Choice The

The Beginnings in Dundalk.

The band started in Dundalk in 1981 as a four-piece, with Brian McMahon (aka Dougie Devlin) on bass, Ciaran Vernon (aka CV) on synths & guitars, Noel McCabe on drums & Jaki McCarrick on vocals. With the departure of drummer, Noel McCabe, Choice later became a three-piece – with a drum machine!

1st Gig

It’s a cold, wet Friday night in September 1980, and the back room of Dundalk’s Wine Tavern is buzzing to the sounds of synth-pop and disco. A crowd mills about in anticipation, dressed in scrappy new romantic uniforms from charity shop rails, waiting for a young local band called Choice to make their debut.

Maded up Brian “Duggie” McMahon on bass, Ciaran Vernon on synths and guitar, Noel McCabe on drums, and Jaki McCarrick on vocals, Choice had formed just a few months before, and they wanted to make a splash. Inspired by the photos they’d seen in magazines of London’s Blitz Club, they wanted to bring that stylish scene to their industrial border town.

Private Party

Under the pretence of a private party, they booked the space in one of Dundalk’s “more sophisticated pubs”, and kicked off their journey to becoming one of the most distinct Irish bands of the 1980s: one that ploughed its own furrow, and made sure every gig was an event to remember.

Post Punk Grit

Choice take the stage at 11 30. With a nervous new wave energy and post punk grit, their influences are clear, citing everyone from Siouxsie And The Banshees, The Human League and New Order to Kraftwerk, Wire and Donna Sumner. At just 16, McCarrik’s voice radiates over the rugged bass and spiky guitars of ‘Experience’, ‘Stain Glass’, and ‘Pierrot’, while the band’s aloof demeanour and lack of audience interaction gives them an enticing air of mystery from the get-go, whether it’s intentional or not.

A handwritten review of the gig in local fanzine Too Late describes them as “real, aware, alive, challenging and simply light years ahead of anything else in this town”. It goes on to predict the band’s selective approach to gigs, and their evasion of the regular venue circuit. It’s an attitude they would stick to, and one that would earn them a loyal cult fanbase in Dundalk and beyond.

Cinema

A month later, Choice played their second show, this time in Dundalk’s Magnet Cinema. Remembering it now, McMahon says the venue “cost a fortune and was way too big”. There was no bar, and no lights, but it drew a crowd simply because it was a “strange setting”.

“No one had ever seen a group play there before, and we got to play on a real stage,” McMahon remembers.

Day Jobs & School

With day jobs and school to think about, Choice were unphased by the prospect of success. They just wanted to sound good, and create special moments and memories at the shows they chose to play. “It was all about the art for me,” McCarrik says now, “I had very little interest in ‘rock stardom’.”

Ireland’s Sheffield

She remembers seeing bands like The Human League emerging from industrial UK towns like Sheffield, and drawing more influence from them than anything she heard in Ireland’s scene. “We considered that Dundalk was like Ireland’s Sheffield,” she says. Choice sought to “embrace the industrial environs of where we lived, to write songs that were close to ‘art’. We let that consume us rather than the idea of fame.”

Youngline

Some success did come however, and after recording their first demo and a live video 1981 the group won RTÉ’s Youngline competition, which was broadcast on national television and garnered them widespread attention from the country’s music industry. “Going to the RTÉ studios was a thrill,” McMahon remembers. “We had our own dressing room – complete with bulb lights around the mirror. We showed that it was possible to get on national TV, without a manager, without any contacts in the industry, and without having to play the usual gig scene.”

Trio

Choice soon became a three-piece, replacing McCabe’s live drums with a drum machine; a rarity in Ireland at the time. There were more recordings too, including one with the legendary Fanning Sessions. After winning Youngline, there was even an offer of a record deal, but they turned it down. “[We were] convinced we’d get a better offer,” McMahon wrote on his Brand New Retro blog. “We probably could have done with a manager. Or a phone… none of us or our parents had one!”

Trinity College

Not long after winning another prominent Battle Of The Bands in Trinity College in 1982 – beating Meelah XVIII from Finglas, who would go on to become Aslan – McCarrick and Vernon left for London, and just as their momentum grew, Choice disbanded, and Ireland fell into the grips of a deep recession. “[Early] in the 1980s, Dundalk was artistically vibrant,” McCarrik remembers. “Everyone I knew was doing something creative – whether it was art or writing or making his or her own magazine. Then, from the mid-80s onwards, recession really got a grip of Dundalk and of course these bonds between people began to break up. It’s a very sad thing about emigration in Ireland – recessions often strike at the most inopportune time.”

That short, brilliant buzz that Choice created in the Irish musical landscape stuck around however, and their music left an impression that lingers to this day. “In later years, people have told me how we got them into electronic music,” McMahon says.

“When I no longer had that project in my life I was bereft,” adds McCarrick, who is now a successful author and playwright. “We did have loyal followers, and today I am still in touch with some of them – they have tapes, recordings of us and so on.”

After their track, ‘Always In Danger’, appeared in the Strange Passion compilation on Finders Keepers Records in 2012, Choice reunited for a string of gigs, including Electric Picnic 2013, one alongside fellow Dundalk singer Jinx Lennon, and another in Dublin’s Grand Social. To McCarrick though, it wasn’t so much a reformation, as a continuation of something that never fully went away, and never will. “I like to think of the band as something that is always there,” she says. “That we can pick up or let go whenever the body wants to say something, make itself heard. It’s very organic – probably because from the start it was never about fame – just a group of people trying to make art together.”

Choice made their mark by making every gig count; a concept we’ve all had to get used to in 2020. Socially distanced live shows around the country in late summer were revitalising, while live streams like Lankum’s jaw dropping A National Disgrace from the Abbey Theatre and Jennifer Walshe’s Ireland: A Dataset at the National Concert Hall transcended distance to create shared moments of release between music fans in a digital landscape. The eerie sight of a performance in empty theatre took on a profound new meaning; a vision of culture fighting to survive that will be etched into our collective memory.

Elsewhere, artists have adapted to Patreon to keep themselves afloat during the pandemic, offering fans a subscription-like service as a way of making money alongside special livestreams. Dundalk’s Mary Wallopers, whose homemade pub has provided joyful folk escapism, continued their Stay At Home series on Halloween night with haunting guest appearances. Throughout lockdown, filmmaker Myles O’Reilly brought us into the homes of artists like John Francis Flyn and Kú Kilian, or into a pre-COVID instrument shop with Myles Manley in support of his new album Cometh The Softies.

In July, Dublin’s Guerrilla Studios launched a bi-weekly live music special along with its patreon, and has streamed sets from the likes of God Knows, Aoife Nessa Frances, Acid Granny, Maija Sofia, Sunken Foal and more in that time. Located beneath a railway arch, the studio, which was opened by producer and sound engineer John ‘Spud’ Murphy in 2011, has been a crucial centre for Irish underground music. Within its walls, releases from the likes of Katie Kim, Percolator, Woven Skull, Jogging and Lankum have been produced, with a trademark grit and heaviness coursing through each. The importance of its preservation can’t be understated, and has been echoed again and again through these unifying live sessions.