We’re All With The Band
When I moved back to Belfast, Dangerfields gigs were one of the first things that became a regular... it was about finding my feet in a city I’d left nearly 10 years previously.
Public Service Announcement: We live in a distressing world these days. I’m sure you’ve noticed. Towards the back end of last year, I discovered Substack was actively promoting and supporting content I was very uncomfortable with, in a far right, pro-Israel kind of way. In addition, shortly after I joined the platform, they introduced and have foregrounded ‘Substack notes’ which is basically Twitter/Bluesky by another name. I’m not looking for another social media feed, I’m looking for a platform for long-form writing, and I’m DEFINITELY not looking for a platform that actively promotes the sort of content that actively harms my fellow humans. So I have moved platform to one called Ghost and after a short hiatus while I got my head round it, I'm writing again. You should have noticed precisely zero difference in accessing my writing, so if you’d signed up to receive these essays via email, you should have received it as normal and I’m now linking to the new site from everywhere I was linking to the old one. Onward!
“We were committed to the cause, Miriam”
I bumped into my friend Clare in Forestside, our local shopping centre a while ago; as Clare has said to me on several occasions now, we’ve only got Forestside left to us for our catch ups these days and it’s proving sadly true. We were talking about the fact that we’re much less bothered about the effort of going out these days and reminiscing about the amount we used to be out at local band gigs back in the day.
There was a time when my catchups with Clare used to happen at least once a week, in the upstairs rooms of no-longer pubs like Auntie Annie’s, The Front Page, The Rosetta and - is it open or closed at the minute? It’s hard to keep track - The Menagerie. Gigs by The Dangerfields, The Debonaires, Dirty Stevie (I’m sure not all the bands’ names began with D), Tracer AMC and dozens of others whose names now escape me. We were there because, as Clare said, we were committed to the cause.
I think of all of them, the ‘cause’ we were most committed to was The Dangerfields. Fronted by my mate Andrew, who remains their only permanent member, back in March last year they played their 25th anniversary gig in the Oh Yeah Centre in Belfast and I was there to watch it. I’ve probably been watching them, on and off, for the vast majority, if not all of those 25 years.
I first met The Dangerfields in Liverpool, when they kipped on my living room floor after playing a gig in a squat venue, The Jump Ship Rat. We knew each other through an online forum for Northern Irish music called Fastfude, though I’d never met them in person, and thus it was possibly a little bit of a gamble offering crash space, but they behaved, much to my relief - and that of my housemates. I can’t imagine that ‘do you mind if a punk band crashes in our living room’ was the question three young professionals actually wanted to hear from their postgrad student housemate. They subsequently stayed on 3 or 4 occasions (my favourite phone call went ‘Miriam, we’ve just done a gig in Bristol and we’re playing in Dundee tomorrow. Can we stay with you tonight on the way?’ ‘Liverpool isn’t on the way to Dundee…’ ‘It’s further north!’) and those days of studying for my Ph.D. feel about 2 lifetimes ago.
When I moved back to Belfast about 20 years ago, Dangerfields gigs were one of the first things that became a regular, amongst so many other nights out to see local bands. When I think back to those nights, not only was it about the music, but it was also about finding my feet in a city I’d left nearly 10 years previously. Coming back to Belfast to start a new job and being aware that that so many people I had known had moved on or moved away, going to local band gigs was familiar territory, as it had been a part of life in Liverpool, and I could tell it would be a useful anchor for my new life.
Commitment to the cause meant knowing sets so well that I could see when everyone was on form and everything was in flow - or when the reverse was true and things were just a bit clunky and ‘off’. It meant delighting when a friend’s band got signed to a local label and got a Peel Session, or got picked up by Bruce Dickinson to play at his live 6Music show. It meant cheering for favourites, laughing at in-jokes and when things went wrong. It meant commiserating after off nights and going home on an adrenaline high when it was a good one.
That connection and community is at the root of it all; we shared the highs and lows because the band were us. I don’t mean that we could see ourselves on stage - that wasn’t necessarily where many of us wanted to head at all - but being in those grubby pub back rooms turned going to a gig into hanging out with a group of actual mates. We commiserated and celebrated because we knew each other well enough to know when it mattered; both to people on stage and off it. The shouting over music turned into conversations in the ladies loos that lasted so long others would be sent in to check I hadn’t passed out in a corner somewhere - it would seem that I am an excellent Ladies' Toilet Counsellor and have got one of those sympathetic faces. I suspect if I went out to see the current crop of unsigned bands who are gigging in whatever their version of our venues are, I’d recognise the same dance of community there too, because it’s all still there, waiting to be tapped into, waiting to resonate with music and human energy.
It doesn’t matter what genre of music is, turning up to a music event of any sort marks you out as being willing to commit to the cause, which always opens up community. I saw it again at the end of last year, when Jonny and I travelled to Liverpool for an all-dayer called Levitation, organised by the label Castles In Space. Castles In Space have a CD imprint called Lunar Module that are putting an album of Jonny's out tomorrow (27 February), so it seemed like a good time to go over, meet the folk behind the labels, some of Jonny's labelmates and - hopefully - some of the people who'd be buying Sun Angle in the not-too-distant future. We had a brilliant day hearing some brilliant music, in the company of like-minded and like-eared people. There it was again - that warmth, that community, that rallying to the cause. Later in the same month, one of the acts who'd been on the bill at Levitation was playing in Belfast so community carried us down to the gig and we were so glad it did. The audience was in single figures and the old roles instinctively took over as we commiserated about the turnout, enthused about some really excellent sets and all that was missing was one of my ladies' loo therapy sessions *.
At that Dangerfields 25th anniversary gig it was lots of the same faces from 20 years ago; a bit greyer maybe, but still up for turning out for one more show - even if we were more grateful these days than we used to be for seats between sets. The songs instantly transported me back to any number of sticky pub dance floors, shouted conversations in people’s ears and smuggling booze in handbags. I’m not sure if I miss the gigs themselves or whether I just miss the seemingly effortless dropping into community, because the friendships and the connections are still there and just as easy to pick up when we do see one another as they always were. I’ve found some of my closest friends through music and had some amazing times with them, both at gigs and elsewhere - though Clare and I really ought to try and aim for better than Forestside in the future.
*This was entirely Belfast's loss. Kayla Painter and James Adrian Brown were playing and both have released fantastic albums this year that are getting a ton of airplay. We were there when…
Paul Branagh: In Memory
I’m hard pushed to imagine a Dangerfields gig without Paul Branagh. A glorious, shambling, gentle giant with a voice like a foghorn and a passion for music like no other. Of course he was at the 25th Anniversary concert, with a pocket full of CDs, a story about getting chips before the show and his usual joy in being down the front. About a month later, I opened Facebook on a rainy night in Porto to discover that Paul had suddenly and unexpectedly died, and it was a massive shock. Our community gathered together once more, in wholly unfamiliar circumstances, to celebrate and mourn one of our own. The service was fitting and included the best story about Bono I am ever likely to hear. This post is dedicated to Paul's memory, because all music scenes need someone like him to bring the energy and buy 43 copies of your EP - be sure to treasure your scene's resident Branagh.
