Back in the musical Jurassic Age, when showbands roamed the Earth, strange creatures were to be seen creeping around the stages of magical, mystical Ireland. Most were unique and instantly recognisable; there was the Brendan Bowyerasaurus, the Joe Dolanognathus, the spitting Dickie Rockodactyl, and perhaps most terrifying of all, there was Big Tom.
There were smaller species too. Blokes with limited musical flair who lived solely for the skirt they could pull; these were the Tyrannosaurus Erects. There were also the dolly birds, those dazzling velociraptors who, it was rumoured, could rip a man to shreds with one flick of their talons. Everywhere you looked, there were Bengal Lancers, showbandspeak for chancers .
To the modern palaeontologist, the most interesting species of all from this era were the bands who wore camouflage or extravagant plumage to either mask their shortcomings or attract the more intense interest of others. These were known as the gimmick acts.
At the height of the showband boom, there were maybe 600 combos plying the roads of Ireland. In this Darwinian jungle, only the fittest and shrewdest survived. Musical abilities were secondary to stage spectacle. Songwriting talent was redundant because audiences only wanted to hear chart hits and dance music. What you needed to stand apart from the crowd was an image, any image.
From Send Em Home Sweatin , Vincent Power s definitive text on the showband epoch, we get some intimation of just how surreal the quest for the most eye-catching image became. There was, for instance, the mysterious Silhouettes, a Belfast band who used to dress up like space aliens, complete with extra-terrestrial false faces to disguise their identities. Their gimmick was that nobody could tell who was in the band, explains Vincent Power.
In the 1970s, there was Magic of The Magic Showband, a young man who wore a suit of tailored light bulbs, illuminated by a battery pack on his back. He was, perhaps, the world s first power dresser.
A black singer was thought to be the most effective draw in some areas, especially west of the Shannon, where it was believed many of the inhabitants had never seen a Negro before. The Derek Joys hired the coloured singer, Earl Jordan, who proved to be an instant crowd-puller. Gene Chetty, the frontman of Gene and The Gents, was Asian, a fact much hyped by the band s management to lucrative effect.
Most notorious of all, however, were Samba And The Philosophers. This was a highly successful group in the late 60s and early 70s whose primary selling-point was Samba , their black lead vocalist. Legend has it that Samba wasn t, in fact, an individual ( Samba not being a name with very much social cachet among black families) but a succession of foreign medical students studying in Dublin, each one only touring intermittently with The Philosophers when exam and lecture timetables permitted.
For some time, Hot Press has been trying to track down a former Samba or even an erstwhile Philosopher. We have spoken to promoters, musicians, managers, music industry figures of every stripe and kidney. We even issued an all-points-bulletin via the good offices of Gareth O Callaghan s Upbeat programme on RTE Radio 1. But thus far, we have found neither hair nor hide of Samba.
If anyone out there can help us, or knows of anyone who might be able to help us, please contact our eager staff at the Search For Samba Department, Hot Press, 13 Trinity Street, Dublin 2. Tel: (01) 6795077.
It is essential for future generations that Samba s story be told. n