A semi-legendary album featuring three young Cork bands live in action at the Downtown Kampus gigs in the city in 1980 has been re-released on vinyl.
Available 42 years after the original issue, emerging acts Micordisney, Nun Attax, Urban Blitz and Mean Features can be heard in full flight on Kaught at the Kampus - a new, extended re-issue of the album recorded live at the Arcadia ballroom in Cork, on 30 August 1980.
The Kampus ran weekly gigs in the Arcadia ballroom for the UCC Student's Union, hosting UK touring bands such as The Cure, The Specials, The Beat, XTC, The Stranglers, and The Only Ones, as well as Irish bands such as Rory Gallagher and U2.
Young local bands were regularly given support slots to the bigger acts. With the start of 2FM in 1979 and the Dave Fanning Show regularly playing young Irish talent on the national airwaves, Kampus promoter Elvera Butler hired a mobile studio from Belfast to record a night of some of the regular support bands so that they too could have a demo tape for the programme.
Kaught at the Kampus became a six-track 12" EP, which has long since become something of a collector’s item.
The recording captured a moment of new music in Cork, an era that influenced later Cork bands such as Sultans of Ping and The Frank and Walters.
The re-released and extended album features three of the most compelling frontmen that Cork, or indeed Ireland, has produced - Finbarr Donnelly of Nun Attax, Mick Lynch of Mean Features, and Cathal Coughlan of Microdisney. Sadly, all three died young.
Nun Attax were scene leaders at the tine and now have three tracks on side one of Kaught at the Kampus, while Microdisney have five tracks from the time on the re-issue.
Three of the four bands went on to have careers in the UK. Mean Features vocalist Mick Lynch with his later band Stump, Nun Attax as Five Go Down to the Sea? and Beethoven. Microdisney, whose frontman Cathal Coughlan died last year, went on to international recognition with their 1985 album The Clock Comes Down The Stairs.
The new 12 track re-issue is available as a very limited package in black or clear blue vinyl, including a free CD and 16-page, A4 fanzine of Kampus memorabilia.
Speaking to RTÉ Entertainment, Elvira Butler of Dublin-based Reekus Records said, "The idea behind the recording was to provide some of my regular local support bands with a demo tape that they could send to the Dave Fanning show on the new 2fm.
"There were no studios in Cork for them to use and travelling to Dublin would have been prohibitive as they were all either schoolboys or unemployed - all of them were under 19 at the time.
"Somehow it became a vinyl EP. It did give the bands a calling card to play shows in Dublin and then three of them went on to have careers of some sort in the UK, with Microdisney gaining international recognition with their 1985 album The Clock came down the Stairs."
