B-Side the Leeside: Belsonic Sound - Trouble

An awesome band on the live circuit in Ireland in the late 1980s-early '90s, a chance encounter led to the reggae-soaked outfit releasing an album in the Netherlands  

Belsonic Sound at the  Lark by the Lee in 1990, at Lee Fields, Cork. L-R, Finny Corcoran, Gene Russell and Noel Barrett. Picture: Eddie O'Hare

One rainy afternoon in 1991, Gene Russell eased into the driver’s seat of his Volkswagen Beetle and retrieved from the glove compartment a battered cassette demo. Also in the car was a Dutch man he’d met just a few hours previously. Russell popped the tape into the stereo. From out of the speakers blasted a riotous mix of reggae and rock. As the wind lightly buffeted the vehicle and the downpour continued, the two strangers bopped along to the music.

“I was down in Kinsale having a singsong,” recalls the former bassist with Cork reggae-punks The Belsonic Sound. “We met these Dutch guys and got talking. It just happened that one of them was a radio producer from the Hague. And our band had just recorded a 12 inch single. He asked me to play it for him – so I put it on in my car. He said that when it came out we should send it to him.”