And the beat goes on: Celebrating New Spotlight Showband Show

Dickie Rock

THE New Spotlight Showband Show will bring back the era of hugely popular Irish bands touring ballrooms across the country performing the cover versions of the biggest hits of the 1960s.

Synonymous with the showband era was Spotlight Magazine (later renamed New Spotlight and then Starlight). The paper’s tagline was ‘Ireland’s No. 1 Young Entertainment Weekly’ which covered all the stories and touring news of Ireland’s showbands along with Fashion and sport features.

The touring show is promoted by Pat Egan who wrote the Beat Column for New Spotlight. Pat told Limerick Post about the show and its origins.

“There has been a lot of show band shows over the last ten years, Ronan Collins has a successful one. We put the title New Spotlight Magazine Showband Show because they are so closely related. I’ve left it a bit late because a lot of the players from that era are dying off.

“So I’m happy to have Dickie Rock and Tony Kenny both of them were very much part of the early boom in Showbands.”

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Production values are promised to be top notch for this show – a big screen presentation on stage will celebrate the era starting off with the Clipper Carlton in the 1950s through the rise of the showbands fronted by Dickie Rock and Brendan Bowyer.

Pat Egan’s involvement with New Spotlight Magazine began in 1966.

“The magazine came out every Thursday. It was selling 60,000 copies a week.

“There was very little coverage of live entertainment on television, no Internet and  no smartphones. There was 50,000 young people going to ballrooms every week and everyone got their news from Spotlight.”

Pat Egan was hired as the Beat group columnist for new Spotlight in 1966. The editor told him the wages were £3 a week but Pat would have done it for nothing seeing that he couldn’t write his own name properly at the time, having left school at 13!

As well as writing for New Spotlight, Pat was a DJ in the 5 Club on Harcourt Street playing soul music from the likes of The Four Tops and Aretha Franklin. The alcohol free club also hosted new original bands from Belfast Dublin and Cork.

“It was pioneering in its day because you didn’t hear any good stuff on the radio. So you had to get your records from the UK or America.

“The soul music that I played was hot in America but not that well known over here and original groups such as Rory Gallagher or Sleepy Hollow, Van Morrison and Them, Skid Row and Thin Lizzy.”

Phil Lynott, Pat Egan and Rory Gallagher

“I remember meeting Rory Gallagher and Phil Lynott outside the 5 Club on Harcourt Street sometime in 1968, the day Rory’s guitar was stolen from his van. My Spotlight column was hot news and I regularly featured a table of the top Irish acts which created controversy.”

While Dickie Rock, The Freshmen, and Tony Kenny were the teen idols of their day in the ’60s, it can be argued that Egan’s coverage of up and coming original bands like Van Morrison, Rory Gallagher and Thin Lizzy was where these future music icons first came to the attention of Irish readers.

Dickie Rock will headline the New Spotlight Live Showband Show with special guest Tony Kenny plus Mick Roche (The Arrows) and Karen Black (Nevada).

They will be accompanied by The Sugar Cubes band with a history of showbands, ‘Stepback to the ’60s – The Showband Years’ on big screen. The concert happens on Friday April 7 at University Concert Hall from 8pm.

Thank you to Brand New Retro online library for the use of these images. Check out the extensive collection of nostalgia at wwwbrandnewretro.ie

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