I'll Walk The Seas Forever More

Sinead O'Connor's funeral took place earlier this week, an outpouring of sorrow and loss for a woman who clearly had a huge impact on many people. David Holmes dedicated his monthly God's Waiting Room radio show for NTS to Sinead, a two hour tribute with Sinead songs scattered throughout- I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got, Black Boys On Mopeds, Jah Nuh Dead, Trouble Of The World, Troy, Don't Cry For Me Argentina, Silent Night and David's superb splicing of Nothing Compares 2U with his own remix of Orbital's Belfast. Alongside these songs are others courtesy of Grian Chatten, Bob Dylan, The Clash, John Lennon, Sly and Robbie, Keith Hudson and Janis Ian. It's a stunning way to spend a couple of hours and a beautiful tribute to Sinead. You can listen to it at Mixcloud and find the full tracklist at NTS. 

David was part way through recording an album with Sinead, titled No Veteran Dies Alone, eight songs completed including Trouble For The World (which came out on Heavenly in 2020). He'd introduced himself to her at Shane McGowan's 60th birthday event and on his Instagram page described recording her vocals as being in the presence of greatness, 'like recording Nina Simone, Billie Holiday or Karen Dalton'. 

More Sinead- Rich Lane created his own unofficial remix of Sinead's Jackie, a song from her debut The Lion And The Cobra. Rich made it in 2016 to play at a gig in Dublin. It's not available to buy or download (more's the pity) but you can listen to it here, an electronic throbber with 808 blips and cowbell and Sinead's voice on top.

In 1994 Sinead made an album called Universal Mother. Fire On Babylon, produced by Bomb The Bass's Tim Simenon, was released as a single and appeared on Top Of The Pops to promote it. The grooves/ bytes/ TV studio seem almost to small to contain the power and intensity of her vocal, not to mention the huge dub bassline that underpins it. Sinead is singing live and the moment at three minutes where she comes back in singing 'Fire!!!' is both breathtaking and bone chilling. 

Lyrically Fire On Babylon deals with Sinead's mother and how Sinead was treated as a child. The video for the song didn't hold back, a film made by Michel Gondry (who also made videos for Bjork's Human Behaviour and Protection for Massive Attack) and which depicted Sinead's childhood. It's a fierce, intense and mesmerising video and song- like the woman herself. 

Sinead

Sinead O'Connor's death was announced by her family on Wednesday night. We'd been to the cinema and came out into the July rain, the news coming through almost immediately onto our phones. Not long after a neighbour sent a message, a family photo of Sinead and Andy Rourke (with a guitar) smiling in the sunshine in Palma in the 90s (my neighbour's mum is friends with Andy's- both Andy and Sinead gone in a matter of months). Sinead's traumatic childhood, bumpy ride through the music industry in the aftermath of her massive fame in 1990 and struggles with her family, mental health and physical health are well documented. Last year her son Shane killed himself, aged seventeen. To lose a child is an awful, heartbreaking, lifechanging and catastrophic event for any parent, as we know too well. To lose a child to suicide is unimaginable. 

I saw Sinead at Glastonbury in 1990, playing mid- afternoon, singing to 30, 000 people from the Pyramid stage, dressed in black biker jacket, circular shades and a Viz Fat Slags t- shirt. This song, The Emperor's New Clothes with former- Ant Marco Pirroni windmilling on guitar, was a highlight. It's a powerful song, Sinead dropping in lines about youth, fame and pregnancy and a partner who has misjudged her, got her wrong. In the end she decides, 'I will live by my own policies/ I will sleep with a clear conscience/ I will sleep in peace'. 

The Emperor's New Clothes

Those lines are how she lived her life- singular, fearless, battling, courageous, unafraid. In 1987 I watched her on Top Of The Pops performing her single Mandinka. In denim and black boots and with her shaven head she looked amazing, a punk spirit making announcing her entry the world. 

Mandinka

By this point she'd already sacked her producer and re- recorded her debut album, The Lion And The Cobra (an album that includes her debut single, the epic Troy, and the song I Want Your (Hands On Me) which was remixed with rapper MC Lyte and became big in the growing underground club culture).

Sinead took no prisoners in her songs, her brushes with her parents split as a child, trauma, abuse, eighteen months in the Irish care system and her mother's death in a car crash fuelling her fire. When her cover of Nothing Compares 2U went supernova she found herself at a level of fame that would have derailed even the most well adjusted person. She was badly treated by many people. The album Nothing Compares 2U came from, I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got, contains many great Sinead songs, not least this one which takes on new layers of meaning every time I play it, a 17th century poem sung over a Soul II Soul drum beat with a fiddle by a Waterboy arriving at the end as a final lament.

I Am Stretched On Your Grave

I posted the full version of this gig, a performance in Brussels in 1990, earlier this year as part of my Saturday Live series. In this excerpt from it, she sings I Am Stretched On Your Grave on her own on stage, one woman with a reel to reel tape recorder and an audience in the palm of her hands. 

Earlier in the year she appeared on The Late Show singing Black Boys On Mopeds, her evisceration of Margaret Thatcher's government, its hypocrisy, late 80s Britain's racist policing of young black men and how 'England's not a mythical land of Madame George and roses'.

Fridays here recently have been a celebration of Andrew Weatherall remixes. Here are two with Sinead. The first is one of three remixes Andrew did of Jah Wobble and The Invaders Of The Heart's Visions Of You, utterly essential 1992 dub/ pop (Sinead's love of reggae and dub is one of the recurring themes of her albums and her book Rememberings). This 12" was a bit of a dream team assembled, Weatherall's production, Wobble's bass and Sinead's voice- they really should have made an album together. 

Visions Of You (The Secret Love Child Of Hank And Johnny Mix)

Peace Together was a collective formed to promote the peace process in Northern Ireland, formed in 1993. The twelve minute Sabres Of Paradise remix of the song Be Still is very much an overlooked Sabres remix, extended Gaelic- dub. Listening to it yesterday, it felt like a celebration and a eulogy.

Be Still (Sabres Of Paradise Remix)

There are many more songs from Sinead's back catalogue that I could post here but I've probably done enough- You Have Made Me A Thief Of Your Heart, her cover of Song To The Siren, Fire On Babylon and Thank You For Hearing Me ( both from Universal Mother in 1994), 2020's 7" single, a cover of Mahalia Jackson's Trouble Of The World, recorded with David Holmes and Unloved, the first fruits of an album abandoned when Shane died and then restarted later on last year. 

Someone at Youtube left a comment years ago that said, 'So many people owe Sinead an apology'. That's the truth- she was frequently, insultingly, portrayed as 'crazy' in the press but was proved correct about so much. In fact, rather than crazy I think Sinead was someone who had figured out exactly what the world is like. Eventually it took an enormous toll on her. I hope she has found some kind of peace, the peace she referred to in The Emperor's New Clothes. 

'I will live by my own policies

I will sleep with a clear conscience

I will sleep in peace'

RIP Sinead.

Saturday Live

In 1990 Sinead O'Connor was a superstar- she might not have intended this to happen but Nothing Compares 2 U made it happen. A couple of years later she became public enemy number one in the USA when she tore up a photo of the Pope on live TV. Her childhood and family life had given her plenty of reasons to be a bit out of shape already and global fame added a few more. Her autobiography, Rememberings, is highly recommended- traumatic and tough going in places but well written, funny and tender too. It was written before the awful death of her son Shane last year which adds an extra layer poignancy to parts of it too. I hope she's ok and doing as well as you can do under those circumstances. 

In late October 1990 Sinead played two concerts, one in Brussels and one the night after in Rotterdam. They were filmed and in 1991 a video was released, a merging of the two gigs. Sinead, a tiny figure with a huge presence, shaven head, round framed sunglasses and dressed in black plays a set built around 1990s' I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got and 1987's The Lion And The Cobra with a band featuring ex- Ant Person Marco Pirroni on guitar and Dean Garcia on bass who would go on to find some success with Toni Halliday as Curve. The full gig is below but I thought I'd pull out this performance from mid- set of I Am Stretched On Your Grave for the TL/DR of you- the Public Enemy drum loop, reel to reel tape machine, bubbles of bass and Sinead's voice singing the 17th century words- is a starkly beautiful and perfectly 1990 way to spend five and a half minutes. 

The full hour's worth of gig is here, opening with Feel So Different and then the crunchy guitar pop of The Emperor's New Clothes and then I Want Your (Hands On Me) and Three Babies, the stunning Thatcherism/ racist policing take down of Black Boys On Mopeds, just Sinead and an acoustic guitar, Irish Ways Irish Laws, I Am Stretched On Your Grave, The Last Day Of Our Acquaintance, Nothing Compares 2 U, Jump In The River, Jerusalem and finally for the encore, Troy, the boneshaking, furious story of young love and betrayal from The Lion And The Cobra (a song she didn't perform after 1990 until 2008). 

Seven Hours And Fifteen Days

The death of Prince was shocking. Growing up in the 80s he was inescapable and while I was never a huge fan I liked some of his singles/songs- you couldn't not like at least some of them. I saw him play in Manchester two years ago, a friend had a spare and it seemed like a good opportunity to see a legend. Over the two hours he blew the audience at Manchester's indoor arena away, song after song after song. The thing that really struck me was the crowd. I'm used to going to gigs that are attended by roughly 60%-80% middle aged men, many either in leather jackets or cagoules depending on the band. Prince's audience ranged from younger teenagers to people in their 60s, racially mixed, glammed up twenty-something couples, gangs of forty-something women, obsessive men on their own, gay and straight- the most socially diverse gig crowd I've ever been a part of. I've since grown to love some of his songs that previously were just part of my musical wallpaper. The energy he put into the show, dancing, playing guitar, singing was immense- partly why it is so shocking that he's died less than two years later aged just 57.

I have always liked this one.

Alphabet Street

There is a Jesus And Mary Chain cover version of Alphabet Street which, trust me, you don't want to hear right now. It doesn't do anyone any favours.

If you were around in 1990 this Prince penned song was inescapable too.