dik evans

Topic: dik evans

April 8, 2012 in - Comments

Richard “Dik” Evans was a founding member of the Virgin Prunes and guitarist with the band from 1977 until 1984. He later formed Kid Sisters with singer Debbie Skhow. After a line up change they continued as Screech Owls (’88 – ’96). The band released two singles: “Desert / Hey Toreador” and “Pray For Rain / 29 palm trees”. Dik, who is U2 guitarist The Edge’s older brother, was a member of The Hype, who – when Dik left – changed their name to U2.

Richard studied engineering and computer science and holds both a BAI (1980) and MsC (1981) from Trinity College, and a PhD (1996) in Neural Networks from Imperial College London.

As a solo artist, he contributed to composer Daniel Figgis’s Snakes and Ladders festival (2008).

Dik, Gavin Friday, Guggi (and backing vocalist J.G. Thirlwell) were reunited on stage at the “Gavin Friday and Friends” 50th birthday concert at Carnegie Hall (2009) to play the Virgin Prunes’ “Sweethomeunderwhiteclouds” and “Caucasian Walk”. He also joined the line up of the Gavin Friday band to play “Caucasian Walk” at concerts in Stradbally (Electric Picnic) and Dublin on the 2011 ‘catholic’ tour.

Songs by Screech Owls

Hey Toreador

Pray for Rain

Desert

Gavin Friday and Friends at Carnegie Hall – Press Round Up

October 9, 2009 in Reviews - Comments

The reviews are pouring in. Here’s what’s being said in the press about ‘Gavin Friday and Friends’ at Carnegie Hall:

Jon Pareles of the New York Times:
“Mr. Friday has built a latter-day career as an eclectic, cabaret-tinged songwriter who hasn’t forgotten rock. The songs testify to romance and disillusion, while taking unexpected harmonic twists. They can be mournful and yearning, but more frequently turn bitterly cynical. They are haunted by death, wounded by love and often disgusted by daily life.”

Photo by tibetjb

“True to Mr. Friday’s repertory, the concert juxtaposed delicacy and brute force, intimacy and irony. It had tender moments, like Mr. Friday’s opening “Apologia”; duets with Antony Hegarty (of Antony and the Johnsons) on “He Got What He Wanted” and “Angel”; and Mr. Friday’s desolate “You Take Away the Sun,” with the shimmering backup of Bill Frisell on guitar, Hank Roberts on cello and Mr. Seezer on piano.”

Photo by tibetjb

“But the concert’s peak came early, with the reconstituted Virgin Prunes (Dik Evans, Guggi and Gavin Friday), including J. G. Thirwell on additional guitar and vocals, along with Mr. Evans and the singer Guggi from the old band. It bore down on two of its old songs — “Sweet Home Under White Clouds” and “Caucasian Walk” — as insistent, unstoppable drones and imprecations. Even at Carnegie Hall, sung behind music stands by men well past their teens, the menace came through.”

David Fricke of Rolling Stone:
“The silent star of the evening was composer Maurice Seezer, Friday’s longtime songwriting partner. He finally took a bow at the very end. But Friday, who always thought he belonged in Carnegie Hall, sang and acted out his lyrics as if he owned the place, swaggering across the boards, gesturing at the stars and jabbing his forefinger at the front rows with a panache that was part opera star, part Dublin punk. “Do we really need these pop stars?/There’s not enough of me!” he crowed in “Caruso,” a dynamic pairing with singer Eric Mingus. It was a song about the power and pleasures of transformation, sung by a man who took on every role in reach tonight — friend, lover, heathen, glitter boy, Irish poet — and was indisputably himself and in control in every one.”

Article: Prune power – Irish Times

October 3, 2009 in Articles - Comments

From: The Irish Times, October 3, 2009
By: Brian Boyd

PROFILE GAVIN FRIDAY: He led an elite group of avant-garde chancers that included Bono and The Edge. A host of stars, including U2, will take the stage in New York to celebrate the former Virgin Prune’s 50th birthday

LYPTON VILLAGE was a little known area in Ballymun, Dublin. It only ever existed for a few years during the 1970s. Its residents included Fionan Hanvey, David Evans, Paul Hewson and Derek Rowan. You could never find it on a map because it was a virtual village – a psychological place of escape for its inhabitants. Lypton Village had its own laws: art, music and weirdness were good, everything else was bad. It had its own language and its members were christened with new names – which is why Fionan Hanvey, David Evans, Paul Hewson and Derek Rowan are better known today as the musicians Gavin Friday, The Edge and Bono and the artist Guggi.

Virgin Prunes – ‘When art and anarchy collide’

October 6, 2008 in Articles, Interviews - Comments

Irish music magazine State.ie interviewed Gavin Friday about the Virgin Prunes for their most recent issue. The article, ‘When art and anarchy collide’ is available to read online.

Gavin Friday talks Lypton Village

May 4, 2008 in Interviews - Comments

1982 interview from U2 Info Service, by Geoff Parkyn

Apart from the fact that Edge’s older brother Dik Evans plays guitar in The Virgin Prunes, there are links between the two bands that go back to their childhoods, and recently Gavin Friday of the Virgin Prunes shed some light on their names: “The U2 connections were very strong at an early stage because I grew up with Bono, he lived a few doors down from me”.

The friends duly formed into two bands, sharing early gigs such as the Prunes’ 1980 UK debut at the Acklam Hall. Together, they invented a private universe for themselves, called Lypton Village, all initiates speaking “a second language”

“As kids, we used to be bored, we usen’t to go out much. Bono went out and formed U2, and what they were expressing was totally different to what we were expressing, so when The Virgin Prunes formed, although there was this closeness, it was in friendship rather than attitudes and ideas… Like the names: Bono’s name, Guggi gave him that name, and my name, and Davey’s, they’re all names from Lypton Village, and The Edge. It goes back ten years. But as the two bands developed we came to our own identities.

“People have always brought comparisons between the bands, musically. But we’ve never really gone together on musical terms. If I see Bono, I wouldn’t really talk to him about music really. I’d talk about other things. We hate it when people bring it up, cos they say, Hey, you’re in The Virgin Prunes, tell us all about U2. We get that a lot, so we hate U2 connections! It just gets a pain in the arse in this country.

“But there is a weird understanding between us. When we were younger one of our biggest pastimes was, Guggi and Bono were very quick with words, and they used to play a game. All these names, they were just because of the personality. Before the band was even formed I was called Gavin Friday. Most of us reject our names when we first get given them, like when Guggi got his name off Bono he didn’t like it at all. But we have a feeling that we have to accept our names whether we like them or not.

“And I remember once, Bono was going through some way out trip in his head, wanted to be cool, and he kept on calling himself Paul Vox, and we said, Don’t be stupid, Bono’s a really good name – Bono Vox. And eventually what’s natural you just have to accept”.

Hot Press magazine: The return of the slaughterhouse six

November 5, 2004 in Interviews - Comments

By Peter Murphy

Back in their terrifying heyday, they threw pigs’ heads around on stage, covered themselves in muck, provided Marilyn Manson with a career and wrote ‘Community Games’ for Aidan Walsh. Having escaped the clutches of a sinister born-again Christian turned transvestite, they’re now making movies with Neil Jordan, dining with Damien Hirst and consorting with Tony Blair. All in all, it’s been a long, strange trip for The Virgin Prunes

Pigs. Swine. Muic. Stuck like a pig. Bleed like a pig. Squeal like a pig. Pighead. Piggyback. Piggytails. Pig’s puddens. Pigswill. Pigshit. Pigpen. Pigsty. Piggy in the middle. Pig’s feet and hairy buttermilk. Piggy from Lord Of The Flies. Pig and Runt from Disco Pigs. Frank The Pig says hello. Pink Floyd’s inflatable pig. Trent Reznor singing, ‘Hey piggy-pig’ on Nine Inch Nails’ The Downward Spiral, recorded in a house whose walls the Manson acolytes daubed with blood. ‘Piggies’ from The White Album. Muic the winged pig, the last creature you see before vanishing into Dublin airport. The Pig Children, the first people you speak to on a Wednesday evening in London at the end of Septicember.

Welcome to Pigville.