ALBO’S IRISH PUNK PAST D U B L I N CALLING BY LLOYD GORMAN
Dublin 1988. Photo: E.A. Kennedy/BrandNewRetro.ie
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n 1988 as Dublin celebrated a thousand years since its foundation as a Viking settlement the city’s underground music scene was a swarm of rowdy and raw punk rock energy - and a young Anthony Albanese was there in the thick of it. In fact it is exactly thirty four years ago this month since ‘Albo’ – then 25 – was at large and on the loose in Dublin. At the time the Irish capital was a very different place to the metropolis and tourist mecca it is today.
Alan Parkers’ hit film The Commitments was released in 1991 – but based on the 1987 Roddy Doyle novel of the same name – and captured that sense of the city on the brink of the economic revival that became known as the Celtic Tiger. High unemployment saw long queues at dole offices, urban decay meant many buildings in and around the city centre were falling down or boarded up and a heroin epidemic swept through the community. The young Aussie may have only been passing through but he was there long enough to sample 4 | THE IRISH SCENE
A hip Anthony Albanese.
