Rooney (UK band)

Rooney were a British DIY lo-fi band that released three EPs and three albums between 1997 and 2000, notably the debut album Time on Their Hands which received much support from John Peel.[1] Initially a solo project by Paul Rooney, an artist and musician, the project became a gigging band when Colin Cromer and Ian S Jackson joined in 1999 prior to the band's first and only John Peel session that year.[2] The project ended in 2002 when Paul Rooney decided to focus on other performance projects and gallery works.[3]

This article is about the UK band. For the US band, see Rooney (band).

Rooney were musically reminiscent of lo-fi contemporaries such as Arab Strap, Casiotone for the Painfully Alone, and Spare Snare, earlier bands like Sebadoh and (early) Pavement, along with northern English post-punk (particularly Half Man Half Biscuit and The Fall).[4] The band's approach to lyrics — the deadpan delivery of absurdly banal descriptions of insignificant objects and events — is, however, quite unique.

History
Rooney at the Magnet, Liverpool, 1999

Artist Paul Rooney recorded the first Rooney EP (this is not the US band of the same name), Got Up Late, in October 1997 in Newcastle-under-Lyme,[5] using a mini-disc four-track recorder with Paul Rooney on all instruments and vocals. Initially only five copies were self-released on Common Culture Records. The lo-fi music incorporated sometimes humorous — but often unsettling — spoken-sung lyrics describing everyday, mundane activities and observations, an approach which was consistent across all Rooney releases.[5][6] BBC Radio 1's John Peel and BBC Radio Merseyside's Roger Hill played tracks from the record,[7][8] and from the subsequent EP Different Kinds of Road Signs.

The debut album Time on Their Hands, released September 1998,[9][10] was distributed by Cargo Records (UK), and featured the tracks Went to Town,[11] Into The Lens,[12] Throw Away,[13] Touts,[14] Scratched, Walked Round The Estate, and Fountainbridge amongst others. The writer Michael Bracewell described the album thus: '... [encountering] Time on Their Hands, 1998, by the group Rooney, the listener might be reminded of any and all of the following: Patrik Fitzgerald's dour requiem to hope, Tonight, the later songs of Ivor Cutler, the Intense Emotion Society of middle period Dexy's Midnight Runners, the industrial melancholy of Throbbing Gristle's Twenty Jazz Funk Greats and the ambiguous intellectualism of The Television Personalities, notably their re-issue, ...And Don't the Kids Just Love It.'[6] The album was widely and favourably reviewed,[15][16][17][18][19][20] including notices by Stewart Lee in The Sunday Times,[21] Tom Ridge of The Wire[22] and Gary Valentine of Mojo magazine.[23] The continued support of John Peel earned a place for Went to Town at number 44 in John Peel's Festive Fifty of 1998,[24] and a Rooney Peel session in 1999.[25] The album received extensive airplay, including BBC Radio 3's Mixing It.[13]

By 1999 Rooney had become a band with new members Colin Cromer and Half Man Half Biscuit/Jegsy Dodd and the Sons of Harry Cross ex-member Ian S Jackson (some of the final performances included Paul Rafferty, who was later a member of Hot Club de Paris), and were operating out of Liverpool, intermittently gigging at venues such as The Dublin Castle, London, and The Briton's Protection, Manchester. As well as conventional gigs the band appeared in events at art venues[26] — Ormeau Baths, Belfast; Grizedale Arts, Cumbria;[27] the My Eye Hurts project at Green Room, Manchester and Thread Waxing Space, New York.[28][29] The second Rooney album On Fading Out was released in 1999,[30][31][32] and the project ostensibly ended with the third and final album, On the Closed Circuit, in November 2000,[33] though gigs continued sporadically until late 2002.[34]

In the years that followed Paul Rooney concentrated on artworks, however he also undertook a series of collaborative 'variety' performances, and toured a rock opera – with various performers – but this time as The NWRA House Band.[34] He referred to the history (real and fictionalized) of the band Rooney in a number of his artworks and stories, references which usually centred on singer Dermot Bucknall from the pre-1997 period of the band.[35][36] In 2006 comedian and writer Stewart Lee curated the Rooney track Into the Lens for the CD/book The Topography of Chance, which also included Mark E Smith, Derek Bailey and Simon Munnery.[37] In 2014 the three Rooney albums were made available digitally on iTunes, Spotify and other streaming platforms,[38] and the Rooney Peel session was repeated in 2016 on Gideon Coe's BBC 6 Music show.[39] An EP of the session, entitled This Job's Forever - The Peel Session, was later released on Owd Scat Records in 2020. At time of writing there is muted to be an album of material from 2000-2006 planned.[40]

Discography

EPs

Got Up Late, Common Culture (1997)

Different Kinds of Road Signs, Common Culture (1998)

Foreign People Speaking, Common Culture (1999)

This Job's Forever - The Peel Session, Owd Scrat (2020)

Albums

Time on Their Hands, Common Culture (1998)

On Fading Out, Common Culture (1999)

On the Closed Circuit, Common Culture (2000)

Compilations

Subculture Fanzine CD1, Subculture (2001)

Ua2, Underwood Audio (2002)

Radio Radio (with Rob Hughes), Revolver (2004)

The Topography of Chance curated by Stewart Lee, Sound Arts Network (2006)

gollark: I have been meaning to repurpose a spare very outdated tablet as a wall-mounted information display of some sort but never found much to put on it. Perhaps that would be "useful".
gollark: By my rough count, it's only about 300 nanoideologies per person.
gollark: I mean, obviously.
gollark: I guess you'd want to reweight slightly so that you don't pick everything from Marxism (because it has a ton of variants).
gollark: It should be easy enough to automatically extract all the names from this and then manually filter out some of the things which don't really work on a calendar-type thing.

References
  1. Doherty, Claire. "The Work of Paul Rooney" (PDF).
  2. Biggs, Bryan (2017). "Paul Rooney".
  3. Grizedale. "Paul Rooney".
  4. Biggs, Bryan. "Paul Rooney".
  5. "Situations : Atmosphere; the work of Paul Rooney : Claire Doherty" (PDF). Placeinternational.org. Retrieved 13 July 2014.
  6. Bracewell, Michael. 'The Art of Paul Rooney', in Got Up Late the Other Day: Paul Rooney artist monograph. Firstsite, 2006.
  7. "playlists/1998/05". avistic.demon.co.uk. Retrieved 6 March 2014.
  8. "Common Culture". Frieze Magazine. frieze.com. Retrieved 30 March 2014.
  9. "Rooney* - Time On Their Hands (CD, Album) at Discogs". discogs.com. Retrieved 6 March 2014.
  10. "Common Culture". The Guardian. Retrieved 6 March 2014.
  11. "Rooney – Went to Town – Listen and discover music at Last.fm". last.fm. Retrieved 30 March 2014.
  12. "Rooney – Into the Lens – Listen and discover music at Last.fm". last.fm. Retrieved 30 March 2014.
  13. "15th March, 1999 | Mixing It". mixingit.hubmed.org. Retrieved 6 March 2014.
  14. "playlists/1998/06". avistic.demon.co.uk. Retrieved 30 March 2014.
  15. Clark, Robert. 'Rooney Tunes'. The Guardian (The Guide). May 1999
  16. Bunn, Jonathan. 'Rooney, Time on Their Hands'. Sleazenation magazine. Jan. 1999
  17. Mackintosh, David. 'Time on Your Hands COMCD009'. AN Magazine. Nov. 1998
  18. Oxley, Steve. 'Sound Bites'. Interview with Paul Rooney. The Big Issue magazine. Nov. 1998
  19. Mason Neil. 'Rooney, Time on Their Hands'. Melody Maker. Oct. 1998
  20. "MusicDish e-Journal - Rooney - Time On Their Hands". Musicdish.com. Retrieved 13 July 2014.
  21. Lee, Stewart. 'Rooney, Time on Their Hands'. The Sunday Times. Oct. 1998
  22. Ridge, Tom. 'Rooney, Time on Their Hands'. The Wire magazine. Nov.1998
  23. Valentine, Gary. 'Rooney, Time on Their Hands'. Mojo magazine. Nov. 1998
  24. "Rocklist.net...John Peel's Festive 50's - 1977 - 2003  ..." rocklistmusic.co.uk. Retrieved 6 March 2014.
  25. "Rooney (1999) | Peel Sessions". peel.hubmed.org. Retrieved 6 March 2014.
  26. Briers, David. ‘Small Battles’. Art Monthly. Nov. 2000
  27. "Grizedale Arts: Paul Rooney". grizedale.org. Retrieved 30 March 2014.
  28. Parker, Graham. 'My Eye Hurts'. Art Monthly. Oct. 1999
  29. Archives of American Art. "Detailed description of the Thread Waxing Space records, 1980s-2001, bulk 1991-2001 | Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution". aaa.si.edu. Retrieved 30 March 2014.
  30. Lee, Stewart. 'Rooney, On Fading Out'. The Sunday Times. April 2000
  31. Beasley, Mark. 'Rooney'. Untitled magazine. Spring 2000
  32. McGill, Hannah. 'Rooney, On Fading Out'. The List (Scotland). Oct. 1999
  33. Lee, Stewart. 'Rooney, On the Closed Circuit'. The Sunday Times. Dec. 2000
  34. "SATURDAY: The N.W.R.A. Variety Night". Cubitt Artists. 8 June 2002. Retrieved 8 January 2016.
  35. Gallery, Castlefield (18 March 2005). "PureScreen #9: PureScreen DVD *01 – Launch Party & Screening – Castlefield Gallery". Castlefieldgallery.co.uk. Retrieved 8 January 2016.
  36. "Akerman Daly". Akermandaly.com. Retrieved 8 January 2016.
  37. "ireallylovemusic › the topography of chance – curated by stewart lee". Ireallylovemusic.co.uk. 29 November 2006. Retrieved 13 July 2014.
  38. "iTunes - Music - Rooney". Itunes.apple.com. Retrieved 13 July 2014.
  39. "The Label of Love is Fruits de Mer Records, Gideon Coe - BBC Radio 6 Music". BBC. Retrieved 19 January 2018.
  40. "Rooney". Rooney1.bandcamp.com. Retrieved 19 January 2018.
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