"That's Tim Wheeler's cousin...
" I'd hear the built-jock types whisper as we passed each other through my school's 'wind tunnel'.
I wasn't much - just an under-built eleven-year old struggling with one bag full of dog-eared textbooks and another with soiled rugby kit.
I had concealed my identity as an out and out "Taig" in a school that included a red/black flower every November as part of the uniform and didn't do it too well.
My link to Northern Ireland's most remarkable band since 'Stiff Little Fingers' was also a fabrication but was more widely believed.
True, my paternal ancestry dates back to the well trodden path of Saintfield to Downpatrick via of course 'Belltown' or rather as it was erroneously named Crossgar.
As far as I know I share this with the affable Tim, the irrepressible 'Rock' McMurray and the towering figure that is one Mr Mark Hamilton.
In fact my Great Uncle Jim, who is so mannerly and has such a noble presence earned the nickname 'Lord Downpatrick'.
He built a great relationship with Tim's now deceased father and his mother served tea after at the marking of Jim's brother passing on.
Most people from that vicinity have such links can say that but Tim's [I hope she won't mind me saying] much older sister - Heather is responsible for my entire existence.
I'll set what is probably a slightly inaccurate scene...
East Belfast, Northern Ireland.
The early Eighties.
Saturday Night.
Whilst the masses are fixated on the recent Hunger Strikes, crowds assemble to socialise in dispersed pockets of the outreaches of the city because the city centre is closed.
One such motley bunch are in a recently qualified Physiotherapist's domicile in the Stormont Area.
This so happened to be Heather Wheeler.
The focus was to provide an enjoyable evening for young professionals mingling with the opposite sex.
Essentially there was two camps - her school friends from the aforementioned small town in County Down and her more worldly university friends from places as far as Norway.
With chat of their plans to progress up the career ladder some were getting on better than others in the meat market of an evening.
In the former camp stood a wise-cracking, sports nut whose clerk-level banking career was an easy improvement on the previous entries on his CV - delivering bread and working in a mushroom factory.
Members of his extended family marched religiously on the 12th July suited and booted but he preferred his identity to be defined by his running down the wing for a senior-level Rugby team each Saturday.
Slight but full of wit and a sporadic tendency to be aggressive he was in the hunt that night.
The unlikely focus of his affections was a coy, pretty, devout Catholic with a short dark brown bob from a tight-knitted family of seven who descended from the man who designed the 'new town' of Craigavon and a no-nonsense school teacher.
This girl of simple pleasures met the host through their shared time at the University of Ulster and was soon off to Dublin to start her career.
The confident rugby player approaches the girl who had been sheltered all her life.
With the looks he only has to talk a good game.
The line, delivered with all seriousness comes...
At this point he could have said anything.
Absolutely any assemblage of words stringed together in sentence.
Gold.
Something to stand out from the crowd.
Even - "How are you?".
What about - "How do you know Heather?".
"Good evening" perhaps.
Try again! Instead...
"Are you going steady? You are now?" My Dad delivered it and Mum fell for it.
After much abject apologising, and a continued relentless pursuit of her of course.
For months.
So four years later I was dumped by the stork in East Belfast.
I wasn't treated to many pleasant cultural delights.
I read 'Top of the Pops magazine' and East 17 were pretty much the only distraction from the 'meat wagons' and rude awakenings in my ill-furnished bedroom such as the Drumkeen and Europa hotel bombs.
Now Ash, it is safe to say, aren't the greatest pop-punk band of all time and it may be rich to call them pioneers.
From a personal point of view and for many Northern Irish peers they are the definitely the first act to reveal (through, it has to be said shit-hot tuneage!) music is not an arbitrary thing.
At 9 years old these Downpatrick lads showed me the world beyond the tired formula of look good for the girls, look cool for the boys, sing drivel written by a suit, talk in sound bytes and disintegrate.
They might not have started a revolt but for a tiny demographic they made us believe 'a lasting peace' was nearby and "in the future" shows like the X Factor would never surface.
The first time I heard the name Kurt Cobain was when the BBC news took a break from the latest happenings in the 'six counties' to announce he had passed.
I even remember asking my mum 'Is he Irish?'.
I'd never heard of Seattle and at the time 'Pearl Jam' and 'Mudhoney' sounded like a disgusting alternative to Lemon Curd.
My anger at the world as a nine year old could never be harnessed into to something fruitful apart from toddler tantrums until I dragged my mother by the heels into Grahams record store in Connswater.
That in itself was an achievement but my utter elation as she handed over the £9.
99 for the greyish covered '1977' became a dream come true.
The roar at the start of 'Lose control' that I would mimic as a mantra was the best way to start the beginners guide to all the punk, grunge and metal I'd be missing out on living a nation divided not by taste in rock but by a bitter dichotomy between two communities that I could see no differentiation between.
'Oh Yeah! It's the start of the summer' was a battle-cry to finding myself the time on our seemingly happy family holiday to Connemara before I started my stint at the aforementioned Belfast grammar school.
It was only when puberty passed I understood the beauty of "...
walking barefoot along the sand" and the articulations of 'hard-ons' when you caught the eye of a girl "Still in her school skirt and summer blouse".
It is widely-know the late, great John Peel cited another punk-influenced Northern Irish act, 'The Undertones' as having written his favourite song (and Lord knows he heard quite a few in his time).
In fact local graffiti crew 'The Most Nasty' remind commuters of this on a underpass close to The Lower Newtownards Road.
That alternate-punk message of harnessing the genre not to 'smash the system' but to 'smash her back doors in' is beautifully echoed in possibly one of the greatest rock songs penned by a minor, single 'Goldfinger'.
It was as important to my school year as 'Born Slippy' or 'Wonderwall' and far more relevant.
It had a riff as good as the one Heineken endorsed in a national television advert a year beforehand with 'Uncle Pat'.
When Tim mentioned 'he was down in the basement listening to the rain' it meant more to my adolescent self than getting high or being in love.
17 year old musicians usually want to belt it out in two minutes then take a break to swill warm lager while the moshers take stock of the wounds.
However what still impresses me to this day is you have tracks there like 'Innocent Smile' and 'Darkside Lightside' that muse frustration/reflect on beauty rather than just shout at it.
Asides from the Star Wars reference ('A New Hope' was released in 1977) the other thing that makes the latter track solely for the young is the vomiting skit after the needle has did its bit.
I have only listened to it once or twice but I love the sentiment of a close friend who said he used to listen to it last thing at night when he did his 'gap yah' in a jungle in Peru...
I now understand why.
It was the only 'Norn Irish' he heard beyond the locals Spanish and the imagined voices from his Ayahuasca trips.
All in all it captured the mood of the decade without realising it in a style different to others that aimed for it.
When I think of the ceasefires, the Clinton visit, New Labour and the optimism...
I see these three.
Nothing quite made me as lustful as when the enigmatic figure of Charlotte Hatherley joined 'my boys' set-up in 1996.
It started off promisingly with the elative soundtrack to Ewan McGregor's follow up to Trainspotting with 'A Life Less Ordinary'.
The next move was the critically panned 'Nu-clear Sounds' (which featured a homo-erotically clothed Tim on the sleeve)...
It definitely had its moments and if they fleshed out its less polished produced responses to young fame/failed expectations like they did on track 'Low Ebb' it may have worked.
The band were in crisis and the boys were too innately affable for the kind of 'Blood! Fucking Death! Anarchy!' image they tried to convey in a NYC-shot video for a bombed single in '96...
It would take a lot for them to return to the fore and if there was ever a way to do it was to be sensitive-sweeties in part and come up with some sort of anthem that will draw in the crowds without forgetting their roots.
If it failed they would consigned to the dustbin of 90s rock.
I even knew this at 16.
They literally couldn't anything more perfect than bellow with all heart "An epiphany you burn so pretty, Yeah you are a shining light"...
The resulting album 'Free All Angels' was like a Northern Irish 'Thriller' - single after bloody good single.
'Burn Baby Burn' fitted effortlessly on Radio 1 and MTV's heavy daytime rotation.
'There's a Star' is a lovely winter warmer that I still play every Christmas.
With this 2001 record Ash maybe didn't ensure they'd be guaranteed a portrait, complete with platinum disc, in-between 'The Velvet Underground & Nico' and 'London Calling' in music's Hall of Fame.
However it gave them the assurance they'd never be labelled one hit wonders and would be kept in Ulster's heart.
Subsequent records never built the bands stock so dramatically - 'Meltdown' saw them at their Rock McMurriest.
'Twilight of The Innocents' saw their experimental side played out.
An interesting swansong was the 'A-Z' project releasing a single every two weeks to represent each letter of the alphabet.
However to know and love Ash means only one thing and that's to catch them gigging.
My first experience of this was my visit to the Ulster Hall as a shy 13 year old in awe of the Goths, Punks and Manic's "Masturbation is Not a Crime" t-shirts which dissipated with the opener of 'Loose Control'.
Uncool for me at the time was that my parents had already beat me to it when Heather invited them to see 'Her wee brothers band...
' at The Limelight in '94.
My father, in contrast to his sporting of grey bank suit, donned a black 'Its Miller Time!' and the most stonewashed GAP jeans he could find was a minor laughing stock.
Indeed when he alerted the bouncer that he was leaving the gig to fetch something from the car and to not to forget to let him back in without a ticket - the doorman chuckled as he was identifiable solely by the fact he was 22 years older than the rest of the clientele.
He wasn't that put off as he caught them again during the 'Nu-clear crisis' when Mark Hamilton passed out during the tropical microclimate created by the angsty teens.
A homecoming show in 2001 made my Christmas holidays and the outburst of artificial snow during 'There's a Star' surpassed my joy at genuine snowflakes.
Tour followed tour and they established themselves as must-see live act.
To sell out the Camden Roundhouse in 2008 two nights in a row showed they didn't do it by fluke.
They were a pull at Glastonbury also.
Whilst watching 'Gang of Four' in the John Peel tent I overhead a man in his forties defend his choice to avoid Stevie Wonder that night at the Pyramid stage "I don't want to miss the main show.
ASH!!".
I didn't have to think twice and the wise decision to include Bloc Party's Russell Lissock was as good Johnny Marr accompanying The Cribs.
Another line-up change soon came - with the replacement, due to family commitments, of McMurray with LaFaro's Alan Lynn.
When I saw them in the Empire Music Hall he seemed a ease and there no sign of noticeable syncopation.
My friend aggrieved that the hits came out first, 'Twilight of the Innocents' was flaunted after and a couple of 90s tunes at the end quipped "We just got served a shit sandwich!!".
I didn't care I never complain at a homecoming show.
I follow Ash like Arsenal Football Club and Ulster Rugby when Ash are doing well I am well also.
They are like a trusty old dog live and never fail to bring me back to my happy place.
Being an Ash fan is a difficult job they are often mocked but for "The Lost Generation" they are a crutch.
Those old enough to remember the troubles and young enough to have their university degrees made worthless by the Global Financial Crisis have lovely memories of a time when anything seemed possible.
'1977' is the indisputable soundtrack.
" I'd hear the built-jock types whisper as we passed each other through my school's 'wind tunnel'.
I wasn't much - just an under-built eleven-year old struggling with one bag full of dog-eared textbooks and another with soiled rugby kit.
I had concealed my identity as an out and out "Taig" in a school that included a red/black flower every November as part of the uniform and didn't do it too well.
My link to Northern Ireland's most remarkable band since 'Stiff Little Fingers' was also a fabrication but was more widely believed.
True, my paternal ancestry dates back to the well trodden path of Saintfield to Downpatrick via of course 'Belltown' or rather as it was erroneously named Crossgar.
As far as I know I share this with the affable Tim, the irrepressible 'Rock' McMurray and the towering figure that is one Mr Mark Hamilton.
In fact my Great Uncle Jim, who is so mannerly and has such a noble presence earned the nickname 'Lord Downpatrick'.
He built a great relationship with Tim's now deceased father and his mother served tea after at the marking of Jim's brother passing on.
Most people from that vicinity have such links can say that but Tim's [I hope she won't mind me saying] much older sister - Heather is responsible for my entire existence.
I'll set what is probably a slightly inaccurate scene...
East Belfast, Northern Ireland.
The early Eighties.
Saturday Night.
Whilst the masses are fixated on the recent Hunger Strikes, crowds assemble to socialise in dispersed pockets of the outreaches of the city because the city centre is closed.
One such motley bunch are in a recently qualified Physiotherapist's domicile in the Stormont Area.
This so happened to be Heather Wheeler.
The focus was to provide an enjoyable evening for young professionals mingling with the opposite sex.
Essentially there was two camps - her school friends from the aforementioned small town in County Down and her more worldly university friends from places as far as Norway.
With chat of their plans to progress up the career ladder some were getting on better than others in the meat market of an evening.
In the former camp stood a wise-cracking, sports nut whose clerk-level banking career was an easy improvement on the previous entries on his CV - delivering bread and working in a mushroom factory.
Members of his extended family marched religiously on the 12th July suited and booted but he preferred his identity to be defined by his running down the wing for a senior-level Rugby team each Saturday.
Slight but full of wit and a sporadic tendency to be aggressive he was in the hunt that night.
The unlikely focus of his affections was a coy, pretty, devout Catholic with a short dark brown bob from a tight-knitted family of seven who descended from the man who designed the 'new town' of Craigavon and a no-nonsense school teacher.
This girl of simple pleasures met the host through their shared time at the University of Ulster and was soon off to Dublin to start her career.
The confident rugby player approaches the girl who had been sheltered all her life.
With the looks he only has to talk a good game.
The line, delivered with all seriousness comes...
At this point he could have said anything.
Absolutely any assemblage of words stringed together in sentence.
Gold.
Something to stand out from the crowd.
Even - "How are you?".
What about - "How do you know Heather?".
"Good evening" perhaps.
Try again! Instead...
"Are you going steady? You are now?" My Dad delivered it and Mum fell for it.
After much abject apologising, and a continued relentless pursuit of her of course.
For months.
So four years later I was dumped by the stork in East Belfast.
I wasn't treated to many pleasant cultural delights.
I read 'Top of the Pops magazine' and East 17 were pretty much the only distraction from the 'meat wagons' and rude awakenings in my ill-furnished bedroom such as the Drumkeen and Europa hotel bombs.
Now Ash, it is safe to say, aren't the greatest pop-punk band of all time and it may be rich to call them pioneers.
From a personal point of view and for many Northern Irish peers they are the definitely the first act to reveal (through, it has to be said shit-hot tuneage!) music is not an arbitrary thing.
At 9 years old these Downpatrick lads showed me the world beyond the tired formula of look good for the girls, look cool for the boys, sing drivel written by a suit, talk in sound bytes and disintegrate.
They might not have started a revolt but for a tiny demographic they made us believe 'a lasting peace' was nearby and "in the future" shows like the X Factor would never surface.
The first time I heard the name Kurt Cobain was when the BBC news took a break from the latest happenings in the 'six counties' to announce he had passed.
I even remember asking my mum 'Is he Irish?'.
I'd never heard of Seattle and at the time 'Pearl Jam' and 'Mudhoney' sounded like a disgusting alternative to Lemon Curd.
My anger at the world as a nine year old could never be harnessed into to something fruitful apart from toddler tantrums until I dragged my mother by the heels into Grahams record store in Connswater.
That in itself was an achievement but my utter elation as she handed over the £9.
99 for the greyish covered '1977' became a dream come true.
The roar at the start of 'Lose control' that I would mimic as a mantra was the best way to start the beginners guide to all the punk, grunge and metal I'd be missing out on living a nation divided not by taste in rock but by a bitter dichotomy between two communities that I could see no differentiation between.
'Oh Yeah! It's the start of the summer' was a battle-cry to finding myself the time on our seemingly happy family holiday to Connemara before I started my stint at the aforementioned Belfast grammar school.
It was only when puberty passed I understood the beauty of "...
walking barefoot along the sand" and the articulations of 'hard-ons' when you caught the eye of a girl "Still in her school skirt and summer blouse".
It is widely-know the late, great John Peel cited another punk-influenced Northern Irish act, 'The Undertones' as having written his favourite song (and Lord knows he heard quite a few in his time).
In fact local graffiti crew 'The Most Nasty' remind commuters of this on a underpass close to The Lower Newtownards Road.
That alternate-punk message of harnessing the genre not to 'smash the system' but to 'smash her back doors in' is beautifully echoed in possibly one of the greatest rock songs penned by a minor, single 'Goldfinger'.
It was as important to my school year as 'Born Slippy' or 'Wonderwall' and far more relevant.
It had a riff as good as the one Heineken endorsed in a national television advert a year beforehand with 'Uncle Pat'.
When Tim mentioned 'he was down in the basement listening to the rain' it meant more to my adolescent self than getting high or being in love.
17 year old musicians usually want to belt it out in two minutes then take a break to swill warm lager while the moshers take stock of the wounds.
However what still impresses me to this day is you have tracks there like 'Innocent Smile' and 'Darkside Lightside' that muse frustration/reflect on beauty rather than just shout at it.
Asides from the Star Wars reference ('A New Hope' was released in 1977) the other thing that makes the latter track solely for the young is the vomiting skit after the needle has did its bit.
I have only listened to it once or twice but I love the sentiment of a close friend who said he used to listen to it last thing at night when he did his 'gap yah' in a jungle in Peru...
I now understand why.
It was the only 'Norn Irish' he heard beyond the locals Spanish and the imagined voices from his Ayahuasca trips.
All in all it captured the mood of the decade without realising it in a style different to others that aimed for it.
When I think of the ceasefires, the Clinton visit, New Labour and the optimism...
I see these three.
Nothing quite made me as lustful as when the enigmatic figure of Charlotte Hatherley joined 'my boys' set-up in 1996.
It started off promisingly with the elative soundtrack to Ewan McGregor's follow up to Trainspotting with 'A Life Less Ordinary'.
The next move was the critically panned 'Nu-clear Sounds' (which featured a homo-erotically clothed Tim on the sleeve)...
It definitely had its moments and if they fleshed out its less polished produced responses to young fame/failed expectations like they did on track 'Low Ebb' it may have worked.
The band were in crisis and the boys were too innately affable for the kind of 'Blood! Fucking Death! Anarchy!' image they tried to convey in a NYC-shot video for a bombed single in '96...
It would take a lot for them to return to the fore and if there was ever a way to do it was to be sensitive-sweeties in part and come up with some sort of anthem that will draw in the crowds without forgetting their roots.
If it failed they would consigned to the dustbin of 90s rock.
I even knew this at 16.
They literally couldn't anything more perfect than bellow with all heart "An epiphany you burn so pretty, Yeah you are a shining light"...
The resulting album 'Free All Angels' was like a Northern Irish 'Thriller' - single after bloody good single.
'Burn Baby Burn' fitted effortlessly on Radio 1 and MTV's heavy daytime rotation.
'There's a Star' is a lovely winter warmer that I still play every Christmas.
With this 2001 record Ash maybe didn't ensure they'd be guaranteed a portrait, complete with platinum disc, in-between 'The Velvet Underground & Nico' and 'London Calling' in music's Hall of Fame.
However it gave them the assurance they'd never be labelled one hit wonders and would be kept in Ulster's heart.
Subsequent records never built the bands stock so dramatically - 'Meltdown' saw them at their Rock McMurriest.
'Twilight of The Innocents' saw their experimental side played out.
An interesting swansong was the 'A-Z' project releasing a single every two weeks to represent each letter of the alphabet.
However to know and love Ash means only one thing and that's to catch them gigging.
My first experience of this was my visit to the Ulster Hall as a shy 13 year old in awe of the Goths, Punks and Manic's "Masturbation is Not a Crime" t-shirts which dissipated with the opener of 'Loose Control'.
Uncool for me at the time was that my parents had already beat me to it when Heather invited them to see 'Her wee brothers band...
' at The Limelight in '94.
My father, in contrast to his sporting of grey bank suit, donned a black 'Its Miller Time!' and the most stonewashed GAP jeans he could find was a minor laughing stock.
Indeed when he alerted the bouncer that he was leaving the gig to fetch something from the car and to not to forget to let him back in without a ticket - the doorman chuckled as he was identifiable solely by the fact he was 22 years older than the rest of the clientele.
He wasn't that put off as he caught them again during the 'Nu-clear crisis' when Mark Hamilton passed out during the tropical microclimate created by the angsty teens.
A homecoming show in 2001 made my Christmas holidays and the outburst of artificial snow during 'There's a Star' surpassed my joy at genuine snowflakes.
Tour followed tour and they established themselves as must-see live act.
To sell out the Camden Roundhouse in 2008 two nights in a row showed they didn't do it by fluke.
They were a pull at Glastonbury also.
Whilst watching 'Gang of Four' in the John Peel tent I overhead a man in his forties defend his choice to avoid Stevie Wonder that night at the Pyramid stage "I don't want to miss the main show.
ASH!!".
I didn't have to think twice and the wise decision to include Bloc Party's Russell Lissock was as good Johnny Marr accompanying The Cribs.
Another line-up change soon came - with the replacement, due to family commitments, of McMurray with LaFaro's Alan Lynn.
When I saw them in the Empire Music Hall he seemed a ease and there no sign of noticeable syncopation.
My friend aggrieved that the hits came out first, 'Twilight of the Innocents' was flaunted after and a couple of 90s tunes at the end quipped "We just got served a shit sandwich!!".
I didn't care I never complain at a homecoming show.
I follow Ash like Arsenal Football Club and Ulster Rugby when Ash are doing well I am well also.
They are like a trusty old dog live and never fail to bring me back to my happy place.
Being an Ash fan is a difficult job they are often mocked but for "The Lost Generation" they are a crutch.
Those old enough to remember the troubles and young enough to have their university degrees made worthless by the Global Financial Crisis have lovely memories of a time when anything seemed possible.
'1977' is the indisputable soundtrack.
Source...