February 17 1989
Not Our World, Banished, Angus, House Of Byron
Grattan
At this stage Not Our World were playing regularly in the Earl Grattan, on Capel Street. We were almost turning into the resident band there. We kept being asked to play. There was a group of 20 – 30 people who always came to see us play and maybe some bands asked us on to their bill so they could be guaranteed those 20-30 £1.50s or £2s. We decided that we wouldn’t play in the ‘Grattan’ for more than £2 and one evening threatened to pull out of a gig with The Foremen as they were charging £2.50. We only found out about it on the night and thankfully they brought the price down. If they hadn’t, we certainly wouldn’t have played but people may have come to see us without knowing. We were thinking about our admission price policy.
A lot of bands were charging what they felt they could get away with, looking for as much as was acceptable. Fugazi’s insistence on a door price maximum of £3 helped shape our thinking. It made us be attentive as to why we charged money into gigs. For Not Our World it was a matter of gigs being affordable to all and consequently that was the case for ‘Hope’ gigs too. We decided to book 2 Saturdays in the Grattan and have 4 bands each night.
The first featured Angus, Dublin’s original Ranting Poet. Poems about Daisy the Cow, The Sun newspaper and Ronald Reagan used to have the crowd in stitches but there was meaning in there too. Angus was always around and, if ever a band didn’t turn up, he was a good man to turn to for an impromptu performance. He was at the gig that night so we asked him to say a few words and added him to the bill.
