Broken Doll

Broken Doll

Broken Doll from; Kildare Active; 1980 – 198?
Style; tbc
Line up;
Vocals; Pete Donovan replaced by Karen Edisson
Guitar; Anthnoy Guilfoyle
Keyboards & Strings; Keith Nolan
Bass; Noel Guilfoyle
Drums; Ciaren Cusack

Demo Tape

Broken Doll were formed in January 1980 and started playing live in May of that year. The original line up (Pete, Anthony, Noel & Cieran) recorded a demo tape. The tracks on the tape are “Every Old Fool”, They are known too have played Boddis (Magnet) as support to Cork based band Microdisney on more than one occasion. Their musical style was compared to that of Joy Division.

Gig Guide

28/08/1980 Boddis, Magnet Bar, Dublin Chant! Chant! Chant! & The End
Tonight was the first time I’ve seen all three bands so that these are initial impressions only.
Broken Doll under the influence of Joy Division, play slowed down punk. To be fair, a couple of their songs do show dist promise but the mix was so bad that the lyrics were indecipherable. With experience, they’ll be worth watching.

The End wear leather jackets and play pop songs. It’s not that I’m hippie in disguise, but the lack of one lead line all night from Cormac Wright meant that the sound did get a little tedious. Lynott is the best bass player in the band – and I’m sure if I heard their songs frequently enough, I’d call them infectious, but I probably won’t allow myself that dubious pleasure.

Chant Chant Chant are very good. Bass player Larry Murphy is the star of the show – and I tend to like the sound of bass oriented groups. His playing is quirky and subtle, without ever losing the basic rhythm drive. Guitarist Robbie Wogan plays psychotic choppy chords and fluidy, slippery lead lines. Unfortunately, the weak link is drummer Mono, who seldom deviates from a bass drum/hi hat/snare rhythm, and seems to have difficulty hitting a snare properly. It’s a pity because if Murphy were paired with a sharp drummer, the band could develop on the syncopation intrinsic to his playing. Finally singer Eoin Freeney has a limited range but uses it well.

The only criticism is that because the band’s songs seem to be written around the bass lines, the sound becomes a little repetitive after a while. Still, time should heel these wounds.

Hot Press Review

I’d go and see them again.
Des Traynor Hot Press
09/09/1980 Magnet Bar, Dublin with The Blades I ducked in the door, paid my quid, and a Broken Doll hit me in the face. The sound was thick, hard, and on top of it the songs crunched along, danceable music mercifully free of any cacophony for art’s sake. Fragments of Joy Division wove in and out of the mix, a vocal delivery here, a guitar break there. Broken Doll play noisy but coherent post punk dance music, but they are not a dance band. Whether or not a “Broken Doll style” will emerge at the end cannot be ascertained, but on this occasion at least, they seemed headed in the right direction. Begin reviewing the Blades and clichés fly at you hard, fast and frigid, like snowballs in a wind tunnel. I mean, you could call them a tight pop dance band but they said that of the Lookalikes; you could call them “a great night out” but they said that of Stagalee, and you’d never wish to associate the Blades with them, now would you?
So you sit down and think a little deeper. Luckily for you, the Blades themselves make the job a little easier. Okay, so they’re a dance band.

Dance Styles Of The Last 25 Years

They do themselves no Favours by their Jam style line up and occasional but obvious rewrites of Beatles riffs and Weller esque vocals, but it’s to their credit that a look beyond such drawbacks reveals a band apparently set on a marriage of intelligent observation and catchy dance music. You can dance to the Blades – the girls shook their booty all over the beer-stained floor for all they were worth, and the guys wove into their steps every dance style of the last 25 years – but stand still for a minute and listen to the lyrics, especially the newer ones, and style and strength are immediately apparent. It’s up to the Blades to start evolving a musical idiom original enough to do justice to their manifest awareness and ability. Either way the Blades showed at this gig that they have lost none of the power and verve that fuelled them in the early days.

21/09/1980 El Ruedo, Carlow with Known Authority

The Threat

The Threat, Broken Doll Boddis, The Magnet, Dublin The date of this concert is unknown
As Dublin’s only enduring punk band, the Threat have this thing called a “reputation”. They’ve played rarely, their period of enforced quarantine being both audience bovver last spring in Belfield and the subsequent loss of their rhythm section. So none would have been surprised if they vanished from view – but late last year the Treat reappeared with a 45 “High Cost of Living”, an instrumental as endearingly simple as anything from Good Vibrations in its heyday.

D.C. Nien

Unfortunately this gig didn’t show a simultaneous playing advance. It wasen’t entirely their fault. The Threat are still essentially two, guitarist Maurice and synthesizer twiddler Stano and at the Magnet, they were assisted by D.C. Nien’s drummer Ken Mahon, doing a Buggie and bassist Vinny Murphy. There was no stable basis. The audience didn’t help, rucking in the postage stamp sized area. The fact of the audience clambering up among the band may have been hilarious and a howl for many but it destroyed the bands concentration.

Maurice Foley

The Threat needed a steady gig for research and development purposes. If they have any more nights like, they won’t move ahead. So, little was learnt or delivered. Maurice Foley can quieten and control a crowd and even sing Irish ballards but the Treat whose “Punk” inclines towards the new glam pop don’t really find a focus. All I remember was the single and an angry diatribe against the adolescent marriage trap. It’ll be another night before we find if the Threat amount to more than “High Cost of Living”.

Broken Doll

Supporting Kildare band Broken Doll were gloomy and one directional. Some presence and personality my be enclosed amid their mix of 6th form poetry and Ramones/Doors/J.D. routines but it hasen’t gone out yet. Their music doesn’t yet transcend the depressing topics they talk about.

Bill Graham Hot Press
10/02/1981 Magnet Bar, Dublin with Les Affairs, Residance