Mull It Over 40: BBC Radio 6 Music - Live in Belfast
Tom Ravenscroft and Deb Grant bring New Music Fix Live to the Ulster Sports Club in Belfast, where Enola Gay, Dirty Faces and Jock all blew the roof off.
If you’re going to blow the roof off any venue in Belfast, it might as well be the Ulster Sports Club. Not for any other reason than it most likely does need replacing. Though, such is the charm of Belfast’s newest hip venue: it proudly wears the social club scars of its past for all to see and enjoy. Once a city centre venue celebrating local boxing and Irish league heroes (George Best’s dad Dickie was a member), members from both sides of the community would frequent it after all the other bars in town had called last orders. In 2024, however, the more impressive blending of cultures comes from the cigarette-burned type of cushioned seats your parents likely sat on that now inhabit the same space as über cool beer brand Beavertown and its Gamma Ray American pale ale.
Tonight, BBC Radio 6 Music is in the club, after setting up shop and emitting a festival of live broadcasts from all over the city in the preceding days. New Music Fix Daily is a radio show on 6 Music hosted by Tom Ravenscroft and Deb Grant. Last year they hosted the inaugural live version from Glasgow, and this year was Belfast’s turn. From Monday 25th to Wednesday 27th November their New Music Fix show heard performances from electronic duo Bicep, hip hop trio Kneecap and the self-described queer-punks Problem Patterns, fresh off their big win at the Northern Ireland Music Prize, taking home the coveted Best Album award. Also on offer were unique acoustic sessions, including singer-songwriters SOAK and piglet, recorded in some of Belfast’s most iconic venues, including The Errigle Inn, The Empire and The Sunflower Bar. Ensuring Northern Ireland keeps its name for producing ear bending electronic talent, the daily show on 6 Music also heard sets from some of the region’s most exciting production talent, including genre-spanning producers Sally C and Or:la.
And if that wasn’t enough, here was the big finale, a celebration of some of the finest live acts we have to offer in what has become, since 2018, an internationally recognised hub for gigging in Belfast - the Ulster Sports Club, broadcasting live on BBC radio. On the bill tonight are noise-punkers Enola Gay, garage rock cool kids Jock and the self-proclaimed rant-hop duo Dirty Faces.
First up is Jock. A stripped down three-piece whose boundless youthful energy and vigour can do nothing but pull you in and wipe the smile off your face and replace it with only a bigger grin. Both in sound and energy I am reminded of Julian Casablancas’ comment on fellow New York band Sunflower Bean that I haven’t thought about since 2016 - "Well congratulations, on being cool, young, and free”. Except tonight we’re not in New York City, we’re in Belfast, Northern Ireland - a fact that the next band up, Dirty Faces, weren’t going to let us forget.
If Jock was stripped down, then Dirty Faces were practically naked. A buzzed out Hofner bass and a snarling Derry mouthpiece, this, I can only imagine is how my parents felt the first time they saw the Gallagher brothers on Top Of The Pops in the mid 90s. Except that’s where the comparisons end. Paying no heed nor care to the fact they were being broadcast live on the British Broadcasting Corporation, the Derry twosome buffered their shouty, angry and funny punk tunes with, on one occasion, an a capella version of Irish rebel song The Bogside Man and a less than favourable chant on the recent death of a certain former head of the British Army. We’re not in London anymore. Needless to say, neither of these offerings made it out on the live broadcast - not that Dirty Faces seemed to mind. A blistering set came to an abrupt end and left the stage perfectly set for the Belfast’s newest buzz band (horrible term, don’t you think?), noise-punkers Enola Gay.
A triumphant headline show if there ever was one, it felt like the small upstairs venue on this corner of High Street had almost doubled in size by the time Enola Gay took to the stage. Exuding the confidence and swagger of a band who know just how good they are, I almost lost myself during their ferocious set. I have been following this band only for about a year, the same length of time as this newsletter, and relished this opportunity to catch them live, perhaps before they take the next step on the road travelled most recently by contemporaries Kneecap and indeed Fontaines D.C. Eyes closed for recent single, the emotional Cold, their hour long set seemed to go in a flash, the houselights stinging my eyes as I realised I must have had them closed for at least the last 20 minutes.
Moved beyond belief by the sheer electrifying and carnal punk energy brought by these three bands tonight in this once unassuming social club in the middle of one of the most complicated cities in either the UK or Ireland, there was nothing complicated about what happened upstairs tonight on High Street. Belfast and Derry just planted their flags on the summit of a vital hill - BBC Radio 6 Music. Censored or uncensored, the revolution will not be televised. It will be broadcast live on the radio.