RTE 2fm DJ Will Leahy looks back on the golden years of Electric Dreams ’80s night in The George. The night is being revived in Dolan’s this weekend at an access all areas event, Will Leahy’s Electric Dreams vs Saved by the ’90s.
IT was a different era, an era before the smoking ban, before late night bars and it was the perfect romp of nostalgia for a generation brought up on MTV USA and Top of the Pops.
Electric Dreams with Will Leahy, or as it was locally known, The Eighties Night at the George, ran for an impressive six years in which 400,000 people came through the door to dance to Madonna, Bryan Adams and Nena’s 99 Red Balloons and the inevitable slow set, almost unheard of in clubs in the ’00s.
Will Leahy with his friend Colm O’Brien ran the night that was the busy club in Limerick city in the 2000s. Talking to Limerick Post, Will Leahy explained that the idea for Electric Dreams came from the movie ‘The Wedding Singer’, Adam Sandler’s classic set in 1985.
“I saw ‘The Wedding Singer’ in 1998. At the time there was this massive ABBA revival and the ’70s were everywhere, every time you went outside the door you saw a poster for an ABBA tribute band. I said to myself that my generation now are the right age for this! I had a history with The Royal George. I worked there in the ’90s. It was the right venue. The people we were aiming at grew up in The Royal George in clubs Tropics and Fernandos.”
The club ran from 1999 until 2004 when the venue was sold but it was only on its second attempt that the club found its success. The management at The Royal George initially gave Will four weeknights to establish the club.
“They wouldn’t give me a night but they gave me four Thursdays. I foolishly put them on in the month of August. We got about 120 people and that was me begging and borrowing, asking people to come.”
But Will knew he had something. He eventually got Friday nights, starting in January 1999 and by Valentine’s night the club was full with over a thousand coming, with regular buses from Adare bringing in punters to The George.
“There was with no advertising, no Internet, no Twitter and no facebook. It just caught on. It was like what Copperface Jacks is today. It was the right place, right time, right age group. We ran until the day the hotel was sold on Valentine’s Day 2004.”
The Eighties Night was revived for last Summer’s Culture and Chips Festival. Will revived all the ’80s classics to a full house at The Spiegeltent after Hermitage Green’s gig.
“As I said that night, there wasn’t a babysitter available in the town.”
https://youtu.be/q-rquAqtAAo
Will Leahy has been on air with RTE for 20 years. His Saturday morning magazine show, a mix of music, entertainment updates and sport in the early 2000s was the second most successful show in the history of 2fm after Gerry Ryan’s morning show.
Today, as well as his weekend shows at 6pm on 2fm, Will also hosts an ’80s show on RTE’s digital channel RTE GOLD, 1pm on Saturdays and Sundays.
“RTE Gold is doing really well but it very much under the radar because only 41 per cent of the population can hear it on DAB.”
Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB) can be received in Limerick, Cork and Dublin. As well as RTE Gold, the digital channel carries RTE Chill, RTE Pulse and RTE 2XM catering to alternative music.
“People don’t know that RTE has an indie station, they don’t market it at the moment. This is what RTE should be doing, filling the void that commercial radio won’t fill.”
Last year, Leahy received a PPI award for his radio documentary ‘50 Years of Irish Clubbing’ and hopes are high for another award for his excellent retrospective on the infamous Féile Trip to Tipp festival in the ’90s.
Will has a programme on Mrs Brown’s Boys in the works at the moment.
“Mrs Brown’s Boys began as a two minute a day soap opera in 1999 on Radio Two.”.
Will returns to live action this weekend, bringing back all the classics from Limerick’s best loved Eighties night fondly remember by the thousands who flocked to The George on Friday’s in the ’00s.
Hermitage Green play Live at the Big Top this Sunday and afterwards the party moves to Dolan’s Warehouse for Will Leahy – Electric Dreams Vs Saved by the ’90s, an access all areas event, happening over three rooms in Dolan’s this Sunday night May 1.
In the second room DJ Screech will be lashing out the classic hits of the ’90s. Expect anything from Backstreet Boys to Chemical Brothers, Whigfield to Nirvana and of course, Prince.
https://youtu.be/1Lmq6RDn5O8
