B-Side the Leeside: Southern Fried - a Cork compendium for the new millennium

The latest of our series on Cork's greatest records features collections compiled by promoter Joe Kelly and alternative fashion house Primetime, to showcase the city's music in the Noughties

Joe Kelly and Lulu Heckett, and their Southern Fried compilations.

His name was Pat O’Sullivan, and his dream was to one day hear his music on the radio. So when in late 1999 he learned that a new record label in Cork was seeking submissions, he put one of his songs on a disc, slipped it into an envelope and set down his details in spidery hand-writing.  

'This Song Is U' is a heartbreaking ballad, Sinatra-esque in its melancholy. O’Sullivan was in his seventies; his voice brims with the wisdom and ennui that come with a life lived almost to the end of the line. The moment they heard it, the team behind the Southern Fried compilation were floored.