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In the early
days, conditions on the roads were rather basic; in fact, at times
they could be pretty rough. Just cast your mind back forty years-
circa 1960/’61 and try to visualise a showband travelling to a gig
in a van, seven guys and all the gear. Now, if you are fortunate
enough to have a roof rack, you would put some of the gear, the
drums maybe, on the rack. This of course, would make the van
top-heavy and dangerous as regards handling corners, etc. If,
however, as in most cases you did not have a roof rack, then you
would be forced to put some of the gear inside with the musicians,
so you might have a drum on your lap or a trumpet case under your
legs! Not so bad if you are only going a few miles, but what if you
are heading for Donegal, Dublin, Kerry or Wexford - 150/180 miles!
I would say the novelty would soon wear off after about twenty miles
or so.
At first, The
Paramount Showband only played within a radius of say, fifty or
sixty miles of Tuam, mainly around Counties Galway, Mayo and
Roscommon before gradually moving out to places like Scarrif in Co
Clare, Nenagh in Co Tipperary, Macroom in Co. Cork, Adamstown in
Wexford, Dublin and the North - the six counties.
I will never
forget our first trip to the ‘Big Smoke’ - Dublin or to be more
precise, to the Top Hat in Dun Laoghaire. Well, like all bright
country lads, we headed straight for O’Connell Street - The Pillar -
sure didn’t we all know our way from there? Yeah, to Croke Park or
Barry’s Hotel maybe, but the Top Hat in Dun Laoghaire, well now that
might be a ‘bitteen’ harder! But hold on! someone has a bright
idea - “Let’s find the bus to Dun Laoghaire” - yea, and we’ll follow
it all the way, and we did; and when the bus stopped, we stopped;
and when the bus started; we started and so it went - stop, start,
stop, start - all the twenty odd bus stops between O’Connell Street
and Dun Laoghaire with all the traffic going berserk behind us.
Jesus! they must have been raging with them stupid ‘culchies’ in
that bleedin’ red and black Morris showband van. We didn’t care
and we got there in time for the big gig - up Galway!
A similar
incident occurred with some colleagues when on a trip to London they
did the same trick - following the bus to, Ealing or some such
‘foreign’ outpost. Only this time, the driver of the bus copped on
to what was happening and when they reached Ealing, he jumped out of
the cab and said “Ye’re here lads, The Shamrock is just 'round the
corner on the left ”. He was Irish of course.
On another
occasion in London when again, we were not sure of the correct route
to the venue, one of us would get a taxi and the rest would follow
in the van. There was also a story about a band that toured London
by tube - underground that is. Each of the boys would carry a
piece of equipment, a drum or a speaker or whatever onto the train.
I would love to have seen the lads trying to keep the door open with
a speaker while they were waiting for the others to come down the
escalator with the drums, Can you imagine the sweat ,the panic,
mayhem ! …and the comments from the 'bowler hats brigade' “Alright
mate, hurry up then” Oh ! how ye? are ye going to the dance
tonight? There’s a great crowd in town, it should be a great dance
tonight!!
Another long
journey I remember was in 1966 when we went to Scotland for a
weekend. We played in Stranraer on Friday and in Glasgow on
Saturday and after the Glasgow gig we drove back to Stranraer,
stayed there to get the early ferry back to Larne and then high-tail
it from there to where we were playing on Sunday night,
Killarney? On the way back on the ferry we met Prince Vince and the
Kings . They were playing in Tramore. Now, Larne is about 12 or 15
miles north of Belfast and the lads were saying that they were not
sure of the road. Our roadie said “Oh, I know the road well, follow
me and we will get ye into Belfast and sure ye'll know the way from
there”. Sure enough, we took off and we were ‘belting’ along and
saw a sign for Belfast, which said “Belfast 12 miles”. The next
sign we saw showed “Belfast 16 miles”. We had taken a wrong road
and were heading north. We pulled into a lay-by to turn around but
as we did, didn’t The Kings ‘tear’ past us and they ‘bootin’ it
trying to catch up to us, because weren’t we showing them the right
road to Belfast’. Anyway, we got as far as Dublin, rushed into the
digs to grab some clean shirts and proceeded on our journey to
Killarney. The Kings passed us on the Naas Road and they going
berserk because they were convinced we put them the wrong way for
the ‘craic’ – just to set them up but it was a genuine mistake.
Anyway, we reached Killarney at around quarter to nine and your man
started giving out to us “what kept ye”? but at least he did allow
us to have a bite to eat. Imagine travelling from Glasgow where we
finished around 2 o’clock and were on stage the following night at
10 pm in Killarney. So, ‘trains and boats and planes’ or whatever,
were the order of the day.
© Jimmy Higgins 2004
©
Irish Showbands Archive 2004
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