This article is from page 27 of the 2011-01-04 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 27 JPG
THE CLARE music scene has needed a hero for a long time. Leaving traditional music entirely to one side, recent years has seen the county struggled to produce a band or artist for other to point to and say, “look at them, they made it, so maybe we can too”.
This is no trivial matter – one only has to think about the amount of north Clare musicians in their mid30s who are playing their songs today because of the success of The Stunning and the real impact that success can have on a scene in brought into full focus.
I think that everyone who loves Clare music hopes that 2011 is a very big year for C!TIES. The Ennis band have promised a lot and, up until now, have delievered everything they’ve promised. The release of their split-single vinyl with Guilty Optics in November is evidence enough of that.
The best thing about C!TIES is that they are that most illusive of melds – a band that is both truly alternative but still has the potential to achieve mainstream success.
“For the first EP, we were in my garage in one of my old houses, and so this time around we had the whole studio. Sean is studying all the sound recording stuff so he was able to pretty much record the whole thing for us,” Sean from C!TIES told The Clare People in an interview last month.
“This is our second paid release. It’s getting pretty heavy at this stage. The last stretch of gigs for Stress, Debt and Chest Pains’ vinyl, was to older crowds than what we are used to playing. We are used to playing in pubs to people roughly our own age – 17, 18, 19, 20 – getting drunk and dancing around the place.
“But we had a more sophisticated type of audience – people were more appreciative of the music as opposed to going mental. And then when we had them coming up afterwards and buying the record, and saying we were great and stuff. It was something else.”