A NATION THAT KNOWS HOW TO PARTY (Part 3)

I thought I'd use today to bring you some tunes by lesser-known bands from the Emerald Isle.

First up is a follow-up to yesterday's posting on The Undertones.

After the break-up of That Petrol Emotion, John O'Neill formed another band in his home town of Derry in 1996. It was a band that got a fair amount of press, mainly on the back of John's radical change of direction, but the media coverage never ever translated to high record sales. This was the nearest they ever got to making it big time:-

mp3 : Rare - Something Wild

It made the Top 75 singles chart, but the follow-up singles and subsequent LP entitled Peoplefreak didn't. Rare disbanded in 1998.

Next is a singer-songwriter from the town of Birr in County Offally. Edmund Enright records under the name of Mundy. In the mid 1990s, he gained some fame and fortune when one of his songs appeared on the soundtrack of the smash movie Romeo & Juliet, directed by Baz Luhrmann. This great little single comes from that era and is a re-recorded version of one of the tracks on Jellylegs, which was his debut LP:-

mp3 : Mundy - Pardon Me

Mundy continues to write, record and perform to great acclaim in his home country. His official website can be found here.

Finally, I'm re-posting a track that I've put uo twice before (December 2006 and June 2007), but maybe will be of interest to newer readers.

This band are probably most famous for forcing a name-change on one of America's best-selling acts of the early 21st Century.

It's a single that came out in 1994 and was a big hit for the band in their native Ireland. I have to admit that I thought they had long broken up, but it seems they are still going strong as can be read right here.

mp3 : Blink - Happy Day

So there you go....three songs and acts that are as far removed from U2 as you could imagine. I'm off now to try and track down some promos of the band to post at The Video Villain. Why not take a look and see if I've had any joy....go on, go on, go on, go 0n.