‘Alive in Belfast: The Warehouse Sessions’ (2CD) was recorded on a wing and a prayer over four nights in April 1995, and released locally in a run of 1,000 a couple of months later.

My plan was to help some of the great acts I was hearing every week at the Warehouse – a kind of ‘continuity Rotterdam Bar’ run by said bar’s characterful proprietors Chris Roddy and Ernie Magennis while the Rott was supposedly getting a makeover – be heard more widely. Maybe the Chairman of EMI would open his door once he heard the results… Well, he didn’t. The ‘Irish News’, for whom I was writing about local music at the time, gave 10%, the artists involved all made a contribution – except Henry McCullough, who was so ‘old school’ he simply didn’t understand the new world where artists had to do it for themselves (so I let him away with it) – amounting to 25% and Jo, a friend in the UK reissues business, loaned the pressing costs.

Barring promo copies and participant copies, the CD sold out. Phew… I can’t recall exactly why, save that there was a cash flow situation of some sort, but by late 1995 the idea of releasing a small run of cassettes – cheap to produce – raised its head. Again, a historian mindset as part of my thinking, if we were going to do a quick cassette ‘best of’ version of the album, I might as well write some new notes and add some exclusive tracks.

We mixed an extra Disreali Gears track, ‘Wanna Be’, from the April live sessions as the cassette version’s opening number and I recall there being a plan to mix another Oige vocal track – 19-year-old Cara Dillon’s voice being one of the sensations of the original release. In the event, probably to do with the flow of the cassette, I opted to feature again Oige’s CD vocal item ‘My Donald’ as well an edit of their instrumental CD item ‘The Maids of Mitchelstown’, which closed side one of the cassette nicely.

At the time of recording, I don’t think I knew Asterix, Strawman, the Mandelbrot Set, Peacefrog or Watercress. All five were happy to contribute tracks of their own to the cassette, snappily titled ‘(Still) Alive in Belfast: The Warehouse Sessions’, as was James Devlin in the guise of his new band North – the fabulous Devlin Law being in the throes of amicably splitting by December 1995 (playing a final show in hometown Magherafelt on New Year’s Eve). All of the new tracks were recent studio recordings advertising recent or forthcoming albums by the artists concerned, save for Watercress’ track, which was, happily, a live number recorded at the Warehouse in late 1994, a few months before our grand endeavour.

While the 2CD original had a quasi-documentary feel, the focus on the cassette version was almost totally music. There was the odd intro or outro retained but, in some cases, we cut applause in order to create a sharp transition into the next song – the abrupt ending of Brian Houston’s live ‘Alright’ into the explosive beginning of Peacefrog’s studio ‘No Songs’ being a good example.

The audio in this montage was sourced from the master DAT copy of the cassette edition, transferred to WAV and with a bit of extra work on each track in terms of relative volumes and EQ using Roxio software – nothing complicated.

For the simple montage itself, I’ve just used the photos and text on each band that was recorded at the Warehouse from the booklet to CD version followed by the text from the cassette version (usually updating their story). For the half-dozen acts exclusive to the cassette, I’ve used their text from the cassette and a period photo from somewhere else. The one exception is the mysterious Mandelbrot Set – not the same as an Australian act of that name operating at the same time. All I could find was an online image of their sole CD. Following the 93 minutes of music, in the montage, I’ve added my general notes from the cassette along with the acknowledgements. It’s history.


1. Wanna Be – Disreali Gears**
2. Sailing On – Tiberius Minnows
3. Live the Life – Asterix*
4. Mu – Disreali Gears
5. Take my Time – Iain Archer
6. River of Love – Devlin Law
7. Wait for a While – The Mandelbrot Set*
8. My Donald – Oige
9. Creatively Constipated – New Brontes
10. Rainbows – David Ballantine
11. The Maids of Mitchelstown [edit] – Oige
12. My Bloody Head – Strawman*
13. Alright – Brian Houston
14. No Songs – Peacefrog*
15. Darkest Hour – Cattle Company
16. The Letter – Soul Truth
17. Think Too Much – Oliver’s Army
18. Uncomplicate It – The Good Things
19. Everybody’s Getting Older – North*
20. Failed Christian – Henry McCullough
21. I Feel Like – Bush Turkeys
22. Photograph – Watercress***
23. Alive in Belfast radio ad*
24. Coda

* Bonus studio track
** Bonus live track from the April 1995 Warehouse sessions
*** Bonus live track from the Warehouse, late 1994

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