THE RADIATORS
Ghostown
Chiswick/Gael Linn
*****
On Tuesday, October 31st, 1978, The Radiators took to the stage of London's Electric Ballroom to preview material from their forthcoming Ghostown album. These new Phil Chevron-Pete Holidai songs detailed "a midnight walk through Dublin with the ghosts of the city's past". They were lost on the punk kidz in the audience. We now know that the safety-pinned fools were being treated to the first ever live airing of probably the greatest Irish rock album of all time.
To put this in local context: The Radiators' creative leap from 1977's TV Tube Heart to 1979's Ghostown was similar to The Beatles' from She Loves You to Tomorrow Never Knows. Their subject matter was a Dublin (to be pronounced with three syllables) paralyzed by political and religious hypocrisies. The song cycle, beginning with the jumpy, harmony-laden Millon Dollar Hero and ending with the tense, nervous Dead the Beast, Dead the Poison, details a cowed city - haunted by its past, with little present and yes, No Future. The songs are magnificent: the stomping They're Looting in the Town; the beautiful snarl of Kitty Ricketts and the stark home-truths of Song of the Faithful Departed.
Musically, the album was audacious for its time; lyrically, it's never been bettered. Ghostown represents the first time in Irish cultural life that a rock music 33rpm could sit pretty alongside the country's literary and dramatic output. In a bitter perversion of the truth, the album marked the beginning of the end of The Radiators. Ghostown was their parting shot to posterity. Quite simply: a monumental artistic achievement.
