On a cold November evening in ’89, a pair of tired and insignificant troubadours, the last survivors of an infamous family five-piece from Tuam, took to the feckless stage in the Warwick Hotel, as they had done without fail every other Sunday for the past 28 years.
As ever, for a shilling and a penance they promised a night of ballroom dancing and other earthly delights. In truth, this venial stretched to little more than the faint hope of a skid on the floor with a tall ham-handed stranger followed by a stale Garibaldi and a raffle ticket if you were lucky.
The band was led by Eddie Quinn, a decrepit shadow of a man in a monkey suit. A musical vessel overflowing with talent who came out of the womb in 1916, Eddie fought in a war, buried two wives and killed a tinker’s horse for his sins. Once crowned by the deaf and the delusional as a virtuoso, now crowned under an apricot rug, Eddie wheezed nostalgia to his saxophone whilst hanging onto the dream of eternal youth.