Toasted Heretic

Singer (and now novelist) Julian Gough reminisces: “Toasted Heretic started out as teenagers in the late 1980s, recording cassette albums in Neil’s parents’ living room, in Galway, in the wild, wet, and windy west of Ireland. It was joyously DIY. We didn’t even have a bass guitar, we just tuned down a regular one. Our drum machine was made by a toy company. When we finished an album, we would send the Dave Fanning Show a copy of the master tape – Dave would play us on national radio that night, and read out our address. Hundreds of people posted a fiver to Neil’s parents’ house, and we sent them a cassette, and a packet of Tayto Cheese & Onion crisps. Lots of our songs name-checked writers, and books, so we started selling the albums through bookshops. We were just making it up. It was fun.

But by the time we recorded Another Day, Another Riot, in 1991, we’d sold thousands of albums, we were in a real studio, and we had a top ten hit in Ireland (“Galway and Los Angeles”). We were packing out lively little venues like the Baggot Inn on consecutive nights, we were Single of the Week in Melody Maker in the UK, we were getting national airplay in France… I was worried we might get famous, and worried what that might do to me, and us. I didn’t feel ready for it; I didn’t feel stable enough to handle it. Luckily we avoided that catastrophe!"