Bob Geldof on The Pogues.
The RADIATORS (Plan 9)
The Radiators release first new recordings since 1989!On October 27, the newly-reformed Radiators (Plan 9) release a four track CD EP called TELEVISION SCREEN 2004 on their own 625 Records. Earlier this year, Philip Chevron, Pete Holidai and Steve Rapid, who formed the legendary Dublin punk pioneers [The Radiators (From Space)] in 1976, joined forces with former Pogues bassist Cait O’Riordan and Those Handsome Devils drummer Johnny Bonnie to forge a dynamic new line-up and The Radiators (From Space) became The Radiators (Plan 9). The new band made its debut in Dublin on June 16 this year and also made a big hit at the Oxegen Festival at Punchestown in July. The band has been steadily working on new material with a projected album due in 2005. In the meantime, this EP, with four new recordings of Radiators classics, provides a dynamic musical bridge between the original band and the new one. “Television Screen 2004” revisits the band’s very first 45 from April 1977. This new version updates the song as a commentary on the Iraq War. Cait O’Riordan performs “Kitty Ricketts”, a song from the band’s legendary second album Ghostown (from 1979). Pogues fans will recall Cait’s featured performances as a vocalist with that band, notably on “I’m A Man You Don’t Meet Everday”. “Enemies” and “Prison Bars”, two songs originally found on the Radiators’ first album TV Tube Heart (1977) completes the line up. The recordings were made for, and originally aired on, John Kelly’s “Mystery Train” programme on RTE in July 2004, except “Television Screen 2004” itself, which was broadcast live from Oxegen by 2FM as the band performed. Remind me: Who Are These Guys?In early 1977, the Radiators’ debut 45 “Television Screen” was the first Top 20 punk single anywhere in the world. Their first album TV Tube Heart served notice that beyond the fast-and-furious sound lay a couple of major songwriting talents in Philip Chevron and Pete Holidai. They left Dublin for a UK promotional trip and to take up Phil Lynnot’s offer of a support spot on Thin Lizzy’s 1977 UK tour. Naively perhaps, they thought they’d be back, but they never did return except, like so many emigrants before them, “for the Christmas”. Within four months of their arrival in London, The Radiators (they symbolically dropped the “from Space” bit as soon as it became clear they were staying) were working on a new album in Soho with producer Tony Visconti. The resulting record Ghostown was a unique outpouring of love, frustration, anger and heartbreak. Visions of Dublin and Ireland trapped in a childhood jam-jar and unleashed in exile, as they had to be. The sheer scale of the material could be seen when “Million Dollar Hero” became the great lost hit single, the late Agnes Bernelle performed “Kitty Ricketts” in her West End show and Christy Moore (and later Moving Hearts) adopted “Faithful Departed” as the perfect song with which to launch his own new vision of Irish music. Commercially, the album bombed. It would be a few more years before Britain would be ready for a band who sought to express a new generation’s view of Irishness. By then, Philip Chevron was himself a member of that band, The Pogues, along with bass player Cait O’Riordan who has now rejoined her former colleague in a new line up of The Radiators which also stars founder-members Steve Rapid and Pete Holidai and former Those Handsome Devils drummer Johnnie Bonnie . The Radiators (Plan 9) - They plug in and they go!
Copyright 2004, 625 Records All rights reserved 
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