REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE SHOWBAND RECEPTION ÁRAS AN UACHTARÁIN
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE SHOWBAND RECEPTION ÁRAS AN UACHTARÁIN, TUESDAY, 10 JULY, 2001
In his book “Send ‘em Home Sweatin’ The Showband Story” Vincent Power says
“ Showbands played a central role in Ireland’s cultural and musical development, a role largely unacknowledged.”
Today is about acknowledging and celebrating and saying thank you for that role in laying the foundations for a modern Irish pop industry which enjoys national and international recognition. It is also about saying thank you for the entertainment, the fun and the memories of an era which was unique to Ireland, which characterised the fifties, the sixties and the seventies and which still has its exponents today.
I don’t remember the start of it – the Clipper Carlton and Strabane in 1950 but I remember the mad panic in my granny’s house every Saturday night as my mother’s litany of younger unmarried sisters painted their faces, fought over dresses and decamped in a lather of cheap perfume for the dance halls. Ireland was beginning, just beginning to open up and there was a change of mood. Seamus Heaney describes the mood of his parents’ generation as living “ under high banked clouds of resignation”. But then came free education, rural electrification, the television, the world of pop music and the clouds started to scatter, as the amplifier, the electric guitar, the transistor and Elvis colonised new space in the world of entertainment.
I do remember the middle of it - for that is when Martin and I started travelling the country in a borrowed Volkswagen following the showbands from one country parish hall to another, trundling back from Hilltown to Belfast in the early hours after dancing to the Miami Showband. It was fun, it was as near to glamour as we got. Romances started there. Courtships like ours were conducted there.
And I remember the end of the innocence of it all when on a lonely stretch of road near Banbridge three members of the Miami Showband were so cruelly murdered. The dark shadows which gathered after that tragic night were in such sharp contrast to the gaiety of the showband scene - a place where young people met, where romances flourished, where even the best efforts of parish priests to impose space for the Holy Ghost between dancing couples could not dampen the sense of fun and liberation.
That fun was gifted to us by the men and women in the bands, the men and women who organised the bands, the venues, the managers, promoters, the backroom teams and through them we have a wonderful album of memories and a catalogue of great names - so many that it would be invidious to mention any in case some are left out, but their imprint on our hearts was very evident when Butch Moore died recently and we were able to see the depth of sadness at his absence.
To quote Fr Brian D’Arcy - Ecstasy in those innocent days didn’t come in tablet form. It was rather a perspiration-drenched night at a country crossroads under the canvass of a five-pole marquee, dancing to the unique sound of an Irish showband.
To all of you, to your families we offer a warm thank you and hope this day of celebration says that while the showband world has changed, the entertainment world has moved on, we owe you a debt and this reception is by way of saying that we have not forgotten.