Sir Henry’s is a club of legend, having brought house music to Ireland and put it on the international clubbing map. Raymond Scannell’s show Deep examines the rise and fall of this musical movement, and here he remembers the Cork nightclub and wonders where the next counter culture is going to rise from
House music is a bit like Marmite. The temptation is to bracket all electronic music (or EDM to give it’s current incarnation) with the distasteful “Rave” tag. Or to treat it with disdain prior to investigation. Of course Rave Culture (which in itself is a bit of a loose, reductive term) has sides to it that are fair game for parody. And granted, there are a lot of bad records, perhaps gathering dust, in the attic lofts of middle-aged vinyl-junkies.
In fact, when approaching work on Deep, I wondered, was there any other way for an audience to swallow the subject, other than sending-up the faded glow sticks and defunct whistles? Or, to take a tack with the other generally accepted wisdom: a tabloid-like, demonising of the time. (The latter, of course, only fuelled the youth generation of the early 1990s on further. An infamous article at the time of Sweat@ Sir Henry’s inception has manager Sean O’Neil holding his hands up to a reporter, trying to reason: “I’m not Gerry Adams. ”)
But I resolved, for better or worse, this was my generation’s time. Perhaps an approaching 25th anniversary of Sweat’s opening (1988-2013) made it timely to look back. But, more pressingly, I had an instinct that the scene had neither been as glorious as the nostalgics would have it, nor as dreadful as it had been represented by the damning of the times. The irony of Ireland’s take on the house music phenomenon facing a wave of prejudice was not lost on me, so I was convinced it deserved revisiting.
So I started digging.
Read Raymond Scannell's full article with The Irish Times here.
Deep is a visual, emotional and audible journey through Ireland’s first House Club ‘SWEAT@ Sir Henry’s’. A mesmerising narrative is interlinked with sights and sounds of a forgotten time, 'if you remember... you weren't there'.
To get you in the mood, here is a sample soundtrack from the fascinating creation.
The Joubert Singers- Stand on the Word (Larry Levane Mix)
Larry Heard- Can you feel it?
The Clash- The Magnificent 7
A Tribe called Quest feat. Faith Evans- Stressed Out
Minnie Riperton & Rotary Connection -I am the Black Gold of the Sun
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