Tom Dunne: Finding refuge in America behind the neon shamrocks

We were often happy to play gigs in Irish bars in the US, even if the emigrant audience weren't always so receptive 

Touring the US often wasn't a very lucrative exercise, so Something Happens gladly played occasional Irish bars. Picture: iStock

Neon shamrocks, an ever-present in Irish American bars. The shamrock represented a lot of what a new emigrant in the USA might like to forget about the old sod, and the fact that it was now neon, a lot of what you’d like to ignore about your new home. But it didn’t work like that, the Neon Shamrock would find you anywhere.

The basic economics of touring the US in the late 1980s or early ‘90s as an indie band were not pretty. US-based bands, like Scream, the one Dave Grohl was briefly a member of before Nirvana, found a way to tour and sell records, but it was a torturous undertaking.