Chapter 1: What is the background of Horslips and their significance in Celtic rock?
The Pat Kenny Show on Newstalk.
Okay, well if time permitted us, we'd play a bit more of what we've got coming, but we're going to have to play just a sample from an album called The Book of Invasions. This is called Sword of Light, and it's for rather ripped records.
That was from 1978, believe it or not. I'm joined in studio by Barry Devlin and Jim Lockhart of Horace Lips. Good morning, gentlemen, and welcome. Thanks for having us.
We're both from 1978 as well.
Now, talk to me about this recently discovered tape and how it made it into vinyl.
Yeah, well, actually, Jimmy's a better hand on that than I am.
Well, there was a friend of ours, Doug Crawl, in San Francisco who ran a record store called Rather Ripped Records that kind of cottoned on to us early on. And we used to go down and play at their birthday parties and stuff in Berkeley. And it was really like an oasis of...
very cool rock and roll and so we stayed friends with Doug and some years ago he found a tape on his shelf that was recorded off the radio because we used to do lots of concerts that went out live on FM stations here and there and he had recorded this concert which we didn't know about And sent us over a tape and we thought, well, that's really interesting.
But there were a number of defects with the tape and we couldn't use it. We thought that's great, but can't be used because a couple of the vocals were mixed. It was a live radio recording and therefore... The radio engineers wouldn't have known who was going to be singing the next song. And so the vocals weren't up in the mix. And you couldn't really hear the vocals.
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Chapter 2: How did a recently discovered tape lead to a new live album?
And so we got a German remix engineer who's a bit of a whiz and he cleaned it up, lifted the vocals that you couldn't hear and suddenly we had a presentable...
very kind of very zippy performance but it's great fun it's really exciting listen to listen to what was your reaction when you finally heard it in this re-engineered pristine form was it were we that good really were we that fast you know we never had click tracks and so the one thing you can be sure of with a horse lips live is that we'll be playing it a bit faster than it is on the album but it's actually turned out to be a really good gig yeah it was very tight
I mean, at that stage, because we were playing so much and we had been playing so much live night after night after night, year after year, we had actually turned into a fairly tight ensemble on the road, you know.
And it had, Pat, what it had was, it was a middle album. We'd done an album in Dun Laoghaire in 75, which represented what we'd been doing up to then. And then we did Belfast Gigs, which was our very last set. And so this is kind of the bit in between. So if you're the sort of person who's interested in horse lips and where we were for all that 10 years, this is a very good middle spot as well.
It's available only on vinyl or in other formats as well?
I think it's only in vinyl.
And it's translucent vinyl. I've just opened it.
You can see the light through it. And also you can lose it quite easily. Where's that Horselips album?
It's gone. It's called Tell Him About It, Johnny. Now explain the title.
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Chapter 3: What challenges did the band face with the original concert tape?
Picnic. And it's based around an Edwardian thing that happened in New York, which was actually called Muldoon's Picnic, with a showman called Muldoon. And so what Paul does, he puts a show on the road. Paul has his own band called Rogue Oliphant. But when Rogue Oliphant can't make it over, which they sometimes don't, we are... Send in the clowns. Exactly. The maggot band comes on.
And that's always great fun because we get to meet famous authors.
And keep the fingers going.
And keep the fingers going as they get.
Devlin and myself are getting up to do a couple of tunes with Pat McManus and Bally Shannon in a few weeks time as well. But you're doing a talking tour as well.
Well, yeah, we're doing... Yeah, we are. That sounds as if we're talking a lot. But we're doing a talk, an evening with, in the Fela Moth in Hackney, beside the diamonds. And so we're looking forward to that. And we're also... We're down in the Shanty, which is a big venue down near Waterford, in a couple of weeks. And we'll be talking, you know... Breathless tales, many of them untrue.
Now, in front of you is an old Horselips album sleeve, which was brought in by Cillian de Butler, our producer. And I think I have one at home and I'm sure you have. That's an extraordinary production because it looks like the most expensive album cover ever made.
I think it may be the most expensive album cover ever made. You know, the extraordinary thing, because we took it all for granted, we were an independent record company way before anybody else was. We, you know, we licensed our own records. We designed, well, Charles designed our own sleeves, manufactured them. And this thing was incredibly complex with
And it's called, what was the title of the album?
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Chapter 4: How did technology improve the sound quality of the live album?
And so the zip, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, you know. Serendipity again. Now, tell us, I want to go back to your talking tour. What are you going to be talking about?
I think it's just going to be random stories. I hadn't thought of it in terms of a tour, but I suppose it's starting to look a bit like that. Yeah, it's pretty much whatever is going to come up because there's, There's a whole load of stuff that ranges from mythology to the social context of 70s Ireland going to where we are now, all that sort of stuff, you know.
And there's probably quite a good question line in hairstyles, I'd imagine, and flares and clogs. Crimes against fashion.
There is the question of whether the bench warrant from The Hague for crimes against fashion is still operative or whether this countryā¦ Yeah, I mean, there were a lot of stuff that happened. A lot of it really unrepeatable on air. Most of it just about horseless being basically eejits.
Well, not everyone thinks that. Connor in Limerick says, a great interview with Barry and Jim. I remember as a teenager in Limerick seeing horse lips in the great Savoy Theatre. And I think it was always special for Johnny Fian to be back at home.
Yeah, Johnny loved... Johnny never really... His heart never really left Shannon.
All right, well, there we have to leave it. The album is available now. It's in transparent vinyl. Tell him about it, Johnny, it's called. And it's absolutely brilliant. My thanks to Jim and to Barry. The Pat Kenny Show. Saturday and Sunday from 10am on Newstalk. Conversation that counts.
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