The Bands Darren Had No Choice But to Love

So, I think if I ever created a podcast, I would call it The Banshee of Ballyhack. I think it will be where the more humorous side of me goes, along with my dry humour and all the stuff about music and film. And death; lots about death.

Basically, it is everything I would be into if I wasn’t fucking grieving at the same time. The humour will be dry, dark and slabbering.

For my non-podcast podcast, I have been trying to work out which bands I brought into Darren’s life. They were bands he could have liked perfectly well on his own. Unfortunately for him, he met me, a music obsessive.

I practically indoctrinated him.

Depeche Mode

The first band is probably Depeche Mode.

Darren liked Depeche Mode, but I had probably coaxed them further into his musical world. I remember us in the late 90s watching one of their videos, Barrel of a Gun. I think realising that Dave Gahan, the lead singer, was a complete fucking mad head made them even more appealing to Darren!

The first song I have got to pick is Shake the Disease by Depeche Mode.

I remember hearing this song in 1985. I had heard them before, but this song felt like the dark turn, even though there had always been a darkness to them.

It was everything. It was a tune. It didn’t even need to make any sense. It was just this amazing song. And then there’s the vocal between Martin and Dave!

Randomly, I remember listening to it in my granda’s house, which has got nothing to do with anything I am talking about. It is just one of my random slabbers as The Banshee.

The Smiths

Number two on the list is The Smiths.

Again, Darren obviously knew of The Smiths and had heard some of their songs, but then he met me and my fucking love of The Smiths.

Anyone who knows me knows I love Duran Duran and The Smiths.

I was an avid reader of Smash Hits and NME. That’s how I became aware of The Smiths. I used to read quotes from Morrissey in the magazines and just go, ‘Oh my God, I love him. Look at him. He is so dreamy and alternative and weird.’

Then they came out with what has been my favourite song of all time since the first time I heard it. That sounds overdramatic, but it is true.

I remember hearing The Boy with the Thorn in His Side for the first time on Radio 1 after it entered the charts. I taped practically every song I heard at the time.

When it finished, I stopped the tape and rewound it because I couldn’t believe what my ears had heard. I said to myself, “This is the greatest song you will ever hear in your life!”

I think a two-bar electric heater was the only bit of heat in the room. I remember dancing in circles around the damp room the first time I heard it. Another little titbit from The Banshee.

Since then, I have tried really, really hard to find another song that made me feel like that. There are songs I love to death, but this has remained my favourite song of all time.

Duran Duran

The third band was Duran Duran, and I would say I turned Darren into a proper superfan.

It started sometime between 1983 and 1984. I saw them, heard them and fell in love. I used to dream that I shared a house with the five of them. It wasn’t just any kind of teeny-weeny teenage love.

Their songs were absolute colour in my world. It was like living in black and white and then discovering them. They represented everything that was the opposite of my life, and I was completely attracted to it.

They were so gorgeous, the music was so uplifting, and their videos and style were a complete eye-opener to this culchie.

After them, I became addicted to music, pop music and nearly everything apart from country music. My ears were wide open.

Out of all the bands, I would say Duran Duran have been the biggest musical influence on me. If I had never followed them and become such an obsessive, mad fan, I wouldn’t know or appreciate half the music and film that I love.

Poor Darren never stood a chance. I think he could have gone on Mastermind with the amount of information he had about them. That’s what over 30 years of listening to me will do to you!

My brain still contains a mountain of useless facts about Duran Duran. At the same time, I only figured out today how part of the car key worked.

Yet another insight into the peculiar brain of The Banshee!

The Kinks

The Kinks were never played as relentlessly on the radio as The Beatles or Elvis. Even though I listened to a lot of older music, you didn’t seem to hear The Kinks nearly as much.

There used to be a shopping centre where Victoria Square is now. Sometime in the mid to late 80s, my mum and I went into a shop there that might have been Poundstretcher. It sold all sorts of random shit and, among the random shit, I found a Greatest Hits album by The Kinks.

I looked at it and thought, “Oh, I know a few of those songs.”

So I bought it and played it constantly.

Roll on another few years, and Darren and I were going out together. Naturally, I got out my Kinks tape and introduced him to them properly.

He loved them too, so that was another band successfully planted.

My choice for The Kinks is one of their later songs, Come Dancing. I discovered it when I was about 15 or 16. It wasn’t on the Greatest Hits album I had bought, so I discovered it separately.

As a by-the-by, I only recently found out the story behind Come Dancing. It was Ray Davies’s tribute to his older sister, who gave him his first guitar on his 13th birthday and died of a heart attack while dancing at a ballroom that same night.

It is exactly the sort of thing I would have told Darren. We would both have been like, ‘Oh, that’s so sad and brilliant.’

Now I know the story and I’m not able to tell him.

There was also the time Darren saw Ray Davies walking down Bradbury Place, arm in arm with two women. Sadly, I wasn’t with him.

Another piece of Banshee lore.

Nick Cave

The next one I would like to add to the list is Nick Cave.

I know for a fact that Darren did not know a Nick Cave song when he met me. I’m laughing as I say this because he managed to die first and got Nick Cave played at his cremation. He literally stole my funeral song, LOL.

I played Darren The Ship Song, and we both agreed that it was one of the greatest songs ever, which it is. It always had the air of a funeral song about it.

People of a certain kind of miserablism, such as I, tend to think about music in that way. You would hear a Joy Division song and think, “That sounds like a funeral song.”

The Ship Song sounds fucking majestic. It is spine-tingling, especially near the end when Nick Cave sings and speaks at the same time.

I had privately identified it as excellent funeral material, and then the bugger went and fucking stole it on me.

I mean, what is that all about?

Fontaines D.C.

The last and most recent band on the list is Fontaines D.C.

This was largely a case of me wearing Darren down with them. Daniel was also caught in the crossfire.

I discovered them a few years ago. I heard them on something and went, Oh my God, hear this. Hear this band, and told Darren about them.

God love him, I have tortured this house with Fontaines D.C. All their concerts on YouTube have been watched repeatedly. If I’m doing anything, they are playing from my phone.

In the same way that I love The Smiths and Duran Duran, they have become one of my obsessions. I mean, it’s not like I follow all their concerts, songs and social media.

Me? Absolutely not!