I’m a-gonna skip a couple of episodes of Viva Hate right through to the summer of 1996. I’d finished up working in the Ballinteer House as a lounge boy and in probably the best job known to a teenager, namely working in the Snooker Hall of said boozing establishment. John Weedle was the best boss I’ve ever had the pleasure to work for. I’d met and worked every Sunday night in the bar with the future Mrs. O’C, unbeknownst to either of us. There was that frisson but it went fucking nowhere. Space and time would regurgitate that to the ultimate. Namely the day we exchanged vows on a beautiful sun shining day in Aughrim. But...fuck it. She wasn’t interested back then. She thought I was a right shaper. And she was very, very right. Even then she knew me better than I knew myself.
I’d taken to hanging round with a fellow lounge boy, Dave Doorly (not his real name). He had an older brother who was mad into his music. Doorly had, as I had previously under the tutelage of Messrs Bushe and Noonan, absorbed his older brother’s music. The Stone Roses were the stand-out. Their much derided opus ‘Second Coming’ had occupied most of the summer of 1995 in our CD players. I did and still do prefer it to their self-titled debut album. It was an eye-opener for me. I had spent the previous year listening to the greatest debut album of all time, and for all you nit-pickers, that is a fact, ‘Definitely Maybe’ by you know who. I had the haircut. I put on the swagger. I was ‘mad for it’. What ‘it’ was? I still don’t know. What a summer ‘it’ was.
One afternoon lazing about as 18 year olds do before they piss off to Club Sarah, the boy Doorly introduced an album by a band called The Charlatans called ‘Some Friendly’ to the room that now included fellow lounge boys and let’s face it, raconteurs, Ian Crotty and Gerard Weedle (of John Weedle fame, for he was his son). Alan Drennan who had tagged along in his position as my best mate was not going to miss out on a massive piss-up and the prospect of female company. “You’ll love this, it’s like The Stone Roses but with more wah-wah in it” opined Doorly. He was not wrong. I loved it. And The Stone Roses were forever consigned to the bread bin. Never to return. It was our Inbetweeners phase and let’s face it, what teenage lad hasn’t gone through that desperation of desperately wanting to ‘get yer hole’ but leaving empty handed at the end of the night looking like a contestant off Strike It Lucky that has gotten all the answers wrong? We struck gold once in a while, but it was a strike rate akin to Andy Cole in his early United days i.e. Fucking rubbish.
I was mesmerized by The Charlatans. The reasoning was that album was that fucking good they could not have been dropped by their label. A trip into Freebird records on the quays of Dublin proved me right. Me, with my meagre funds bought three of their albums on cassette. ‘Between 10th & 11th’ with bananas on the cover, ‘Up To Our Hips’ with a couple of models peering at me from behind the Perspex box...and ‘The Charlatans’ self titled with a stern black background with five stern looking lads peeping out through the gloom. At least thirty glorious tunes to become accustomed to. And all for fifteen old Irish pounds!
These albums kept me occupied from the summer of 1995 right through to the leaving of the Ballinteer House in May 96. You’ve just got to move on sometimes. In my mind I was Eric Cantona. I never stooped to kung-fu kicking a customer although sometimes I’ll admit, it did cross my mind....No! Love ‘em, cause a bit of fuss and leave ‘em. That was my ideology. In other people’s minds I was just a little Liam Gallagher-wannabe with shit shoes. And shite they were, let me tell you. And I was a little shite too, as only a Mam can testify. God Bless her Scouse socks.
One Saturday night, following the definitely tried but poorly tested “this place is full of birds, it’ll be no problem to us” route we headed to the Mean Fiddler on Camden Street. My old pal Barry Dunne had swelled our ranks to five. After another night of ‘hitting the bar’ in more ways than one we retired to my ‘gaff’, for the oul’ pair were away.
Through my drunken state I had remembered I had purchased The Charlatans new single. On cassette. Naturally. Stuck it in the Hi-Fi. Off we go. I had forgotten to mention that their keyboard player Rob Collins had been killed in a car accident a few weeks previously. But one of the lads brought that subject up. It added a danger to proceedings. “Fuck me! They’re bringing a single out? And one of them has just died?!”. “Shush, fucking listen. Listen”. Trippy drum loop intro courtesy of The Chemical Brothers. Piano (“that’s Rob that is”...shush!),guitarspianodrumsbass, bang. The roof lifts off my head. Fucking a-maz-ing. “One to another, sister and a brother and a change in the way that you feel. Pleased to meet you, hope I never see you, I’ll be at ease watching you sleep, watching you smile”...Fuck me, I thought to myself, Noel Gallagher doesn’t do tunes like that....”Love I adore you, always looking for you and I’ll be there whenever you need me, Be my Spiderwoman I’ll be your Spiderman!”...Okay, okay, do go on...”And I hear our day is coming, gets sweeter every year, tomorrow’s gonna be too easy and today is gonna be too near”...That’s us lads...”Trust is for believers and love can keep the faith, I don’t need you I can’t buy you I can’t hurt you”...That’s that ugly mug from the Mean Fiddler, fuck her, she’s a dog anyway...Rob’s piano bit. Goosebumps appearing on all our arms at this stage. Listen to the drums. Fuckin hell! “One to another, peace to my brother always giving me his thing for free, sad to knock you, it’s good to rock you and I’ll do it the best that I can...”. Chorus. Our day is coming lads, I’m telling you we’ll be fucking minted one day and all this will be a memory...Oh, piano bit. Fucking hell, sounds like Led Zeppelin with Chemical Brothers in the background, guitar joining in the riff now...”Stand by my accusations, I’m come clean don’t need no vice, I know you want to keep me waiting I think it’s funny that you might”...no pause for breath...”Love is hard to leave and it’s hard to never have, can you please crawl out your window you can blame it all my love yeah yeah yeah, box up all my records and a head full of ideas and a handful of escape routes. GONNA BURN YOU!”...Right lads. ‘Don’t Look Back In Anger’ this is not. This is our fucking anthem!
Then we played it again. And again. And again. Until we passed out due to being fucked on my Dad’s homemade wine.
Oh what a night.
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