GREAT IRISH BANDS, PART 30: THE GREAT WESTERN SQUARES
Sep 30th, 2008 by Conor McCabe
Last year I went looking for something to put up by the Great Western Squares but couldn’t find anything. Sean’s post about The Sewing Room got me looking again, and sure enough, something’s popped up. It’s their cover of “Ace Of Spades” and damn fine it is too. Their second album, Ammost Sober, is going for $0.61c on Amazon these days, so there’s no excuse for picking it up. Hell, even a Wall Street broker could afford that.
Their myspace page contains more songs, while frontman Gary Fitzpatrick’s myspace is here.
The name of the band comes from Great Western Square in Phibsboro - a side-link to my own area of research as the square was built in the 1850s to accommodate workers and managers in the Broadstone depot of the Great Western Railway, until the 1930s the main terminus for the Galway trains.
The video itself seems to have been filmed around the canal in Phibsboro, and as far as I remember, the Great Western Squares played a residency of sorts upstairs in the Hut at Doyle’s corner.
Enjoy.
Nice one Conor - noticed them alright among the friends on the Sewing Room’s MySpace (both I think created by the same revivalist person / label ). Remember a few good gigs by them in Whelan’s - the D7 Lonesome Sound…
Not too sure it was exclusively THEIR residence upstairs in The Hut - it was a thing called ‘The Johnny Cash Appreciation Society’ - heard lots of good things about it - but I regret that I never dragged me sorry arse over to it from D5. Maybe there’s others lurking out there that experienced it ?? Grangegorman Stardust Cowboys and the like..
The video itself seems to have been filmed around the canal in Phibsboro, and as far as I remember, the Great Western Squares played a residency of sorts upstairs in the Hut at Doyle’s corner.
Think i remember it being shot on the other (Grand) canal down Baggot St way …..
Cheers, Seán, That was it. It was the Johnny Cash Appreciation Society. And cheers for the info on the video, Sonofstan.