![Chant! Chant! Chant! via irishrock.org]()
Chant! Chant! Chant! via irishrock.org
Chant! Chant! Chant! were one of the most original and exciting bands to hit Dublin’s post-punk music scene. Active from 1979 to 1982, they played a jilting sort of New Wave that would find a natural home amongst your Talking Heads, Wire, Gang of Four and XTC records.
The line up was Eoin Freeney (vocals), Robbie Wogan (bass), Larry Murphy (drums) [ex. The Threat] and Paul ‘Mono’ Monohan (drums) [ex. The Threat]
Journalist Liam Mackey reviewing the band in the Project Arts Centre(26 June 1980), on the same set as Derry’s The Moondogs and Cork’s Nun Attax, wrote:
Chant! Chant! Chant! offer glimpses of what the embryonic Talking Heads must have been like struggling to create coherent music out of all those bubbling, half realised ideas in a New York loft way back when. They’ve got something of the dark pulse of Joy Division too and their methodology – songs constructed around the startling bass runs of Larry Murphy – has a precedent in the work of the Public Image chaps…
Their recorded legacy is sparse with only a track (‘What do you know’) on The Boddis EP (1980) also featuring Big Self, Departure and the peridots ; one hard-to-find single (Quicksand/Play Safe) on DIY label Peig the Man from July 1981 and a 3-track live recording (Ballet no.1/Forty one/Say so) on the Dave Fanning Rock Show Session from the same month.
Self-described ‘writer, hack and music fan’ John Fleming has written a special account for CHTM! on the band’s 2013 reunion gig and their impact first time around when the band were a “dark force to be reckoned with.”
Grand Social, 2013
A few numbers in, it starts to flow: Quicksand. It’s May 2013 and Chant! Chant! Chant! are back on stage after 31 years. Five hundred people bought their record in 1981 on the Peig The Man label: Quicksand with its B-side Play Safe. Having been zapped through a time warp, Chant! Chant! Chant! play tightly, a gang of now older mates but still as thick as thieves. Nostalgia for lost moments is pulverised. Singer Eoin Freeney thanks the crowd, joking about this one-off reunion concert at the Grand Social venue in Dublin. “At this rate, our next gig will be in 2043,” he says. “So… See you then.” The ageing audience share the wistful smiles of mere mortals.
Chant! Chant! Chant! – each word followed by an exclamation mark – are temporarily back. It is the start of summer 2013 and they have returned through time’s thick ether, magnificently but momentarily. They take the stage. The lads stand nervously. The frontman’s cool, leopard-print shirt inspires the confidence they all badly need. Some conceptual music floods from the speakers. Edgy smiles fade away. Slow seconds crawl. The tape ends. The drums, the bass and the guitar crank into machine mode and Chant! Chant! Chant! begin to play. The singer stays motionless, beaming himself back from 1981 as the magical wall of sound builds behind him and he gets into character. Two camera guys dart back and forth, capturing the event with digital technology, training 21st-century lenses on every second of the legendary Dublin band’s return. (Some of these videos have now at last been posted on YouTube.)
![Lead singer Eoin Freeney in action in 2013 in the Grand Social. Image via Youtube.]()
Lead singer Eoin Freeney in action in 2013 in the Grand Social. Image via Youtube.
Tune after tune bleeds out. 41. What Do You Know. Play Safe. Chant! Chant! Chant! were Dublin’s Factory band that never was. A mesh of punk and funk, they stalked the same world that produced A Certain Ratio, XTC, Wire, Gang of Four, Pil and Josef K in late 1970s Britain.
Dublin, early 1980s
The wonderful Quicksand sucks you down. Down along the damp and gritty trajectory of the last three decades. Back to Dublin of 1980 and 1981 and 1982, when this city was the small-scale capital of limited opportunity. The scratchy guitar and huge slabs of bass swirl the audience back through time like agents of Adam Eterno. They bring us to the Judge and Jury on Bolton Street, to the Ivy Rooms on Parnell Street, and, aaaah yes… remember the Magnet on Pearse Street? Nascent stars of a small firmament that will soon peter out are queuing for pints between sets – there’s the boys from Amuse who would yield Blue in Heaven and Backwards Into Paradise. There’s The End who would spawn Something Happens and a certain radio host. There’s Meelah 18 who would become Aslan, there’s The Blades, a support band Microdisney and The Atrix who will live forever.
It’s the summer of 1981. The gigs were full of snapped guitar strings (Cormac Wright, The End), bass drums bursting (Johnnie Bonny, also of The End) and the singer of A Further Room belting out their single Psychedelia Disco as he dangled from one arm, his fist clenched on a beam that just might break. But Chant! Chant! Chant! had the best musical mishap: a sound desk exploded. After three short tunes in the Judge and Jury that summer, electricity had the last laugh. The plug was pulled: the show was over. A noble decision to give refunds was taken, and fists of 50-pence pieces were handed back to 80 or 90 disappointed fans.
Band members and the future
“That was Robby who gave you your cash back all those years ago,” said drummer Paul “Mono” Monahan, three decades later at the reunion gig. “There were so many on the guest list that night we gave out more money than we took in.” That one-off gig was short and sharp too, a lesson in post-punk art economy. And the music? It transcended memory’s distortion: despite the obscurity of the endeavour, some of us knew what we were at back then.
![Chant! Chant! Chant!, 1980]()
Chant! Chant! Chant!, 1980
Larry Murphy was the god of the band’s pulsing bass. He still is now, and lives in Spain. Mono had pre-gig butterflies but was delighted his offspring got to see his old man’s crew were cool. Guitarist Robby Wogan lives in England: he was relieved to be going back this time without having to give any more cost-ineffective cash refunds. And singer Eoin Freeney looked like one of the happiest inhabitants of the planet tonight, leading his team of elegant 1970s/1980s men through the matrix of music and memory.
Due to geography, rehearsals posed logistical challenges. But over the course of 10 European months, the fiftysomething year olds all dug in. They disinterred their sturdy tunes and collective identity. Just as they might have sunk down forever into the Quicksand of culture, they dragged themselves back out in May 2013.
Will Chant! Chant! Chant! ever play another reunion gig? “No!” the men chorused. But packing their instruments away, they seemed less certain.
Fore more information on the band’s history, check out their entry at Irishrock.org and U2theearlydayz.com. Two great resources. Also this brilliant interview with singer Eoin from Thumped.com (2013)
For more CHTM! pieces on music history, check out this link.
