Dublin Opinion

Apologies to regular visitors here but we’ve slowed up considerably on the posts recently. For myself, I seem to have contracted a dose of Joycean Paralysis or Dublin Sleeping Sickness since I got back from a trip there for 10 days in April. I know Conor has a document to submit at the end of May and will probably be off radar until then. Donagh has, apparently been locked away in the cellar of the ILR by Libertarians from another planet, or some such silly accident.

In any case, I thought I’d get going again on the back of someone else’s post. It’s a translation of French music blogger (and radio DJ, I believe), Pol Dodu’s, post on Five Go Down To The Sea’s 1984 Knot A Fish EP from his excellent Blogzonheureux! music blog. I came across Pol’s site as it had one of the few write-ups of any length on FGDTTS that came up through a Google search I did a year or so back. When he’s not referring to Cork’s insanest geniuses, his blog is based on a record by record presentation of his fairly excellent and eclectic record collection. As he seems to have lived in London from the start of the 80s on - there are a lot of examples of the finest Indie output of the time and he has a lot of 1st hand accounts of bands from the Creation / C86 scene * referred to elsewhere on this blog by Conor. Speaking of Conor, I have given my solemn promise to Mr. DODU that I will not reveal his, or his record collection’s whereabouts as Conor might very well organise himself to get invited to a party in the vicinity..

So, for those interested, here’s the translation of Pol Dodu’s post (Pol has very kindly given me permission to use it and would also like any suggestions for the title of the live mini-cassette track posted up below) :

Original post from Pol Dodu’s Blogonzheureux / Original Post in French

EP Review :
FIVE GO DOWN TO THE SEA ? :
Knot a Fish EP

Bought at Rough Trade, London in 1984
Ref: KA Five 5 — Released by Kabuki in England in 1983
Type : 7″ / 45 rpm
Tracks : There’s a Fish on top of Shandon (Swears He’s Elvis) — Why Wait Until April — Fishes for Compliments — Elephants for Fun and Profit

It must have been a sign that I needed to talk quickly about this Irish group from Cork : the day before yesterday, I scanned some old photos, for this blog or for the ‘Souvenir Photos’ section of Vivonzeureux! among which was the below photo of Five Go Down to the Sea ? Then today, rooting around in my ‘archives’, I came across a fanzine draft in English from 1984 with a short article on FGDTTS !

Here, more or less, is what I had written in 1984 after having seen them in concert 5 times between March and June of that year :

“FGDTTS are insane, as are all geniuses. They need more beer inside them before playing a gig than a Formula 1 car needs petrol in its tank before a race….

FGDTTS are fun ! They look like the grandchildren of Status Quo’s guitarist, and you’d expect their music to sound in accordance with their appearance. This is not the case !

FGDTTS are Irish and may well be as important as the Undertones. Even at their best (”Positive Touch”), The Undertones play a sort of traditional pop, FGDTTS are different !

Their singer sings like David Thomas, and their music reminds me of Pere Ubu’s , though well freed up from the “intellectual” aspect sometimes associated with Pere Ubu. Where did they get their name from ? Perhaps some sprite or other showed them the way to a sea of beer ?
In fact, I wasn’t to know it at the time, but the group’s name simply comes from the ‘Club des Cinq’, the reference to Enid Blyton being fairly obvious for any English-speakers. In retrospect, I would also add that Donnelly, the singer, reminds me a lot of Kankrela/L’Incohérent, the leadsinger of Les Combinaisons [ SB - Swiss group referred to elsewhere on Pol’s blog ]

This EP by FGDTTS has a particularity in that a violin features on all of its tracks, which is not the case on the 2 other EPs brought out by the group and which gives just the slighest of Irish touches to their music (careful now, I didn’t say that it was ‘Folk’ !). The first track is excellent. There is a long and very good instrumental intro, before Donnelly lets rip “This song I wrote for you, I love you, I love you” (Be aware that there really is a fish on the roof of Shandon , as seen on the record’s cover, but he doesn’t claim to be Elvis, I reckon he just believes himself to be a cockerel ! ) [ SB - specific French reference - the cockerel of the French rugby jersey comes, eventually, from the prevalence of this animal on French church steeples - originally put there by Irish missionary nutters in the 7th / 8th centuries ]
‘Elephant For Fun and Profit’ is another great love song and I’m also rather fond of ‘Why Wait Until April’. You will therefore surmise that ‘Fishes for Compliments’ is a bit less to my taste.
In a previous incarnation, this group went under the name of Nun Attax. Subsequently, they became Beethoven. The latter group came to a brutally abrupt end when Donnelly drowned in the Serpentine, the (artificial?) river that runs through Hyde Park in London : he tried to swim under a punt, with a bit too much ‘fuel’ on board, I reckon.
Peter Astor paid his respects with the fine song ‘Donnelly’ on his ‘Paradise’ LP.

Five Go Down To The Sea ? In concert at the Empire Rooms, Tottenham Court Rd., London, 26th June 1984 - Photo - JC Brouchard [refers to above photo].
It was a bit of a strange concert in that it took place in a fairly flash room belonging to the Mecca group, with wall to wall orange carpet, and not in the pub backroom a few doors down the street normally used by Creation for most of the gigs by the ‘headline’ bands of the day - such as the Three Johns, and the Red Guitars.

Two or three years ago, I came across a fairly detailled page about FGDTTS, mentioning a Radio Documetary or a planned radio documentary, I’m not too sure. In any case, the page no longer seems to be up, and I’ve not found anything with any detail about the group.

[ UPDATE 25/02/08 - I’ve just been made aware of this 50 min radio programme - that won a prize in 2002 - and which is available for download here [ SB - Docu referred/linked to in a previous post by Conor on FGDTTS ] as well as the whole recorded output of the band ! ]

For those of a curious disposition, I’ve just put up, on the Vivonzeurex! radio blog, a track from Five Go Down To The Sea ? recorded on mini-cassette at a gig in London the 20/05/84.

5-go-down-2-the-sea-pol-dodu-track.mp3

Five Go Down To The Sea ? from the NME 05/11/84 [ B/W Photo from Conor’s 2 previous posts on the band ]

[ SB - Anyone that can put a title to the mini-cassette track - be our guest (in the comments section) I can’t make out much of the vocals and I wasn’t exactly a 5GDTTS expert in the first place ! ]

* Anyone remember that song I once heard on Peel that went ‘I know someone who knows someone who knows Alan MacGee quite well’