FLYERS

WORDS #1

Johnny Moy
In conversation with 909originals.com

“A friend of mine, Paul Davis, had taken over the Usit building, which is now defunct, it’s in Temple Bar. It was huge – it was supposed to be the centre for student unions. It was an amazing space, high-spec – there was nothing like it in Dublin.

“It wasn’t open to the public, so they let us do a one-off. I think they were allowed to do three one-offs per year, but you had to have a student card. I didn’t have one, but you could just forge them, or whatever.

“So we put on The Chemical Brothers. It was the first gig they had done as The Chemical Brothers, because they had to change their name from the Dust Brothers, because they had a lawsuit from the Dust Brothers who produced the Beastie Boys. They only had a couple of singles out at the time. Weatherall was bigger, in our minds, and Billy Nasty – they were upstairs with Billy Scurry, and it was myself and the Chemical Brothers downstairs.

“Actually, we thought were getting the Dust Brothers, and we were kind of upset, you know? ‘No-one is going to know it’s the Dust Brothers. So we went out to beat the street to tell people – it was very hard to get that information out there at the time.

“But anyway, that show went ahead and it was phenomenally big. We had sold, I think, 3,000 tickets in advance and then somehow, through slight lack of organisation or the fact that the venue not been prepared for that amount of bodies, bouncers were letting people in the fire doors and there was all sorts of stuff. Security was very different then, you know, security pretty much ran the club.”

WORDS #2

Paul Davis
From Analog Rhythms discussion panel

“The first formal gig we all did together [as Influx] was in The Furnace. I was working in The Furnace, and promoting things here and there – I had been promoting clubs since I was a nipper.

“We put on a night with Andrew Weatherall, the Dust Brothers – who became the Chemical Brothers – and Billy Nasty and David Holmes and loads of other people – it was a big night. That was the first night of Influx, and became a kind of seminal moment for everybody, as we were growing up, because it was just so fucking epic.

“Everyone remembers it being an amazing night, but at that one we were sued by a big international promoter that was trying to stop the event from happening. They tried to stop the Chemical Brothers from playing – it wasn’t the first time, and it wasn’t the last time. There was a whole legal wrangle around that.

“Also, the cops were going crazy. The place was full, and the cops came along – I remember the sergeant from Pearse Street was saying ‘You’re not bringing raves into Temple Bar’, and ‘There’s too many people out in the street’, and things like that. I was only a kid, so I was shitting myself. There was something like 2,000 or 3,000 people outside the venue because word had gotten out that there were tickets on sale.

“He made me stick my head out the window with a Garda loudhailer and tell everybody to go home, or else he would shut the night down. That was our first night as Influx – as it happened, Andrew Weatherall also played the last night of Influx as well, so he did the opening and closing of the whole thing.”

WORDS #3

Billy Scurry
In conversation with Dean Sherry, Phever

“Myself and Billy Nasty were playing upstairs, and The Chemical Brothers – they were the Dust Brothers at the time – and Weatherall and Johnny [Moy] were playing downstairs. It was mayhem. It was mental.

“Specifically, if I remember, at the time of the Furnace, it was when there was this amalgamation of two sounds. A lot of us that were into the tougher stuff, were also into the trip hop thing. The Dust Brothers – as the Chemical Brothers were at the time – where they exploring the whole beats thing as well, and taking things down. Weatherall went down that road as well, along with James Lavelle. It went from playing 180 beats per minute, to 90 beats per minute.”

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