Irreverand Brothers Break Silence

I may have been lucky in the weather, a fresh unclouded weekend during September's Indian summer but somehow the mood in Cork felt less pressurised and fettered with no edge of restless urban paranoia. It's simple to say that of the city itself but the new Cork bands are as much shaped by their environment as any other citizen of the burgh. Just now they're at that point of creative purpose and adventure at which they haven't yet been blinded by embitterment to re-rehearse past bleak routines. Myles na gCopaleen once chided: *'Art' is so terribly often no more than vocational malfunction.* There's less of such directionless dilettantism in Cork.

The first signal came at the pub beside the Ark, or the Arcadia Ballroom in Cork parlance. Even if this random gathering of Nun Attax, Mean Features and Micro Disney members may have been partly intent on displaying themselves to the journalist from Dublin, they did so with a wit and relish I'd forgotten existed in Irish bands. There was none of the ingrown moroseness of beings trapped in a sub-culture with no way out and their best dreams behind them. These were people who hadn't yet forfeited their humanity to that devourer called 'rock'.

Which isn't to claim Cork as the newest Akron. Rock erects so many obstacles to test character and creative fortitude that the finest intentions can dismayingly unravel to leave only morale-sapping memories. But there's pride in Cork, a refusal to be intimidated by fashion and that's an essential starting point. There won't be instant hits or front covers but meantime this is the class of '80 most likely to. And if they don't...

The Nun Attax must come first. The first necessary local heroes, the first to show others they could move from the sidelines to the stage, the first to move beyond pure punk, the Nun Attax gave the Ark audience something that was both their own and recognisably original.

Most recognisably original for the Nun Attax could be the Undertone's Cork cousin Kevins in search of a lost common chord. Stone crazy, they are chiselling away towards a sound that hasn't yet been fully sculpted. As they hover around the chattering scratching discontinuous funk of the likes of the Pop Group and Captain Beefheart. Just to confirm that point, lead singer Donnelly says his current listening is the Contortions. But the Nun Attax don't dress up to assert their status. *The Face* wouldn't know where the place them: Donnelly, he of 'the simian features' sports a contoured crophead, bassist Philip O'Connell is more often to be seen in a Bainin cardigan and neither guitarist Ricky Dineen nor drummer Smelly are fashion-plates either.

On stage, Ricky tends to withdraw into a shape of intense concentration and watchfulness. Smelly smiles and exults at his clatter as drummers do and Philip plays sweeper to Donnelly's striking antics.

The Virgin Prunes haven't yet got to play the El Ruedo, metaphorically the Nun Attax beat them to it and Donnelly is the reason why. Some nights he glowers, but at the Ark he was all sweetness and piss-artistry, mocking the punk phalanx at the stage as he spat back at them. He has the instinct and humour to simultaneously charm and mock an audience, to make them the Punk Sallies of his smiling insults, yet still be forgiven and more.

Currently he's their best insurance, for however complicated Nun Attax music becomes, he humanises it. But it's also a current asset that could become a future fault if too vast a rift grows between his performance and the music. Presently the Nun Attax are too set on a course of exploration to want to attain a coherence based on any musical language but their own. The Nun Attax don't wish to be symmetrical; the hazards and rewards are equal.

*We were a punk band, we got into 'Anarchy' by mistake, we got into punk too early,* says Donnelly as if in disgust at a misspent youth.

His '76 musical understanding had proceeded as far as Eddie and The Hot Rods but when he walked into a Cork record store to purchase 'Teenage Depression' he got one of the few original Irish copies of Anarchy by mistake.

*And so then I discovered that the Sex Pistols existed, and The Clash and The Damned and saw all these photos of The Roxy and all these horrible people and they just wanted to be the horriblest fucking people in the world.*

So two years ago, he was still the only punk in the city, *The Lone Ranger of Punk* according to our Cork contributor, Brendan Halpin. That wasn't the luckiest line written in the HP for, laughs Smelly, when the local skins, the Blackpool Rats read it, *They bate the shit out of him.*

So how did you meet up?

*In a chip shop,* smirks Donnelly and Smelly expands that the other three were going to school together, and that they then went through various line-ups, losing two guitarists en rouge before settling for the latest, most basic line-up.

*We weren't going to make a statement,* cautions Donnelly. *It was just something to pass the time. Like Sunday afternoons are so boring.*

And since there was no other bands you liked?

*Yeah, we knew what we wanted to hear so we could write it.*

And for both reasons of increasing expertise and boredom ta punk inertia, they started to fashion their own style. Donnelly again: *It was just getting boring, it was getting like heavy metal, riff, chorus, solo, riff, chorus, end. That was just getting tedious.*

Among the guitarists who left was Gerdy, now with Micro Disney. Older than the Nun Attax, whose average age is only 18, and apparently a refugee from the Sir Henry's scene, Gerdy according to other Cork informants was discomfited by their incessant disrespectful banter but Donnelly sticks to musical reasons: *You saw him last night with Micro Disney. He was great but he didn't fit in. He was too serious. He'd say 'We have to work on this'. All this pronounced like a wagging school-master and he'd spend three weeks jamming; working on one song and we'd jut go out and get the ideas and work on them.*

Earlier Philip said: *Every band in this city that started off with a serious attitude broke up.*

Then there is the Arcadia, location of Leeside's own peculiar Saturday Night Fever, a demonstration of how a considerably-run ballroom can encourage local bands by giving them a continuing centre and open-minded attention. So many Cork stories begin at the Ark.

Donnelly says of the other Cork bands: *They were the people we knew from going to the Ark. Anybody worthwhile went to the Ark. So they all appeared at the Ark so after a while they introduced themselves and you all went drinking together. I mean all the bands know each other.*

And slowly the number of dedicated malingerers at the front of the stage grew. As Philip explains: *When we started, there'd be about twenty at the front. They were the ones who were interested at the start but the line progressed back. And now we can say,* he laughs, *we're half-way down the Ark.*

That audience is in contradistinction to the country-rockers et al who still rule in Cork's alternative pub venue, Sir Henry's. Donnelly gets analytical about previous close-mindedness.

*Two years ago there was a Sir Henry's type band that did 'Cocaine' and 'Black Magic Woman' and some of their own stuff and maybe a load of Bob Dylan thrown in. And the audience was laid-back long-hairs, you know, smoke their dope. That's happening as well but there's something else. There's no need to cut that off as people are enjoying that and there's people enjoying the other bands.*

But there's the generation gap between the older musos and yourselves?

*But even then there's this kind of hippie who's into the Grateful Dead and Zappa but they'll come along and buy the new Joy Division album because it's supposedly Doors-influenced and they'll tell you that's great and they'll buy Talking Heads, the doomier bands that I think are pathetic.

*But they're open.* He finishes and I get confused interpreting the transcript.

The Nun Attax themselves are unsurprisingly selective in their Irish enthusiasms. The Virgin Prunes get approval. *Musically they're great,* says Donnelly, but he makes a distinction. *We're not really into their ideas. We don't really like people who have set ideas. Talk to us a week later and you'd get a different idea.*

*All those Dublin five-pieces, those pop bands are horrible,* adds Smelly and Donnelly finishes their observations by saying, *We like to hear U2 but they're annoying to watch.*

The Nun Attax are wary of involvement in a chummy 'Irish Scene'. Donnelly lays down the line that *There should be an 'Irish scene man', it shouldn't be the Irish scene is getting better, it should be this band is getting better. Individuals stuck together getting better.

*What people seem to be doing is being nice, starting by doing covers so you can get a nail and then do what you want. Whereas when we saw the Prunes last year, it was amazing that this happened in Ireland. And then we saw this, no talking between songs, make-up, hints of whatever you want to call it, sex. It was shocking. If you're looking for a major influence in the Nun Attax it's the Prunes but not musically just a sort of magic we thought they had and then when we found out what they actually were, we didn't like them any more.*

Just now, the Nun Attax are unboxable. Untidily spontaneous, suspicion of form, leery of being caught static in one position, the Nun Attax throw their musical shapes up in the air and find where they fall. They compel attention if only to find what their wares are this week. Come back next year and you can be certain they're redesigned the convent.

Unorthodox indeed, but not completely untraditional. Towards the end of the conversation, Donnelly lets slip this morsel about Belfast where he was born - *Van Morrison's old man taught my old man how to play harmonica.*

Remember this Pete Frame, the Nun Attax are only beginning to get into their mystique.