Anarchy in the UK

Richmond, a sleepy market town in North Yorkshire, is kicking itself into a frenzy. The town’s annual festival is drawing to a climactic conclusion. Heads are bobbing up and down and kids are going crazy.

Security guards can’t help but take their eyes off the 12,000 strong crowd as they try to take in the intense excitement of what is happening on stage. As headliners The Revs wrap up their set the audience seem genuinely stunned. Afterwards one hardened roadie declares the Donegal men the best band he’s seen since The Jam. His insistence is compelling.
In the build-up to their set The Revs sit suitably relaxed in their hotel. The intense heat though has taken an early victim in vocalist and bassist Rory Gallagher. “It’s bloody hot”, he says in disbelief, “I was just down for two beers and all of a sudden got dizzy with the heat. I had to come back to the hotel and sit in the bath for four hours!”
Twenty four hours with The Revs, I had expected, would make for an article detailing a night of youthful rock and roll abandon, of excess and drunken rapport. Yet there’s much more to the band. Sure they have their hedonistic side. There are fascinating stories of setting up equipment in LA’s Viper Room as Jack Osbourne throws up in the background, or of driving down Hollywood Boulevard with two coked up prostitutes behind the wheel. But this isn’t what’s interesting about The Revs.
What sets them apart from most young acts is the intense feeling that they really have something interesting to say. Their output so far has been less then staggering but in hearing some of the new material, and in being in their company, there’s a genuine sense that these three guys could really forge something wonderful such is their energy, knowledge and pure intellect. Gallagher typifies this. With an inquisitive manner, he’s very much aware of the social and political state of the world around him. In the hours before the band are due on stage, he occupies his time wandering around the town intrigued by everything from dusty old pictures to local legends.
At one stage he gets a ticking off from a pensioner for messing with an old grandfather clock such is his childlike fascination with everything he sees. “Men always have to fiddle with things” the woman complains. “Yeah but the sound (of the clock) is so relaxing. Come over and listen,” comes the response.
Throughout the day, The Revs are very much the focus of attention and regularly teenage girls bashfully approach for autographs. At one stage a young girl hides behind her father as he asks Rory for an autograph on her behalf purely on the basis that Rory has met Damien Rice. “She’s embarrassed to even meet people who know famous people” he says.
After the show drummer Micky D is amazed at how crazy the crowd were. “They were fuckin’ great”, he says as chants of the band’s name echo in the background, “pure mad”. It’s an unusual reception given that the group’s recorded work isn’t widely available in the UK. Like their initial success in Ireland, this adulation is drawn primarily from their live shows. With 12,000 people on their side, The Revs have conquered Richmond. The rest of the UK should take note.

The Revs play Shefflin’s, Waterford (September 9); The Regal, Murringtown (17); Cuba, Galway (23); Stables, Mullingar (24); Spirit Store, Dundalk (25); and Glor, Ennis (October 8)