techno pop
Room 101 was the band I was in from around 1994 when I first began experimenting with noise through to the bands dissolution (and disillusionment) in late 2000.
Although I was a casual fan of early nineties rock bands such as Nirvana and Faith No More, it wasn't until I heard a compilation called Hot Wired Monster Trux that I realised that, not only was there another way of making heavy, noisy and exciting music, but that people had been doing it for quite some time. Lyrically this music was literary rather than literal and seemed to ask something of the listener with regard to interpreting them rather than merely telling them what their message was .It had depth, humour and was generally very cool .For the first time I was inspired to create music.
Like many introverted teenagers I had rather morbid reading tastes and after reading Orwell's 1984 and took a liking to the concept of "Room 101", a much feared yet largely intangible space which contains each individuals worst fears. I also liked the fact that it gave no hint as to the quantity of people involved in the group (there had been various members of the band over the years but for the majority of the bands life-span I was the only member). Unfortunately someone at the BBC also must have also been reading it at the same time and I was forced spend the latter part of the bands existence explaining to various dullards that we weren't named after a television show.
Due to being born into a not particularly musical family, conventional musical instruments were seldom around. Save for beating the odd rhythm on pots and pans I neither received little musical training, nor did I ever seek any. Therefore my first recordings were created by recording loops of drum beats and overdubbing them using two tape decks .I would use scissors to keep rhythm and recordings of my (then) infant sister as vocals .If I was sharp and knew of some older friends who were happened to be having a party with rented decks, I could call around in the aftermath of the party to steal an hour with the decks before they went back to the hire shop .One such session yielded the tracks "Point and Shoot It" and "Ironshed" ,which were the first two tracks I was happy with .I also recorded two track that I had the nerve to call remixes for the band Scheer ,who were popular at the time .All this time I was absorbing as many of the groups from the Monster Trux compilation and beyond as possible ,Ministry ,Nine Inch Nails, KMFDM, front Line Assembly, Excessive Force all became enduring favourites as I bought up as much of their back catalogues as I could, and sought to include as elements in my own experiments. The music of Mike Patton was also a major inspiration. There were few Irish bands who made this type of music, although, hard as it may seem today, Therapy?'s early work seemed colossal.
October 1995 marked a pivotal moment in my musical development, as this was when I saw the band that boasted that they were "Cork's only industrial band". Kane, which featured Leo O Sullivan, Noel Lynch and some other guy, proved to me that Industrial music could exist in my small town, and also put me on the trail of bands such as Godflesh and Big Black.
By this stage I was learning guitar and wasting a considerable amount of time just being in school, but I did manage to complete several more recording along the way, including the faux porn theme tune "Gay Best Friend" and "How to Abandon Ship". At this time I was exploring the Occult and also my other abiding interest, Communism, and was trying to produce a hybrid order involving the 3 counterpoints, Exesis, Egesis and Tesis, but that's a story for another day.
Having tried and failed to play and write with other people, necessity became the mother of misfortune for the music lovers of the world and I decided to play live, not as a solo artist but as a member of a band that had only one member. I had also by this time perfected my prodigious pretentious streak, which I retain to this day. My initial live set up consisted of an alesis sr16 drum machine and a guitar played through a zoom 505 pedal, an impressive piece of gear at the time, and my own shabby vocals. The most fun part of the set was when I produced pieces of meat and offal and through them at the disinterested audience. My uniform for these early gigs was an all in one white boiler suit, white doctor suit and white face paint, splattered with red from my meaty props.
Around this time I met another important figure in my musical life, Liam O Shea. I was putting up posters for a Room 101 gig in Rumplestiltskins, and his band, the Grunts happened to be in Mc Cabe's Bar setting up to play their own gig, when he showed me the Grunts demo tape. The cover of the tape was a shot from the film the Texas Chainsaw Massacre featuring the main character, Leatherface sprinting towards the camera. The illustration on my poster was the exact same shot. This wasn't a coincidence; we were of a similar mindset and would work together on several projects in the years to follow.
These gigs went on in similar fashion until Julie, who I had known in college told me that she could play guitar, a little, and that we should jam. This was the beginning of a beautiful friendship and we shared many ups and downs over the next couple of years. Julie, as it turned out was an excellent guitarist and helped turn the band towards a more song orientated, structured style. Dermot O Shea also joined the group on bass, and for a while we seemed like a legitimate group, despite our complex relationships. With this set up, we began to write more cohesive material, like Badgigator and Chainsaw (many of my songs at this time had some sort of Texas Chainsaw Massacre theme).
By the end of the college year, in the summer of 1998, we played in the Phoenix Bar as the opening act in a daylong punk/hardcore festival. Obviously, being first on, especially during a day long event is a fairly poor position to be in, but at this time punk hardcore was huge in Cork, with at least 10 different bands playing regularly. Unfortunately I consider this genre to be amongst the most fake you can find, generally consisting of insincere posers, most of home have proven this as fact by becoming square-johns in the meantime, but, returning to the subject at hand, on this particular occasion we had good sound, played well, and looked creepy. Julie was in some sort of black Basque, I was wearing nought but a red leather mini skirt my body covered in marshmallows covered in red food dye and held on by cling film to represent my internal organs, and Dermot was wearing a dress and White-face. We started the day playing to an empty hall, but by the end we had a large and confused audience actually enjoying us .
This contrasts with another gig around that time when we played with some Black Metal bands from out of town .I was dressed in a large Bishops robe and played our set to near constant jeers. These country boys were shouting sexist remarks and generally behaving like the kind of people who wear baseball caps and have just discovered the power of invisibility. For the coup de grace, however I gave birth to the pigs head I had early had sawn up the middle and tossed it in to their mew. We left the stage to disgusted silence.
That summer, the band all headed to Edinburgh, Scotland to write songs and have a good time, which we did. On our return to Cork, however things, as they will, changed. Personal problems and bad decision-making began to sour the milk and we found ourselves without a bassist. Hell is other people, after all. For the next several months, our live gigs were played as a twosome and we became adept at playing together. Julie began to sing live and brought a smooth, mature approach to our songs, but always maintaining our experimental edge. For one sequence of gigs during December 1998, we would pounce on the drummer of one of the other bands on the same bill and have them play for us, with mixed results. Audiences at this time comprised Korn and Limp Bizkit clones or dolorous E-heads, so naturally you can imagine the impact we made: none. Not to matter, we recruited Liam O Shea on the bass and Ronan Hayes on Keyboards in a bid to kill our inertia. I worked, Liam is an excellent song-writer and wrote the song “Eva Braun” for us, which appealed to me simply because it was the opposite of my personal political/philosophical beliefs. Again, in the summer of 1999 we returned to Scotland, this time to Glasgow, to continue writing and make our first true recordings as a band, but not after our notorious outdoor gig on the Paul Street Plaza. It’s all forgotten now, and quite lame in retrospect, but we had the wooden spoon slot, opening the ceremony celebrating the Special Olympics being allocated to Ireland. The plaza was full of retards and bored shoppers when we took to the stage in drag to begin the charade. Half way through, our friend, Leather Barry, climbed onstage and pretended to give me a blow-job, which he followed up by spitting milk in my face, and all over any one who was near by. Although the retards were applauding like a flock of ticklish seals, the organisers weren’t so amused, and called the whole thing off.
Our time in Glasgow began our most creative period as a band but also set us on the road to existence-ceasement per se. We recorded a cassette demo (cds were still beyond our means) called “Bad News For Cork Punks” which, while a generous description would call it lo-fi, had some strong songs, which remained in our set for a considerable time. Into 2000, our performances became tighter, our songs more focused and our audiences marginally bigger . People were slowly beginning to actually like us .It seemed like we were making some progress beyond the tape deck for the first time. They weren’t clapping out of embarrassment any more.
Of course, you guess what happened next, but it wasn’t until after we re
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