In praise of Microdisney and Their Finest Hour

Today I pay gentle tribute to my favourite band of the 1980s and their finest album. I also briefly mention rubber johnnies.

Back in 1894 I went with a mate of mine for a ‘Lad’s Holiday’ to Ibiza. As things turned out it was anything but a lad’s holiday in the perceived sense** and we were on a very quiet, chilled out part of the Island. Before I left for the holiday, a work colleague gave me a home made compilation tape for the walkman which was an excellent mixture, which included ‘Dolly’ by Microdisney. The tape was played to death over the two weeks, surviving just long enough for me to play ‘Dolly’ over and over on the plane home in memory of two great weeks chilling out in the sun, a great crowd of people we had met over there and an intense but quite innocent holiday romance.

I won’t attempt a Microdisney biography here, as there are plenty of these already on the net. Suffice to say they were two guys from Co Cork, loved by John Peel and revered by the NME, who recorded on Rough Trade and later Virgin records, had little if no commercial success and to those who heard them were nothing short of brilliant. They became my new favourite band, and for the remainder of that year their ‘Everybody Is Fantastic’ album ate slowly into my system, eventually proving the perfect antidote for my childhood musical idol (Bowie) having let me down massively with the truly awful ‘Tonight’ (amusingly enough his next album release a few years later would be the equally dire ‘Never Let Me Down’)

Just over a year later, in the build up to Christmas 1985, they released their second album ‘The Clock Comes Down The Stairs’ having expanded from a guitar (Sean O’Hagan) & keyboard / vocal (Cathal Coughlan) duo to a five piece band. Almost instantly ‘Clock’ became and has been ever since my favourite album of all time. I have always struggled to be able to pigeon-hole this album or make comparisons, but there are elements of country rock, west coast rock, Brian Wilson, Steely Dan, Jimmy Webb and Scott Walker in the sound of the record, the real magic being in the haunting melodies they had such a knack for, fronted by the bitter and ascerbic, yet wise and often very funny vocals of singer Cathal Coughlan, who, as testament to his genius, sings in his Cork accent throughout.

I only ever got to see the band live once and this was at one of their most famous gigs at The Boston Arms in Tuffnell Park North London in November 1986. Tracks recorded live at this show were then released as single b-sides and bonus tracks on their almost a hit 1987 single ‘Town To Town’ It was by a long way one of the best live gigs I have ever been to.

‘The Clock Comes Down The Stairs’ is long since deleted and was only released briefly on CD in the late 1990s. The band released four studio albums in total before they broke up in 1988-9 – to the best of my knowledge none of these albums are currently available on CD but there have been some compilations over the years which are still available. A full on comprehensive reissue of their work is long overdue. Both Cathal and Sean have continued to record and release great music in other guises to this day.

So thank you Col Glynn (if by some miracle you ever read this Col, get in touch – haven’t seen you in about 20 years!) for that brilliant compilation tape and the introduction to this great band. Col was at The Boston Arms gig with me and first in the queue (well, we were the queue) with me in Our Price (Harrow) on the day ‘The Clock’ was released.

More to follow

Col

** Although I did drink myself half to death and enjoyed a holiday romance with a lovely young Geordie lass, I ended up giving 11 of the (very hopeful) ‘packet of 12’ I had taken out there with me to two superb 100% genuine 80s casuals called Grant and Tony (what else) on the day we left. The only one I had taken out of it’s wrapper was used to demonstrate the ‘pull it over your head including your nose then inflate by exhaling through your nose until you end up with a huge comedy alien head which eventually bursts leaving your hair full of spermicidal lubricant’ trick in Manolo’s bar one drunken night. Well, come on, good Catholic boy and all that............