Tickets on general sale Friday 6th February at 9am.
Following their comeback tours of the UK and US in 2025 and the deluxe vinyl reissue of their much-loved The Three E.P.’s The Beta Band now bring the reunion to Dublin, featuring the classic line up of Steve Mason (guitar / vocals), Richard Greentree (bass), John Maclean (samples / keyboard) & Robin Jones (drums).
Arguably one of the most acclaimed and loved bands of the time, by both fans and their musical peers alike, The Beta Band formed in 1996. Innovative and singular, The Beta Band’s unique musical and aesthetic approach to everything they did set them far apart from their musical contemporaries. Together for a relatively short period of time, their three albums, The Beta Band (1999), Hot Shots II (2001) & Heroes To Zeroes (2004), would nonetheless help define them as one of the most exciting and cherished bands of their generation.
Talking about getting back together for the tour, the band said:
The Beta Band, as everyone knows, is an institution, like Bedlam, or the RSPCA, and as such has its own indelible stain on the bedsheet of Western culture. It was the great John Noakes who said “you have to shake it out at least once every couple of decades, if you want to know what the moths did”. So with both those facts in mind, we realise the time has come to show the wall the Luminol, K*ll the lights and hit the UV.
I discovered the Beta Band, like I discovered a lot of great music, basically through eventually surrendering to the enthused urgings of a mate who was cooler than me. He continually evangelized about the EP’s. I was lost to the concert hall and firmly ensconced on the dancefloor by then and highly resistant but quite taken by the idea that a band would bring out extended plays rather than singles. When I did check them out, I was instantly smitten by their originality and power.
The band, therefore, were pivotal for me in terms of my own musical journey, in that they
represented a gateway back into indie guitar music, which I’d basically given up since becoming obsessed with rave and acid house.
The Beta Band were definitely a band for the cool cognoscenti- like my buddy- the ones you
make a bit of a tit of yourself trying to convert quite straight boring people to.
The emotions they induced were a kind of throwback to school days when you were very
pompous and prescriptive about what you liked, and derisive towards non-believers. It’s a
testimony to the power of the music that they could take me to the raw state of the younger man.
I took it personally that they didn’t hit the mainstream commercial base. At least two of the three albums they made deserved quadruple platinum status. Hot Shots II and Heroes to Zeros are permanently lodged very high in my top one hundred albums of all time.
So, the return of the Beta Band has me moving into the same mode of immature, adolescent anticipation. Everyone should have the Beta Band albums and EPs in their collection. It still kind of annoys me – in fact it bugs the shit out of me – that most of them don’t. And that really is something.
Irvine Welsh – February 2025.
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