Episode Notes

“She’s quite skinny, like me, but nice skinny. Roller-skate skinny. I watched her once from the window when she was crossing over Fifth Avenue to go to the park, and that’s what she is, roller-skate skinny.”
Holden Caulfield, Salinger’s narrator, describes his younger sister Pheobe in Catcher in the Rye.

Episode sixteen of To Here Knows When - Great Irish Albums Revisited focuses on Shoulder Voices and Horsedrawn Wishes by the great Dublin band who who were named for Holden’s description of Pheobe - Rollerskate Skinny.

Ken Griffin joins me to talk about: forming Rollerskate Skinny; moving to London; signing to Beggars Banquet subsidiary Placebo; moving into Shane MacGowan’s old apartment in Marble Arch; scoring an NME ‘Single of the Week’ with Trophy - their second EP; being influenced by Ennio Morricone and Public Enemy; touring with Pavement, Smashing Pumpkins, the Verve, the Afghan Whigs and The Flaming Lips; recording Shoulder Voices with Guy Fixsen; signing to Warner Brothers; Perry Farrell picking them for Lollapalooza 1994; recording Horsedrawn Wishes with Aidan Foley in Dublin; working with mixing engineer Anjali Dutt; meeting The Velvet Underground in New York; playing and recording with August Wells; the writing process; and recording an album as High Leaves, Ken’s latest musical project (with Graham Finn, Emperor of Icecream guitarist).

When I first drew up a list of albums that I wanted to feature on this podcast – I placed Rollerskate Skinny’s Shoulder Voices and Horsedrawn Wishes near the very top. Simply put I think these are two magnificent albums.

Old friends Treehouse were also on the bill that night in The Village. They might have been Freehouse for a few minutes around the time the tickets were printed but by the time they took to the stage for what was their first gig, they were definitely already re-christened Treehouse. What a first gig to get! A great band, Treehouse were Mike Lyons (guitar/vocals) and one of Cork’s greatest rhythm sections - the brothers Rudden (Paul on bass and John on drums).

Rollerskate Skinny’s Novice EP was followed the following year by the Trophy EP and in awarding it the ‘Single of the Week’, the NME wrote: “If this is a fair indication of where Rollerskate Skinny are headed, then we’ll be looking at a fit and strapping companion for Mercury Rev and The Boo Radleys in the weirdbeard greatness stakes. Prizeworthy stuff indeed.”

Shoulder Voices came next, a fantastic debut album recorded with Laika’s Guy Fixsen. The CMJ – New Music Report, put the band on their cover alongside Pavement and Low and wrote of the album: “Not since My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless has dissonance been so effectively crafted into a pastiche of melodic euphoria. In the 10 January edition of the magazine Scott Perry of Beggars Banguet US wrote: “Shoulder Voices, the debut by Rollerskate Skinny comes out February 15 - I can't quite verbally straight-jacket their sound, but this album will definitely fuck you up.” Indeed.

Rollerskate Skinny signed to Warner Brothers and in the summer of 1994 joined Perry Farrell’s Lollapalooza travelling festival. After surviving the gruelling eight week, 42 date tour across the US and Canada they returned to Dublin to record with Aidan Foley. The resulting album was ambitious in scale – there were more twists and turns on some individual songs then other bands had on entire albums. So ambitious in fact that a load of engineers turned down the job of mixing the recordings. Anjali Dutt successfully took on the challenge.

I saw the band a second time in Cork in 1995, a few months before the album’s release. It was a gig I promoted with Frontline Promotions in Nancy Spains. A full house turned the small Barrack Street venue into a sauna and a few songs into the gig the band’s DAT machine packed in, the band played on without the elaborate backing tapes. It was a loud, intense affair.    

Horsedrawn Wishes came out in February 1996, and was rightly lauded, Raygun wrote: “Imagine the lush sonorities of Brian Wilson as inspiration for experimental composer John Cage with Sonic Youth as his nervous back-up band and you’ve got a pretty good clue to Rollerskate Skinny.”

I presented a radio show with my old friend John O’Leary on Cork Campus Radio in the mid-90s and we interviewed Rollerskate Skinny twice. Once in 1995 before the band played that gig in Nancy Spains - at the start of this episode I remind Ken that their DAT machine packed in a few songs into that gig. A few months after Horsedrawn Wishes was released we interviewed Ken. A friend of John’s had been in the US and had bought a pair of Docs. He was given a free CD along with his purchase and it was news to Ken to be told that ‘Speed to My Side’ was included on the Dr. Martins compilation alongside tracks by Ministry, Lush, The Flaming Lips, Cornershop and others. Ken was resigned that these were the sort of things that happened when a band was signed to a major label and laughed as he told us that he had turned on the TV one day to see Naomi Campbell walking down a catwalk to the sound of ‘Speed to My Side’. “It is a bizarre human experience to spent two years working really hard on something and then for these business men to just not do their job very well,” said Ken, when asked we asked whether Warners were promoting the album. “You’ve got that whole dilemma about how much you actually want to attack them about it and how many conversations you want to get into about selling a record when we know that the people how did get to hear it seem to really like it. We got some really good reviews too, but it’s just some weird quirk of fate that it didn’t take off.”

Where do you go from there?

Well, Rollerskate Skinny demoed a third album but it wasn’t to be, the band broke up and went their separate ways. We’d follow the various member’s fortunes through different bands: Ger Griffin and Steve Murray formed Walker before Steve went on to form Empire and then The Radio. Ken Griffin moved to New York and first formed Kid Silver and then Favourite Sons and more recently he’s released three albums with August Wells. He’s soon to put out new music, with Emperor of Icecream guitarist Graham Finn, as High Leaves. The duo have recorded a gorgeous album called Ordinary Nightmare with a host of guest musicians.

Rollerskate Skinny left us with two magnificent albums and a few brilliant EPs – they also gifted us ‘Speed to My Side’, one of the greatest Irish singles ever. I can remember DJing in Sir Henry’s on Fridays with John O’Leary and playing ‘Speed to My Side’. We’d played it for weeks to half-empty floors, determined to make it work. Then finally one night it clicked. As hundreds packed the dancefloor singing in unison: “Nobody ever told me that this sort of thing could come alive,” it seemed to me as if the collective energy in the room would lift the roof right off the famed venue. John and I turned and high-fived, you’d swear we had written the bloody song we were that proud.

For Further Listening:

To Here Knows When column in The Goo on Horsedrawn Wishes…

Horsedrawn Wishes is not on streaming services. Shoulder Voices can be heard below:

August Wells, Ken and John Rauchenberger’s New York-based band have released three albums to date and all are available from Bandcamp.