Ideas and Inspirations

The Cave Hill

Mark and I were born in the shadow of a dramatic 1200-foot basalt outcrop that overlooks north Belfast. Film production designers couldn't improve on a natural topography which marries woodland, wild meadows, grim blackgrey cliffs, domed hilltops and hazy views of the Irish sea, with Scotland on the horizon. Known as either Ben Madigan (see Organelles mountain of red dogs from the album cellular soul, Tristesse Douce 1999) or, more commonly, Cave Hill, this is where I spent much of my boyhood playtime.

From many viewpoints resembling the form of a prone human profile, the Hill inspired in Jonathan Swift the image of the floored "giant" Gulliver. This "mountain" deeply imprints my whole childhood. It's probably the one thing, save perhaps the delicious soundworld of the Belfast accent, that I still miss daily about my home town.

Historically, the summit of the Cave Hill is both the site of northeastern Ireland's earliest neolithic habitation, and of the seminal meeting place of the founders of Irish republicanism (a movement begun by Presbyterian Protestants - stereotype-confundation shock!) In the 'seventies the hill embodied for me boundless adventuring and childlike fantasy, but also stood for dark rumours of sectarian murder and devil-worship.

Guitar Players

Often enough asked for guitarists who influenced me, I usually disclaim with a "too many to mention", or other evasion. Thus, in no special academic order:-

Jimmy Page, David Gilmour, Joan Armatrading, Prince, Joni Mitchell, Todd Rundgren, Robbie Krieger, Paul Brady, John Fahey, Willie McTell, Bill Frisell, Emily Remler, Jimi Hendrix, Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison, Andres Segovia, Paco de Lucia, Django Reinhardt, Johnny Fean, Brian May, Steve Howe, Gerry Garcia, Robert Johnson, Pete Townsend, Steve Jones, Mick Jones, Ry Cooder, Ali Farka Toure, Fred Frith, Chuck Berry, Frank Zappa, Leo Kottke, Buddy Guy, Joe Pass, Wes Montgomery, Charlie Patton, Bukka White, Huddie Leadbetter, Eric Clapton, Jaime Robbie Robertson, Johnny Winter, Joe Walsh, Chet Atkins, BB King, Michael Chapman, Robert Fripp, Carlos Santana, Mick Ronson, James Honeyman-Scott, Artie McGlynn, George Benson, Mark Knopfler, John Martyn, Jan Akkerman, Paul Kossoff, Jeff Beck, Mike Bloomfield, Scotty Moore, Angelo Bruschini, Keith Richards, John McLaughlin, Martin Carthy, Phil Manzanera, Steve Miller, Randy California (all of whom q.v.) etc. - list to be updated as amnesia allows.

Additionally, some players you won't have heard much outside Bristol:-

Kevin Byrne, Neil Smith, Jesse Morningstar, Sheldon King, George Claridge.

Phosphenes

As a ten-year-old mass-goer I used to while away the comforting ennui of the often daily services by pressing the flat lengths of my fingers firmly onto my lidded eyes. This I could sustain for up to ten or twenty minutes, by which time the resulting bio-luminescence (try it - but not for too long, please, grown-ups) would assume the likeness of a virtual chamber of fire in which I felt suspended. Very hallucinatory and, I feel, precociously proto-psychedelic (I had never heard of LSD, Huxley, Leary or any of that shower), these natural ocular phenomena are known as phosphenes, according to my old friend Garrett Quigley [ubi es? Ed.]

Schmists II

Alright then, writers it is. Well, you didn't ask for it:-

Beckett, Joyce, Brian O'Nolan, Kurt Vonnegut, Tolkien (how predictable! I hear you sneer, but I must say that I read L.O.R. in seven days at age ten and, truly, the day I finished that epic my mammy came up to my hermitage with the news that Tolkien's death had just been announced on the radio news - sorry Jerry: kiss of death, eh?), Tove Janssen, & co.