THERE ARE 13 of them, prominent among their arsenal of instruments are bongos and a flute, they hail from Galway and their lead singer recently played to a packed Da Club wearing denim shorts, battered ox-blood Docs and nothing else. And yet, despite these seemingly myriad musical handicaps, Judas Diary are as exciting and entertaining a home-grown live act as you re likely to see anywhere in the country at present. A wantonly eclectic bunch, there is an indefinable quality to their particular brand of ultra lounge cabaret sleaze, a sound which even frontman Eoin Killeen is at a loss to describe.
Well, someone called us psychedelic popsters the other day, I quite liked that, he muses. But then somebody called us a shower of bastards recently as well I didn t really think that was quite as accurate.
I think the reason our particular sound is so hard to pigeonhole, he continues, is down to the fact that there s so many of us, each with loads of different influences. People have compared us to Horslips and Jethro Tull and there was a bit of that, I think, in previous years because the flute player we had before was a kind of Celtic style player. I m a pure folkie myself.
Oh dear. Mentions of flautists and folkies are unnerving at the best of times, but when they come from a man who bears more than a passing resemblance to Mike Scott . . .
Well you ve heard us, we re not a raggle taggle outfit, laughs Eoin. We ve often played without the flute in the past and it hasn t really affected things. I suppose it depends from gig to gig. Sometimes when you tell people you ve got a flute in the band they throw their eyes up to heaven because they think you re some sort of Eurovision band. The way we work it though, it s the icing on the cake for a lot of the songs. It always comes in at the right moment, when we ve built the song up, as an added touch.
set of bagpipes
And with over a dozen musicians, these build-ups can take quite a while. Why are there so many people in the band?
There wasn t always 13 of us, Eoin attests. We ve had over 40 musicians in the five years since we started. I m actually the only original member left. What happens is, we might see someone busking on the street with say, a set of bagpipes, and we ll go Jesus, that sounds great, will you come along and play in the studio with us? So we ll have him in the studio and then before long he s with us playing at a gig.
It can get pretty hectic I suppose, particularly when we re on tour. The last time we went there was 10 of us living in the back of a bus for two months. It was good crack though, because we started busking in the streets to promote gigs. We had people throwing money at us in the streets and then turning up to see us again at night.
We did one impromptu performance in Wenceslas Square in Prague where the big communist rising was. I don t think busking was actually allowed, but we were just passing through, saw this big fucking square, jumped out of the bus and started playing. Apparently we came quite close to getting shot but there was a few hundred people watching us so the police couldn t do much. I enjoyed that tour actually, we actually made a bit of money on it.
Despite their windfall Judas Diary continue to operate as a non-profitmaking organisation. Any money earned is reinvested in studio time, an arrangement which has enabled the band to release an EP, Snakes & Ladders, and two mini-albums, Me, Fred Astaire And The Musical Chair and Bring Out The King And Clowns. Their current offering, Jolie enjoyed considerable chart success and earned the band an appearance on Kenny Live.
Despite this minor televisual triumph, however, Eoin remains unimpressed with the amount of media coverage given to bands based due west of Ballinasloe. He holds little truck with my argument that this may have something to do with the crustacean image purveyed by outfits like The Big Geraniums and Big Bag O Sticks.
Everyone says that about a lot of Galway bands, he protests. I don t think anyone in Judas Diary looks crusty-ish. Okay, my hair s a bit long at the moment, but I m thinking of getting it cut and I told the rest of the lads to comb theirs before the last Da Club gig. They didn t of course, but that s hardly grounds for calling us crusty.
And what about Eoin s less than elegant attire at the same gig?
Well, there is that, isn t there, he chuckles. But that was just for the night that was in it. I was much tidier in the Gaiety. n