A Snapshot in Time: 110th Street, Galway in 2002
Cyril Briscoe & I pictured after a night DJ-ing in Le Metro, Galway (early 2002)
In 2012, I wrote a version of this piece, which was primarily about a club night I ran with my friend Cyril Briscoe called 110th Street but ostensibly was written to paint a picture of what the club scene in Galway was like in 2002.
Although 110th Street debuted in Galway in November of 1998, I'd like to revisit the year 2002 – which, in many ways was a kind of Year Zero for our club night. I say that because around then our music policy changed from the funk, soul & hip-hop vibe that defined our early years to the electronic music policy that we would pursue over the following decade. Also, it was a year – to borrow the title of our second 110th Street mixtape from that time – that we were ‘on the move’. Twice.
In January 2002, having spent over three years throwing the parties of our lives in the Town Hall Theatre bar, we found ourselves in the rather perplexing situation of being wooed by several would-be suitors around town: promoters and club owners asking us if we’d like to bring 110th Street to such and such a venue. I say “perplexing”, because it was difficult to decide if (a) we wanted to leave behind the perfect series of conditions that had given rise to create the ideal block party in the Town Hall and, (b) were we to bring our club night elsewhere, which of these particular offers should we take up. It was an appetite for change as much as anything which motivated our decision to begin hosting our parties elsewhere. Also, it was the era of the Celtic Tiger and there was a sense that you should be moving on up in the world and trying out exciting new projects. Stasis was frowned upon. The Town Hall nights had been undeniably magical and it was with a heavy heart and some regret that Cyril hosted our last party there in January 2002 (although we did return to play there on two separate occasions in later years …. before a 'read-the-small-print' issue with the fire officer put the brakes on us every returning there again).
Galway clubbers at Boogaloo in the Black Box - early 00’s
Le Metro at The Radisson SAS
Initially, we found ourselves in the wrong place, playing to the wrong crowd. From February to April 2002, we threw weekly parties in a vast space called Le Metro @ the Radisson (now The Galmont Hotel) which had just opened their doors to weekend club nights. We were offered a weekly residency and found ourselves playing to in excess of a thousand punters every Saturday night (one particular night, there were just shy of 1,500 punters in the room – still a record for 110th Street). This was a huge leap from the 200 or so die-hard party bitches that used to cram into our nights in the Town Hall. We didn’t kid ourselves in believing that 110th Street was the main attraction. Much of the excitement had to do with the opening of a new venue. Plus people seemed to have a better cash flow back then. Pubs used to also close earlier in 2002 than they do now, so everyone had to hit the clubs if they wanted to stay out late at the weekends.
On Saturday afternoons in the first weeks of 2002, long lines of people snaked out the doors of Mulligan’s Records (which was situated right across the road from where The Dough Bros pizza spot is now) on Middle Street, where people would queue to buy tickets in advance to our nights in the Radisson. It was a given that you’d buy your ticket in advance to avoid the disappointment of not getting in on the night. This was a continuation of the hysteria that was associated with buying tickets in advance for our nights in Town Hall and our Boogaloo parties in the Black Box. (The late, great Mark Logan of The Disconauts, used to drum with us at our Boogaloo nights, is just one of many old friends we've lost and miss over the decades). Our nights in both venues would almost always sell out in advance.
Mark Logan drumming at Boogaloo in The Black Box, early 00’s
We knew it was going to be a challenge to replicate the intensity of the party spirit of our legendary Town Hall nights in the new venue . . . and we were proved right from the very start. The vibe was utterly dampened not so much by the larger volume of people present, but more so by the style of punter in attendance. Our music-loving regulars found themselves outnumbered by more casual “piss-head / meat-market” Saturday night types and after a few weeks of jostling with them for space on the dancefloor, they had had enough and gradually stopped coming. In a manner of weeks, it became a real chore to lift ourselves to play for the masses, who weren't at all interested in the music we were playing. I recall one night looking down over the balcony at the scenes below and feeling a stark realisation: “These are not our people”. We felt that we needed to move on and quickly… or we’d be consigned to the dustbin of irrelevance.
[Records from that muddled time – that Bushwacka! Remix of Billie Jean , the Kaori cover of Good Life by Inner City, Basement Jaxx Where’s Your Head At?, Ben Watt remix of By Your Side by Sade, Thinkin About You Baby by the Drummatic Twins on Finger Lickin’ Records].
GPO
Luckily for us Kevin Healy - now of Róisín Dubh & main mover of Galway's Comedy Festival; then guru of GPO club on Eglington Street and a magazine called clubbing dot com - was keen to have us play in his club and came to our rescue by offering us a rotating Saturday night residency with the 091 crew playing on alternate weekends. Kevin was the main patron of clubbing in the west of Ireland and his club, the GPO (which became Carbon for a while and has been rumoured to become a 'Wetherspoon's' for seemingly eons) had a reputation of being a dance music mecca, especially at the weekends, with a knowledgeable crowd of heads into their tunes.
The previous September, mere days after the Twin Towers came tumbling down, Kevin had arranged for 100 clubbers to spend a week partying in Ibiza. Cork-based TV company Forefront Productions sent Hector Ó hEochagáin & myself along to cover the week of excess and hedonism and the programme we made for TG4 called Ionsaí Ibiza can still be viewed on YouTube.
Since January ‘02, 091 had been hosting Saturday nights in GPO on the back of throwing quality underground nights in Club De Burgo’s on St. Augustine Street (after 091 left, Gigantic took over that particular basement space – Olive, Mac and Tom of Gigantic had cut their teeth DJing upstairs in a club called Cuba on Eyre Square prior to that). The 091 motto was ‘Kicking the truth to the Galway youth’ and their focus was on playing underground dance music to their dedicated and passionate posse. The main floor residents were Tiddlerz (who was a famous face on Berlin's dancefloors in later years), Lynam (who you may know from The Universal and the Bierhaus) and Frenchie (who’s released some beautiful 4/4 records down the years), while Deviant (just one of his many monikers), Two Crown & their crew hosted hip-hop and drum’n’bass sessions in GPO’s second room (The Drum). I think that 091 were more comfortable with the idea of rotating Saturday nights with us, than having to turn up every single week and from May 2002 until August 2004 each club took turns to host alternate Saturdays in GPO. International names such as Stanton Warriors, The Youngsters, Calibre, Deadly Avenger, Josh Wink & Adam Freeland played for 091 during that time.
New Sound
We’d been striving to find a sound to play in the big rooms, as our previous funk/soul/disco music policy which rocked the more intimate floor in the Town Hall wasn’t the ideal soundtrack for a t hronged Saturday night, yoked-up mainfloor. In the Radisson, we had relied on the more anthemic Ibiza-type house records, with Simpy and Graham Dolan (sometimes called Stroller) setting the tone earlier in the evening with choice funk, soul & hip-hop (a cornerstone of the original 110th Street that they would continue to keep alive in room 2 of GPO, the Drum). However, for the peak-time mainfloor sound we were looking for something rawer & grittier (in the spirit of the old funk records that we used to play) to express ourselves with and the sassy Defected-style house that was prevalent in the house music scene of that time just didn’t cut the mustard.
In April 2002, we pretty much stumbled on the sound which would define us for the next few years. I was in London for one of my then regular clubbing weekends across the water with my old mate Paddy Kelly, who brought me to Bugged Out! where he introduced me to Erol Alkan, who was playing one of his first non-indie/non-Trash sets in the smaller attic room. He was relatively unknown outside of Trash at the time and blew the socks off us with a wonderfully dynamic soundclash that irreverently merged Michael Jackson with The Streets (‘Original Pirate Material’ had just come out) with International DeeJay Gigolo-style techno and some of the house hits du-jour (remember Junior Jack’s Thrill Me?), before finishing his set with The Carpenters’s Close To You. For the record, also playing that night at Bugged Out! were Felix Da Housecat, Dave Clarke & Richard Fearless. The latter told me to “fuck off” when I asked him what a particular record he played was (some bootleg featuring the acapella from Beastie Boys 'Intergalactic').
Electroclash was firmly leaving its mark on London’s dancefloors that year and through compilations like the Futurism series on City Rockers (curated by Damian Lazarus, now of Crosstown Rebels), we fell for its spell. We were beguiled by the sexiness, the vitality and the freshness of the filthy electronic grooves, the deadpan vocals (Miss Kittin could get a job voicing radio ads for the financial regulator) and euphoric new waves samples. It was also the era that Soulwax - previously regarded as no-frills meat’n’2-veg indie band - cut up the DJ-mix rule book with their seminal As Heard On Radio Soulwax Part 2 mix. The stars were aligned. We had found our sound.
Radisson flyers from early 2002 proclaimed a 110th Street music policy of “future funk, satellite soul & block party breaks.” By the end of the year, GPO flyers announced us as purveyors of “punky funky, robo-pogo disco”.
There have been periods where people have poked fun at the electroclash/bootleg scene of the early millennium , but it’s essential that I convey how fresh and new it sounded in clubs at the time. In later years we distanced ourselves from the way the sound evolved (that moment where blog-house pretty much became proto-EDM) as the scene became overrun and watered down by mediocre producers, sycophants and bandwagoners (every scene eventually loses its way). But in 2002 though, it was two fingers in the face of bland, corporate superclub brands such as Cream & Ministry which had been all the rage at the weekends for thousands of young folk around Ireland and the UK (po-faced superstar DJ playing anonymous prog-house/trance/breakbeat to the gurning masses – yeah I know, the description of the music pretty much sounds like what's happening in most clubs right now in 2022 all over again!). There was something irreverent and punk rock about bringing back an unpretentious party spirit to weekend clubbing. Indeed, electroclash was the perfect antidote to the anonymous techno scene (which needs a reality check/kick up the arse every few years). It brought a much needed splash of colour and personality back into the overly-serious European techno scene.
For our 4th birthday party in the GPO that November, it seemed fitting that we hosted Erol Alkan, an in-form Soulwax & Arthur Baker (legendary Noo Yawk producer of New Order, Afrika Bambatta & The Soulsonic Force, Freeez et al). 110th Street also had a Friday night residency in Dublin’s Red Box in 2002 and the same DJ line-up stuffed the club the night before they hit Galway. We didn’t announce what order the DJs would be appearing, so the nights were rammed early. Indeed, Soulwax (who, in theory were the main act) warmed up for Erol, who finished his Galway set with The Breeders’ Cannonball, leaping into the exuberant crowd, fag in mouth.
Careless whisper, with Erol, Galway, mid-00s. Photo by Cyril Briscoe
That year, the anthems kept coming: Vitalic’s La Roc 01, LCD Soundsystem Losing My Edge, Felix Housecat Silver Screen – House Scene (Thin White Duke Mix), The Rapture – House Of Jealous Lovers, FC Kahuna – Mindset To Cycle. Pretty much all the tunes you’ll find on our Fast 'n Bulbous mix (AKA The Purple CD), which Cyril Briscoe brilliantly mixed in the GPO one night in November 2002. Indeed, 2002 was also the year that Cyril & I began DJing together as a team. He patiently taught me how to beat-match and in an interview with local ‘zine G-Mag that year I’m quoted as saying “I’ve been watching Cyril and been learning from him. I think he’s really hitting his peak as a DJ”. Looking back from a perspective of over twenty years, I can confidently say that I learned more from him about DJ-ing than from anyone else I've ever met.
Vinyl or Nothing
We were pretty much playing almost all vinyl at the time, like every other DJ back then. If you didn’t have a particular tune and wanted to play it, there was no way you’d be able to pick it up as a quick download, you’d have to ring around your DJ mates and borrow it from one of them if they had it! While we were buying our records online (Hard To Find, Juno), in Dublin (Big Brother), in London (Koobla, Sounds Of The Universe, Atlas), we were also able to source records on home turf, whether in the much missed Mulligan’s on Middle Street or in Noel Phelan’s Wax Factor record store . Even Golden Discs on Eglinton St and Zhivago on Eyre Square sold vinyl! Our research was done through combing through the record reviews in magazines such as Jockey Slut (now resurrected as Disco Pogo) and Muzik every month.
One thing that we took for granted back then but that we hugely miss now is the opportunities that a regular residency gives a DJ to help build a symbiotic rapport with a crowd of regulars, and little things such as breaking new records and observe which of them might eventually evolve into club anthems. It might have been the following year that we started playing Drop The Pressure by Mylo which was, as Mylo himself insisted upon telling us when we bumped into him a few years later, a throwaway track he put together in a few hours after he got back from the pub one night, on the B-side of the Paris Four Hundred EP. We had played it for weeks on end to benign indifference before – without warning - one night on the GPO dancefloor one Saturday it detonated. The first few bars and everyone started flipping out and by the time we got to the breakdown you could hardly hear the tune for the screaming. Playing regularly gave us the opportunity to create anthems by virtue of playing records over and over again (much in the same way that people become familiar with pop tunes through constant exposure on the radio). Dance floor bangers tend to be created through their presence on social media these days, though you don’t really get big cross-over anthems á la Higher State Of Consciousness , like you once did any more.
Saturday Night Fever
Memories of nights out DJ-ing in 2002. Rocking up to the GPO just before 11pm, picking up our tipple – Bulmer's - for the night from the Drum off-license. Joe, Shocks, Nicola, Peadar, Monty, JD & the two Timmys on the door. Debbie or Karen or Jackie on cash, Conall & Cathal vibing, just vibing, Heidi & Sinéad on flyers, 200 people (first 200 free in before 11pm through Drum, remember!) straining on their leashes to get the party started, then into the club with Sumo on light/visuals beside Cyril & I in the DJ booth. All of us smoking cigs in the DJ booth because Micheál Martin's smoking bill had yet to see the light of day.
Then you had Mark, Jason, Dooley, Barry, Kieran, Windows 98, Fiona, Judith, Peadar, Gummy, John Griffin, Ross & Lally working the bars, Greg or Alex overseeing that everything was running smoothly and the younger Healy gals looking after your coat for the evening. There were no smart phones. Any photographic evidence from back then were on cameras. We occasionally used to bring disposable cameras with us on a night out, which we would get developed in pharmacies later (and much like movies such as The Hangover, we were able to thread together a narrative of the night through the photographic evidence that came to light, sometimes weeks or months later).
2002 was a year that friendships were forged with the likes of Graham Dolan, Prime Time and Ger Regan (AKA Ger Z, who Cyril took under his wing when they played Fridays in Drum). It was the summer that Roy Keane walked out on the Irish camp in Saipan and our World Cup dream came to an end when we lost to Spain on penalties. GPO was thronged for the match and an impromptu party broke out in Drum that wet Sunday afternoon, which continued in the upstairs offices well after closing time. It was the year that Dexter from The Avalanches first played for us (we adored The Avalanches’ 2000 Gimix ). It was a time that Boogaloo and Outrageous were regularly bringing The Rave to the Black Box. Pirate radio station Wild West Wadio was broadcasting all manners of 4/4 from its secret hub to bedsits across the city. Shake!s Aran & Ray were putting on brilliant parties every Friday night in the old bar Cuba on Eyre Square, bringing over the likes of Gilles Peterson, Mr Scruff & Norman Jay. Ben Ó Faoláin began hosting his O a Dó parties in Club Áras na nGael.
Back in 2002, Gugaí (now of the Róisin Dubh) was running Monday nights in the Drum and Strange Brew in the Warwick in Salthill every Thursday. DJ Ferg had taken over Saturdays in the Radisson after we left and and started his Lowdown residency every Wednesday in Cuba (with Graham Dolan’s The Magic Number upstairs). The 091 crew were throwing raves in forests and other secluded woodland areas with their Kibosh SoundSystem. The Commander and Noel Phelan ran Fridays in GPO. Sundays were hopping in Drum where the spirit of Saturday night lived on and many folk still out from the night before danced on, under the watch of whichever of us weekend DJs were booked to hold fort for the night. Keith Disconaut, Diarmuid Flavin & Damian Gerahty hosted Sidewaze parties in Monroe’s, while Padraic Disco represented Galway in Barcelona. Ted & Dean, having been running Friday nights in the GPO for over six years, moved their Essence parties to Cuba. There was a wealth of good nights happening in Galway, many of which we haven’t had the opportunity to mention here. There always are.
To paraphrase a great scribe, all the world was a club and all the men and women merely ravers.
Cian Ó Cíobháin, November 2012
Updated: November 2022
[Special thanks to Graham Dolan, Cyril Briscoe & Conall Ó Cíobháin for helping me remember]
Many important people in the Galway club scene mentioned in this piece are no longer with us, síochán síoraí leo
PS Here are some charts as featured in the last 110th Street “newsletter” of 2002.
CYRIL & CIAN’S TEN FROM GPO MAINFLOOR
Vitalic – La Roc 01 / International Deejay Gigolo
The Rapture – House Of Jealous Lovers / DFA
Audio Bullys – We Don’t Care / Source
Primal Scream Vs Beck – Rocksexx (C&C ‘110th St’ re-edit) / cdr
Tiga & Zyntherius - Blue Sunglasses (Tom Middleton re-edit) / City Rockers
DJ Marky & Xrs – LK / V Recordings
Electric Six - Danger! High Voltage (Soulchild Mix) / XL
Felix Da Housecat - What Does It Feel Like? (Royksopp Return To The Sun Rmx) / City Rockers
LCD Soundsystem – Losing My Edge / Output
Sugababes - Round Round (Soulwax Rmx) / Island
SIMPY & STROLLER’S TEN FROM DRUM
The Streets - Let's Push Things Forward / Locked On
People Under The Stairs - Hang Loose / PUTS
RSL - Beanflicker / Sub-Tub Players
Treva Whateva - Singalong / Tru-Thoughts
Johnny Jones & The King Casuals - Purple Haze / 13 Amp
Dr. John - Right Place, Wrong Time / Warner
The Demigodz - Don't You Even Go There / Ill Boogie
Biz Markie - Let Me Turn You On / Cold Chillin
Carol Cool - Upside Down / Soul Jazz
The Coral - Dreaming Of You / Sony