20/04/2024
In 1981 , I was 16. I went to bed with a transistor radio my uncle had given to me . A brother of my grandfather, he was a Cistercian father in a parish in California . He visited yearly. It was a time when pirate radio was at its height . Radio Dublin had split into a number of alternative stations . ARD Alternative Radio Dublin based in Whitehall Dublin 9 and the Big D in Camden st. The Big D broadcast on 273 m on MW band ( now defunct) as VHF/FM moved into the preferred format for technical listening. On that night , the radio was playing John Lennons IMAGINE non stop. The BiG D was sending out something very unusual. Word started to filter through that there had been an incident at a night club in the north of the city . The music , the same music played and replayed and word came that the incident was increasingly moving into an emergency situation. A transistor radio on 273 MW bought the news. John Lennons Imagine punctuated the updates . The horror of the night unfolded slowly. By daybreak the world was different. I was helping with my Dad in a pub in parkgate st . Some nights , we often stayed over, sleeping upstairs over the pub. I listened in that room . The next day , grown men , hard men , sat silent in the bar . The city was silent as word came and the numbers rose & rose & rose. Whispered asks to strangers , if they had family in Coolock or Raheny or a dozen other whispered parishes. The news came & came again and again. Harder each time. A city looking northward and wondering who might not come home . In the background John Lennon asked us all to Imagine.