The new video from Telefís, the collaboration between acclaimed producer Garret "Jacknife" Lee and the late Cathal Coughlan, splices up early film clips of U2's The Edge, Nun Attax, Microdisney and The Virgin Prunes with vintage RTÉ footage of showbands.
The duo’s new song, The Carthaginians, is the third single from their upcoming album a Dó and you can watch the video here.
The band’s second album was finished several months prior to the sad passing of Microdisney and Fatima Mansions front man Cathal last May and The Carthaginians is one of two new tracks that examines the role of the showband in Irish popular culture of the '60s and '70s.
Cathal and Jacknife, who has produced artists including The Killers, U2 and R.E.M., trace the importance of showbands back to their own desire to go into recorded music and live performance, even if their younger selves might have scoffed at the notion of young post-punks of the early '80s owing any debt to their cultural forebears.
Jacknife’s video for The Carthaginians features early film clips of U2’s The Edge, Nun Attax, Microdisney and The Virgin Prunes interspersed with vintage RTÉ footage of showbands and their audiences in full Saturday night swing.
"When Cathal and I started conversations about what the themes for our second album a Dó might be, we kept coming back to the peculiarly Irish phenomenon of the 'showband’, and certainly not in the dismissive way our teenage selves might have approached it," says Jacknife.
"But with a curiosity and excitement. Entertainment and community were important to us as teenagers in the late '70s and the '80s and all the bands featured in the video, from the Miami Showband to Nun Attax were born of this and have more in common with each other than not.
He adds, "When Cathal and I were starting out the thought of us having similar goals and impulses as the regal showband or dickie rock would’ve made us laugh and maybe throw a punch, but now not so. There is a straight line through us all.
"The post-punk artists featured in the video (as well as the touring showbands) could only have been products of Ireland and we wanted to celebrate the oddness of it all. So, we invented a showband and called them The Carthaginians.
"The song explores what it’s like to be in a band, the relationship with the audience, the internal dialogues, the branding, the town hopping, the dashed hopes, and the ridiculous fantasies".
The Carthaginians will be available on all digital platforms on Friday September 16th via Dimple Discs.
Pre-save here.
a Dó will be released on 7 October on CD/cassette/digital on Dimple Discs and on blue vinyl on 20 January 20, 2023.
