The Archive archive’d
At my peril do I announce the end of this project, having done so at least once many years ago. So never say never, but there’s a couple of reasons for stopping now. The most obvious is that I’ve simply run out of cool records to share – though I’m always on the lookout for more. More to the point, I want to turn my attention to other projects. Besides all this, other sites now offer a more democratic and inclusive way to talk about these great bands. Starting this site over ten years ago, it seemed like these musicians were written about by only a dedicated few, and heard almost never. But times change rapidly, and the era of blogs and mp3s may already have passed. There will be updates and housekeeping, comments and questions will be responded to, and the pet projects of cassette covers and family trees will be ongoing for a while, but there probably won’t be any more record posts.
One thing I would like to see evolving out of this is an actual archive that would preserve Ireland’s vinyl rock music heritage for future generations. We have an Irish Traditional Music Archive with a dedicated vinyl department and proper storage conditions, but having made some inquiries I’m not aware of anywhere that cares about Irish rock music. As this site has tried to highlight, a huge number of these recordings exist only on old vinyl platters of fifty years age or more. For the moment we are relying on record collectors and traders to look after them, but how long can that situation last? If anyone can suggest a likely venue for such a resource I would gladly donate my collection to it.
In any case, thanks for all the support over the years – let’s see what happens next!
Rock Roots: The Irish Rock Music Archive 
Look forward to that mixtape project, thinking of doing something similar myself, digitizing the tapes and uploading to mixcloud, my artwork wasn’t as elaborate as yours.
Interesting point regarding a vinyl archive, I too have amassed a collection albeit of digitisations which possibly could do with preserving.
Thanks FS – I’ve already been given a few suggestions to follow up, so I’ll keep you posted!
The excellent Family Trees you have just posted shows the outstanding quality that this site has always contained. It has been a superb resource for obscure and forgotten Irish pop and rock. Thank you for all your efforts to highlight forgotten Irish music. There is so much here to trawl through for a long time to come.
Thank you, Daragh, much appreciated. And it’s worth repeating that your book was a major part of the inspiration for this site.