bohemian Montmartre — “It’s all about the music man.”

The thing about Kilrush singer- songwriter Aileen, though, is that she really seems to mean it. After cutting her musical teeth at the age of 13 with soft rock five-piece Wire Bullet, it was the persistence of other people that dragged her slowly into making music.
In the last few months, Aileen has supported the likes of Sharon Shannon, Ocean Colour Scene and the Monoband, and even got a slot
with Albert Niland at the National Concert Hall.
“That was funny. I went up in my jeans and a t-shirt thinking, you know, happy days. But I got up there and people were all dressed up.
There was a posh little lobby there where people got their drinks and
chatted.
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As he emerges from behind the mixing desk, Andrew Hamilton chat to legendary producer Daniel Lanois about the his debut film, the Canadian revolution and the progress of U2’s 12th album.

South over Custom House Bridge, through fields of fresh wrought cobble and a thousand 21st century workhouses drip-drying with the fresh-dollar veneer of IFSC, deep in this jungle of grey and off-grey stands the great windmill of south Dublin.

In the shadow of Stack A, the walls of Creighton Street breath and grow like a plant. With layer upon layer of new graffiti, the psychedelic photosynthesis of youth survives unchecked in a steady truce between Ireland’s past and present.
This is the old Windmill Lane Studio, the spiritual home of U2 and the birthing ground for Boy, October and War. A shrine to all that was once great about music on this island.
Less than a mile away, from a hotel window overlooking St Stephen’s Green, U2’s legendary producer Daniel Lanois contemplates the future. In town for a long stay, the Canadians thought drift to his latest endeavour with Bono, the Edge and co and the work of the day over at U2 Towers.
Success has thrown up a paradox in the life of Dan Lanois. His skills as a producer are unrivalled but have somehow overshadowed his own career and a performer and singer songwriter.
But now, after countless trips to Ireland, he has finally come to share his music and not just his skills at the desk.
“I like to thing of producing and recording as all the one thing…

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People’s poet or pulp philosopher, Jinx Lennon is an artist who pulls no punches. Andrew Hamilton chats to the Louth musician about turning radio and why he hates Billy Bragg.

It’s the question of the hour; who (or what) is the Free State Nova? Answer that, and you go a long way to understanding Jinx Lennon. Standing square behind leviathan dark glasses, deliberately emblazoned with tipex pop-mantras, he both hides and seeks.
Studyer and learner, he stalks the world through windows of broken glass and impenetrably clouded pools. Then, from rooms with no furniture, he yelps and screams his visions. Simplicity of feeling for intensity of emotion.
Time’s running out, we’ll need an answer now, tick follows tock follows tick. He’s someone you know, someone you’ve seen but don’t always recognise, someone (deep down) you need.
It’s a social thermometer, a challenger of rules, a stater of the obvious. Alter-ego or no, the Free State Nova is Jinx Lennon and Jinx Lennon is the Free State Nova.
Later this month Jinx Lennon bring his brand pulp philosophy to the radio waves. Alongside long time collaborator, Pauline Flynn, legendary radio producer Eithne Hand and Mikel Murfi, the words and sentiment of the Free State Nova have been transformed into RTE Radio 1 drama.
“I found that a bit disturbing at first to be honest, changing the songs into a play…

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Andrew Hamilton chats to Clarecastle actor Ronan Moloney about his time as one of the Kings of the Kilburn High Road.

February 25 2008, and the eyes of the world turn to North Highland Avenue and Hollywood Boulevard - to the Kodak Theatre and to Los Angles.
Billions tune in as a tiny Irish film once again manages to capture the hearts of middle America. Eight thousands kilometres away, in a small flat in Harolds Cross, Ronan Moloney watches on as Glen Hansard does his best ‘Hugh Grant with a Paddy heart’ routine.
The Kimmage Road is a long way from the City of Angles, but for tonight at least, the distance doesn’t seem unconquerable.
In an odd Oscars year, the best foreign language category threw up it’s fair share of surprises. No place for The Lives of Others, none either for Persepolis - and sadly too, no place for Kings.
For this Clarecastle man however, the disappointment wasn’t too great. The joy of the experience was all that mattered.
“I was in college in Galway, in my final year. A mate of mine, Mark Hennigan, said that they were doing open auditions for plays that were actually written my students. So we went in for those and we both got lead part. I was really bitten by bug from there, straight away…

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With a new album and a new outlook, Gemma Hayes is right back on form. Andrew Hamilton chats to the Tipperary songstress about her quest for musical redemption.

January 25, 2008. Unseasonably warm rain has washed the hills of Beachwood Canyon for more than four days - creating fast running gullies, impromptu puddles and a new whitewashed look of freshness.
As the mist finally gives way to California sunshine, the rain-soaked landscape begins to shimmer in a kaleidoscope of brilliant light. A liquid horizon, an oil painting that never quiet dried - Los Angles has never looked so beautiful.
Curled before her bay window Gemma Hayes sits to write. Still wet from her slow walk in the torrent, drip-drops from her hair mingle and blotch with ink as she writes and writes. Oblivious to the staining, she works unheeded. True confessions can bear no distraction.
This is a day of self atonement, a day for Gemma Hayes to draw a line under her musical past, her record label days, and re-announced herself to the world. She write a letter to her fans.
“It can be so hard to really connect with people. I really just wanted to do something where I felt that I was really opening up to people…

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