I keep Dancing On My Own

But I wanna be In Da Club

I’ve just had the most glorious walk with my dear friend Joy. We were sat on the li’l wall on the Long Walk in Galway, and we were one or two groups down from a few lads playing some acoustic tunes who had a few cans on them.

The sun was the hottest it’s been in a long time, and we’d just had iced lollies and fizzy drinks on a walk from Duggan’s Spar in Renmore all the way along The Line, the photo-friendly bridge on Lough Atalia, to where we were sat now.

We were on about unbelievably wanting to pop in for a pint but the fizz and the chill of the softer pleasures of the aformentioned snacks kept the resilience in us in what feels like a set of lockdowns that have gone on far too long.

I was able to gather the feeling for myself of being in a pub last Friday the 19th of February with Cormac the huzzband, on the couch, with a bottle of white. We were watching re-runs of Boy George-centric documentaries on BBC 4. It was a thrill to have a few sips with my fellow music nerd as bed time slowly approached while we heard the beats created by the cultural backdrop of Boy George’s musical influences, his own repertoire, and, in the end, the more manufactured sounds that would mimic his innovation as the 1990’s neared.

A cheap night out- I mean, in- even if I do say so myself.

As a few more pours were in me, I so wanted to hop off the couch, put my make-up on and walk right on down to my local dancing pubs in my minds eye as they were open February of last year.

My mind was cast back to my most iconic nights out and the daft things that happened as little old me experienced them in my very youthful late teens and twenties.

And how I became more open minded as I experienced a new kind of clubbing in my thirties.

Lisbon- Pensão Damor

When we were on holiday in Lisbon before we were married, all the way back in 2012, myself and Cormac were done with the day-time culture of old churches and museums. We wanted to let our hair down, and let loose with some booze.

We were on our way to Music Box (more on that a little later), and we Irish wanted to start drinking at 8 or nine, like we usually would. We got to the street Music Box was on and saw nowhere was open to start drinking in before the late club would open. A man we asked pointed upwards over the bridge where the entrance to Music Box was and we saw a building with big windows and intriguing colours inside.

We quickly meandered our way up to the upper street, and walked through the doors. What greeted us was something of a Victorian design. With velvety seats all different colours and shapes, Michael Angelo-style paintings of naked figures, and very risqué parphernalia in glass cabinets.

I don’t know why we didn’t expect so much of it given that the name of the venue translates into ‘love hostel’ in English.

We had thought with our sensible settled couples mindset that it would be a name harking back to the days of it being a brothel, and this was just a tiny nod to that era.

No siree!

I loved the place, for it’s cheerful-yet-sophisticated colour palette of reds and blues and the DJ played The Cure, so I felt at home enough to dance without a care in the world.

We ordered cocktails initially at the bar because the place seemed like it called for that, moving on to our old reliable pints of ale and pilsner. Naturally I wanted to go to the toilet a little into our visit. Either there were no signs on the doors or I didn’t have enought linguistic street smarts to ask the staff, but I walked into, what I bet, was the mens bathroom. It was one of those small all-in-one sink and toilet joints.

It had 20th-century pin-ups of very endowed women plastered all over the ceiling and walls, and I felt mortified, wondering if I opened the door would people be looking at me.

I remember thinking: “ feck it, I need to go real bad. I ain’t walking around looking for the other one!”

Luckily the rest of the fellow pub goers had the audacity to be getting on with enjoying their own nights, so all was well. Sure it was a fun little blip!

We had a nice and average night later on in Music Box. But the love hostel was the event of the night.

Although, an Australian had gotten into an argument with the friends he came to Lisbon with and had clung to us the whole night in Music Box for some reason.

At some point with a slightly aggressive tone of voice drunkenly said to us “why do you holiday in Lisbon? Why don’t you go somewhere outside of Europe?”

In hindsight, he probably was projecting on to us whatever madness had happened for him with his friends or something else in his life.

Berlin- Cookies

So it took me a while to come out of my shell when it came to having fully fledged anxiety-free conversations with friends in pubs. And the associated self care and boundary-setting for engaging in the enjoyment of pub culture with company you like, which would eventually abate this affliction. Basically the full 10 years of my twenties.

In 2006, I think, myself and Evan went to Berlin on a winter trip. Another thing that also took me ages to come up with was the crazy idea that as an adult you’d actually have to plan your trip abroad! To get the most out of it so that when you were there in the foreign city, all you had to do was undertake the ‘arduous’ task of having a laugh with your travel companion while you had a yummy ice cream or glass of your finest.

Bless him, I was suddenly completely shy around my dear friend that I had known since we had baby teeth, who I would have no problem chatting with for hours back home. This was my 2nd trip abroad without my the parents. The only foreign trip I had without them was to Garda, Italy, in 5th year on a class trip.

Myself and Evan had gone our seperate ways after 6th class in primary school.

So Evan might have been the more seasoned traveller of us two. He very much still is, and he had a much more natural ability to plan the few days and nights worth of fun for us.

Including the night club.

He found a place that you had to walk through gates, through a mysterious alleyway to get to the main door of the club. So far, so suspenseful!

It was called Cookies.

In the city that was host to David Bowie, Lou Reed, and Iggy Pop all those decades ago.

When we got inside, I was blown away by how cool with a capital C the place was. The interior design was eye candy made for architects, with a dancefloor sunk in to the ground, like you see in living rooms in old Holywood mid-century pads.

And young me with an 18 year-old’s want to explore all kinds of the mischievous part of society was thrilled to be met with a unisex bathroom- the only bathroom in the place- and catching a glimpse of a group of people in a cubicle doing lines of coke on a toilet cistern. That was exciting!

But my sudden almost mute-like personality didn’t add any interest to the night for my friend and I just wanted to go back to bed and introvert the hell out of the holiday the way you can when it is bed-time hours.

He wanted to go out and explore the town at night again the next night in very much the same way, and I just couldn’t make myself join Evan.

So sorry Ev. Perhaps we can have a do-over pal!

Liverpool- Electric Warehouse

If you could write Charlie and The Chocolate Factory’s character Veruca Salt but make her be a fan of music and set the movie in Liverpool.

Myself, Cormac, Ann, my Mom, and Eoin, my Dad, went to Liverpool in 2015. For Mom’s big birthday celebrations to soak up the city that was home to the greatest pop group on the planet.

Us Fab Four were being the architectural fiends we are and having a gawk around Liverpool Cathedral on the Saturday.

Earlier in the day we had picked up the free local culture magazine, The Skinny, and myself and Cormac were checking out the listings for entertainment that Saturday night while the four of us had coffee in the cathedral’s café.

I wondered where we would go and Cormac was saying that we could just head on into the center of the city and see where the night would lead us.

This is where it gets all Veruca Salt. For the first time in my life, I get a temper tantrum in mixed company. On my mother’s birthday celebration weekend.

Facial features and all.

“What do you mean, we just wander in? We’re in Liverpool…”

One of the most iconic cities for music on the planet.

“We can’t just make the night up as we go along!” I exclaim like a disappointed teacher.

Not knowing when we’d be back, I wanted to make the music element of the two night stay stretch for as long as possible. I didn’t want to go to any old one-size-fits-all floor fillers boozer.

The magazine alerted us to an alternative nightclub called Electric Warehouse. I insisted we go there. Cormac, the great dude that he is, said cool.

When we got there, I was blown away. Back home in Galway where myself and Cormac live, we have Róisín Dubh. It has two floors, where two DJs can be playing two sets of alternative nightclub anthems.

This was that but with ANOTHER FLOOR, and it was in a BIG old converted industrial revolution-era warehouse with the club night, appropriately called, to my earlier tantrum, RAGE at Krazyhouse.

And an alternative music fan had actual choice of which sub genre of alternative music they wanted to enjoy in a club, with floors dedicated to EDM, the slightly more ‘delicate’ nu-metal, indie & math rock brigade, to the more ‘hard’ metal down below.

It made for a huge diversely dressed dance-floor crowd, which appealed to my sensibilities.

It also made The Róisín look quite tame.

I enjoyed myself way too much with the biggest hangover yet of my twenties on the Sunday. I just about managed to avoid throwing up in the back of Ricky’s taxi that took us all around the city of Liverpool and us immersed in the stories of John, Paul, George an’ Ringo.

Galway- Cuba

I was going through a mad time in January of 2007 and found out that Alan my older brother by four years would be going to Galway for the weekend with his best friend from secondary school. I needed to escape my world of hospital check-ups that were the result of a traumatic injury to my left foot in my childhood home of Clondalkin.

The two had both gone to my Godmother’s Montessori school like me and Evan had.

So I sort of gatecrashed the weekend.

One of the main quests of the weekend was to find this mythologised venue, Róisín Dubh. A lot of my brother’s friendship groups had music at the heart of their bonds, with a lot of them going on to perform in bands. The best friend was as much of a fan of music as they were. So us Dublin heads knew very much that the place existed.

We stayed in the dorm of a hostel the two men found: Galway City Hostel. Just off Eyre Square.

We would walk the streets searching for a good pub and would sing over and over again, the iconic opening lyrics to The View’s ‘Same Jeans’.

We never quite managed to get to The Róisín but, low and behold, what did we see the opposite side of Eyre Square? The since shut down, now home to McGettigans, Cuba. The older pair of our weekend crew decided we’d go there at night.

It was great, I’d gotten a lovely level of merriment in me with cheap pints. Similar to Electric Warehouse, it too had different floors for different music genres.

So entertaining it was, being witness to the hilarious antics of my naturally cool older brother with his equally naturally cool best mate and their great stylish late 2000s alternative fashion sensibilities, where if my memory was better, they probably had moves like Mick Jagger.

Galway Mark 2- Róisín Dubh

Have I written about The Róisín Dubh enough in this piece? I think not!

Before I met Joy, through work, I would have had a clear demarcation between where cover versions of songs could be enjoyed in a public space, where the original versions could be played by a night club DJ on vinyl (or digital track), and, where one would hear the real thing by the original artist live on stage.

Sure hadn’t I been to posh music theory and piano classes on the weekends as a child and a teenager?

To be honest with you, the die-in-the-wool indie kid in me wouldn’t know if a band just playing the hits would sustain me through the night.

And, lastly, I naively thought that there was only one way to market the songs released by the artist, via their released publication and own concerts, in order to maximise their revenues.

I had previously been to O’Connor’s of Salthill with Cormac, and the last time I’d been to a proper couple of gigs with gal pals was Oxegen 2007 (man, that Daft Punk set…).

In O’Connors, the music was the relaxed toe-tapping laid-back vibe of the offerings expected of house bands. The catalogue they would draw from was the family friendly classics of the 20th century.

The focus wasn’t so much on the house band. It was more a backdrop to the epic conversation to be had in that famous pub in Salthill.

I wasn’t yet fimiliar with the land of the more rowdier ones in town in the likes of the Quays or Monroes. Here the band were certainly the focus. But original music-oriented me couldn’t figure out why. I’d been once or twice later on down the line with Cormac and his flatmate and a bunch of her friends, and yet the penny hadn’t dropped.

Until I finally was ready to make authentic life-giving friendships in my 30s. With Joy. And go on nights out with all the other brilliant women she knows.

We would hop from venue to venue covering great ground on all the choice of pub and club Galway had to offer.

A few repeats in, I eventually figured it out.

On the back of all this great anthemic strong female music coming out thanks to Lizzo, Christine and The Queens, Billie Eilish etc., I figured out that it was a kind of dance floor specifically made for friendship.

All the various music that spoke to each individual member of the posse. And for nights where anything was possible. We with our feminine approach to nights out, we would all have each other’s backs until it was time to go get something yummy and dirty for the tummy by way of Supermac’s or Vinnies.

This would open up exposure for the artist even more, where the enjoyment of it, tested by all the differing opinions of music in the gang, was the greatest litmus test of all.

Perhaps more purses would come out to buy the artist’s concert ticket…

The Quays were a huge part of it.

To close out on my journey back in time, one of these trips to see these covers bands stands out as one of the most cathartic nights out of my life. The powerful performance of Prince’s ‘Purple Rain’ performed at a special night out at The Róisín as we listened to the phenomenal voice of Barbara Vulso on stage with John Coneely Inc.

The music child in me stared up at Barbara with huge wide eyes and to say I was blown away was an understatement.

It was kind of great to be able to have this kind of experience in my favourite venue of the whole of Galway City.

Worry no more, indie kid!

(Ah jeeney, I said I wasn’t going to get all profound in this particular blog post…)

Anyway. Chin chin everyone! That’s your lot for this piece. Hope it’s a good sunny day, wherever you are.

“I’ve had the same jeans on…”

QUE CLOSE CREDITS ;-)