Ooops! Belfast’s number 1 punk band (unconfirmed)

So, Ooops! then.

Without a doubt, intentionally or not Ooops! where one of the funniest, pleasant and down right confusing bands on the go in early 2000. We (The Dangerfields) played an awful lot of gigs with Ooops! There was BelFEST 2001, A New Years eve show in The Duke Of York, The Ooops! Album release ‘party’, a Blast from Belfast in Dublin and more Front Page gigs than you could throw a pint of watered down Harp at. Ooops! where well known (with us) for many reasons; their massive purple speaker, their larger than life and legendry drummer, having an album out on Good Vibrations, their love of wearing vests on stage, having a manager and going to every gig in a 7.5 ton truck whilst other bands got by with Metro’s, Golfs and in Pee 45’s case a Toyota Yaris and 106.

This was the CD Ooops! Put out on Good Vibrations, it was released in June 2000. I’m not sure how they managed this and what exactly Terri Hooleys input was, but you could buy it in his shop which is more than you could say for The Dangerfields demo tape. It’s a limited edition 10 track CD in that it was limited to how many they could afford to get pressed and then further limited to how many they could sell. DF’s guitarist and Japanese educator Jar ended up with a copy when his Granny went into Good Vibrations informed Mr Hooley that her grandson liked punk rock and she was looking for a Christmas present. There was no NOFX for wee Jar that Christmas. Ooops! also claimed to be Belfast number 1 punk band. Nobody was ever sure what was meant by that. So it was June 2000 that the CD was released, but it was 7 months later that they sorted out an album release party: Here is the poster:

The Cd was out 7 months ago.

It was of course made by Andrew Griswold and put up by us. When we where starting out I was talking to their drummer Iain (who used to run new band night in The Front Page) about promoting gigs. I was keen on posters and flyers. The Beard (for that was his name) informed me that posters where useless and the best way to promote a gig was “to go down to Katy’s (Katy Dalys pub) and put the word about”. That soundbite had us in stitches and became a regular DF’s routine. So needless to say Ooops! didn’t make or put up posters, but then on the other hand nobody came to their gigs. The Dangerfields on the other hand put up hundreds of posters handed out loads of flyers and, nobody came to our gigs either… But at least we had the fun of making posters, paying for them to be copied and then stomping around at 3am pasting them up in stupid places.

So the Ooops! album release party was to be in Auntie Annies, they asked us to play and their other pals Plan 9. Plan 9, like Ooops! never seemed to play anywhere other than The Front Page. They where a grunge type band what I remember most about them was their bass played wore a huge black duffle coat on stage. It’s get pretty hot being stage, yet he stood there in his duffle coat, sweating, playing 3rd rate Pearl Jam out takes. Seriously though, Plan 9 where pretty good. Anyway, this was the Ooops! album release party. Of course there was nobody there. Ooops! however where concerned that when they went on there would be even less people there, so they wanted us to headline. So The Dangerfields headlined The Ooops! album release party. Or as I prefer to say ‘we went on last’. Their plan kinda backfired and more people had arrived by the time we finished. I can’t remember much about this gig except Cormac and myself spent more time playing on the floor than on the stage and we generally blew Ooops! away. I think we ended up with a pile on or something that could have ended with somebody losing an eye. As for the CD itself? It’s not that bad. Guitar sounds a bit shitty and the vocals a bit too high in the mix, but there is worse. The songs are still pretty good. I listened to it today. Seriously it’s alright.  Bit strange inside, there is a speech about how Terry Hooley invented Belfast and all forms of music which is badly published with some of the letters missing and a review of an Ooops! gig which I don’t think the reviewer was at. It’s from the now defunct Big Buzz magazine.

 

Yes, just another 4 piece punk band on Good Vibrations.

Having their CD now officially released Ooops! decided to cook it up a notch, they made merch! They made the WORST T shirts I have ever seen. I now wish I had of bought one (nobody ever did) just for comedic effect. These badly printed shirts featured the Ooops! Logo about half way down the shirt, then a photo! A fucking photo of themselves and the words social scum below it. I cannot describe how awful they where. They also made key rings and bottle openers, I had one of each, the key ring broke very quickly and the bottle got given away as some form of comedy present. Thirteen years later and there is a box in a garage somewhere containing 10 Ooops! shirts, 100 key rings and fuck knows how many Social Scum limited edition CD’s.

Merch out, CD out, next up it was the Social Scum tour. Ooops! Actually made posters. Again, awful. The Social Scum tour (by Belfasts number 1 punk band) was to take in three dates and two venues. A gig at The Front Page, then a gig in Giros and finally a gig in the Front Page. The gig in Giros was cancelled. The posters still went up, needless to say the posters went up about a minute before the gig. Something tells me Ooops! May have even put up the posters AFTER the gig. Of course we where playing with them on all dates and proceeded to take the piss out of them constantly. Say Social Scum Tour to any ex-Dangerfield and you’ll get a giggle in return.

During their BelFEST show at The Elms their guitarist Dicky wore a kilt, or least we thought it was kilt. For some reason he ended up shirtless (probably something to do with one of us acting the maggot) only to reveal that it wasn’t a kilt but a big girls tartan dress. Drummer Iain would often play shirtless and being a more robustly shaped man he had man boobs (like a lot of us, no shame in that) somebody took pity on him, removed their bra and donated it to him, he wore in on stage. I think that’s what happened anyway.

The Duke of York is of course one of the busiest pubs in Belfast these days, not when we played though. Oh no, plenty of seats then. Jonny Hero asked Ooops! And ourselves if we would like to play there on New Years Eve. I suppose that way Jonny was guaranteed that anybody who was in the DOY that night upon seeing us or Ooops! would head straight upstairs to his disco.

One of the stage pieces Ooops! Liked to do was get their shirtless bearded drummer out from behind the kit and put him out front to sing some naff country song whilst the normal singer drummed. Everybody had a giggle at this comedy segment. There was none of this for the Dublin show, oh no, it was all business for Ooops! A blast from Belfast (or something similar) was a gig in some Dublin pub featuring 4 bands from Belfast, Mr Nipples, Ooops! The Dangerfields and Runnin’ Riot. Ooops! Dropped all the comedy from their set for this one, there was no shirtless Beard singing country songs and no dresses/kilts. Instead it was something even funnier; vests. Every member of Ooops! seemed to be sporting a vest. Why? We’ll never know. But the vests never reappeared. It was a good gig too, well Ooops! over played and The DF’s set was cut short. Ooops! had gone down well in Dublin and at least the night ended well them. Oh hang on it didn’t. During the usually maniacal Runnin’ Riot set the infamous purple Hughs and Kettner speaker and amp got knocked over and had beer spilt over it. Smoke started belching out of it. Always a good sign that. After the gig Ooops! Had to travel back to Belfast in their 7.5 ton truck being driven by their manager whilst the band sat in total freezing darkness in the back of the truck for the 2 hour drive back up north.

Ooops! split up eventually. It was a pity, a lot of fun was had with the Ooops! gigs and we did a hell of a lot of early DF’s shows with Ooops! Beard went on to play in the FAB Experience and ran his Wedesday nights in the Front Page for a good few years. As for what happened to the rest of the band? No idea, they just vanished. A few months after broke up their huge purple Hughes and Kettner amp and speaker was being sold in Smithfield market, the tag on it said “as used by punk band Ooops!” I pity who ever bought it because no matter what anybody tried with that amp, it gave one shitty sound.

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