"That Petrol Devotion"	NME
	02 June 1990

With God (stuck) on their side, Something Happens! have conquered the Irish charts and are set to charge the hit parades the whole world over. Terry Staunton says 'Hello Hello Hello Hello' to the prolific pop-stars-in-waiting in Dublin. Let's get the obvious question out of the way first, shall we? Those of you who have shaken the occasional leg to the most recent Something Happens! single may be more than a little curious about the title. A glance at the label reveals the legend 'Hello,Hello,Hello,Hello,Hello (petrol).' And while the 'Hello' part is pretty bloody obvious to anybody with a pair of ears, the 'petrol' portion of the title needs to be explained. "Basically , when we're working on a song we give it a working title while we're still writing the final lyrics," frontman Tom Dunne tells me in a Dublin pub. "We called this one 'Petrol' because Ray (Harman) had a guitar part which borrowed a little from That Petrol Emotion. He got so embarrassed by it that he finally changed the guitar part and now there's nothing that really sounds like the Petrols. When it came to release it we kept the word in the title as a little tribute." "Actually, I met Steve Mack the other night, they were playing in Dublin, and he thanked us for leaving the 'Petrol' bit in the title. He said 'At least you acknowledged it. The Wonder Stuff never did." The day we meet, Something Happens! have three new songs "in production" with the working titles 'Mad start', 'Funky Baby', and 'Good Verse.' Tom: "Yeah, the last one's called 'Good Verse', because it has a bad chorus." Something Happens! have just released their second album, 'Stuck Together With God's Glue', from which the aforementioned 'Petrol' song is taken. It's littered with the type of metaphor-heavy, adolescent sex guitar rock that the Undertones delivered so gloriously ten or so years ago: knee-trembler anthems for an acne-troubled generation. But it's much more than 'Teenage Kicks' revisited, there's a special kind of suss and 90's worldliness to 'God's Glue'. In a nutshell, Something Happens! are Feargal Sharkey's big brothers. The LP is leaps and bounds ahead of their debut Virgin album, 'Been There, Seen That, Done that,' which the band were not altogether pleased with. While 'God's Glue' was produced by seasoned pro Ed Stasium (Living Colour, The Smithereens) its predecessor was produced by Tommy Ramone -- the group were seduced by the idea of working with one of their fave raves. "It didn't seem that bad on paper but the results were not brilliant," admits Tom. "Because of that mistake we had an album we had to live with for about a year. It doesn't matter how good your live gigs are, the actual LP is the permanent record that everyone judges you by. Fans might have enjoyed the shows, but they had a poor record to take home with them." The choice of Stasium meant Something Happens! had to spend three months in Los Angeles recording 'God's Glue' (what a drag! - Ed). What problems did that cause the young Dublin boys, surrounded by Southern Californian sin and debauchery? "To tell you the truth it was a really good idea to get out of Dublin. We needed to be away from the distractions of girlfriends, or the desire to go out to the Pink Elephant (Dublin's famed rock 'n' roll hang out) every night." "Dublin is a 24-hour rock 'n' roll city, LA is not. Mind you, there was the odd night..." Something Happens! next major engagement in their ceaseless promotion for their wonderful LP is this weekend, at the highly attractive Fleadh festival of all that's best in contemporary Irish pop. Although some press reports suggest there have been behind-the-scenes wrangling over running order and who gets star billing, Tom says The Happens! couldn't give a toss. "We're tryin' to avoid the whole internal politics thing about who goes on when, it's not particularly important to us. Let it sort itself out on the day." Bass player Alan Byrne says it's typical of the competitive element that the media and the London-based record companies are trying to introduce to the Irish music scene. "It just does not exist. In a city as small as Dublin you tend to know everybody else and you just help each other out. We all want to get on and I wouldn't like to see us become successful at the expense of other bands, at the expense of our friends." "There's no rules that say there's got to be one winner and loads of runners-up. We all want to be winners and there's no reason why we can't be. I bet all the Manchester bands are pissed off by this 'contest' between them. It's not like that at all." The last time Something Happens! found themselves in any sort of position where they had to prove anything to anyone was as support to The Mission a couple of months back. "It was a very levelling experience," says Tom." Any delusions of grandeur you might have playing in front of a large crowd that loves you disappear immediately when you walk on stage in front of thousands of Mission fans in Leeds." "We got a pretty mixed response and we found that we had to abuse Mission fans to get a bit of a reaction. There was one heckler who was having a real go at us. I just told him that I sympathised with him over his difficult puberty and suddenly everyone else was on our side." "We've done those sort of big shows before. Last year we were added to the Simple Minds bill in Ireland because tickets weren't selling." Ireland loves Something Happens! ('God's Glue' is currently the country's Number One album) and Something Happens! love Ireland. Sadly they will be over in America during the World Cup finals and may miss most of the Republic's games. "I'm surprised old Jack Charlton hasn't popped over to the States himself to find a few flash centre-forwards," says drummer Eamonn Ryan. "I'm sure he can figure out something to get a fourth generation American Irish into the team." Has Jack bent the rules in the past to strengthen the nation's squad? "I think basically the way Jack works it is if you've got an Irish red setter you're in." Aside from 'Petrol', the origin of the band's name is a bit of a poser. I suggest that it may come from the John Hiatt song of the same name, complete with exclamation mark, fact fans. "I didn't know there was one," claims Eamonn. "Mind you, that's quite a hip source so I think we'll use that in future interviews. Thanks." Tom: "It came out of desperation, really. We couldn't think of anything we all agreed on and as things started to move and we were going to put out our first independent single we had to think fast." "When I first heard it I couldn't be bothered objecting, so it stuck. My justification is that if Simple Minds can get away with their name for years and years, we can get away with Something Happens!" Alan: "That's a stupid name. Imagine callin' yourself Simple Minds. You might as well call yourself F*ckin' Idiots." Dublin audiences may catch a glimpse of the group under a different name in the coming weeks, however, as they plan to put on a few low-key shows to try out new material, working titles, warts and all. They are bogged down with new, unrecorded songs and are very proud of their prolific output. "When we went into the studio to record 'God's Glue' we had quite a few to spare," says Tom. "We've been storing stuff for ages, ever since the first album." So exactly how many unrecorded songs do you have, Tom? "Well, for the 'God's Glue' sessions we went in with 60 songs." "WOW!" exclaims the impressed journalist. Alan: "It's not that great. Obviously, out of the 60 there were two that were not very good....." © New Musical Express, June 2, 1990