Our very own Mark McCabe. Where do we start?
Mark McCabe can be rightfully be called an Irish Dance Music Icon.
“Maniac 2000” spent 10 weeks on top of the Irish Charts from March to May in the millennium year.
2020 will mark 'Maniacs' 20th Birthday and still new generations of club goers and music fans alike discover and fall in love with 'Maniac 2000'.
Mc Cabe's fan base is still growing in 2019 with releases such 'I'm Feeling it' with Sunset Brothers, 'Time To Groove' with LMC and a remix of Gavin James' 'Nervous' heading for 150 million Spotify streams.
Not to mention the many club and festival appearances in Ireland and across the world.
He continues to showcase and support the best of Irish and International talent on iGnite on iRadio
iGNITE on iRadio Saturdays from 17:50Mark McCabe in 2019
We talk to Mark as he is nestled safely inside the confines of his studio "We've been through so much together ... I have two kids but these are all my other children and they're much better behaved and don't speak back as much."
We Jump straight into the latest offering from Mc Cabe, a collaboration with Siights, A Dublin/Glasgow alliance with both being accomplished musicians and songwriters respectively; they met by chance in summer 2016 in a house studio hidden away in LA writing tracks for other artists.
SIIGHTSQuestioned on how a collaboration between them came about, Mark responded with: "I've been a big fan of SIIGHTS for quite a while, so they've been bubbling under for quite some time, so it's Maya and Tony. Maya used to play with Hozier and Tony is from Glasgow, so they kind of got together and I've just been watching what they've been doing and I really liked their style. And I wrote this track with them in mind and just sent them off an instrumental and they came back to me with the vocal that they wrote, which I think is really, really good. We don't know each other that well as of yet, but I've been watching them from afar for quite some time, so it's really great to have them on this track."
LISTEN To Mark McCabe & SIIGHTS - Don't Let Me Go
How does a Mark McCabe collaboration work we wonder? Is there a Mark McCabe little black book?
"I mean, the black book is in my mind. I've got all these people that I really like and I admire and I would love to do something with. And technology allows that, that you can get in touch with people a lot easier than it used to be and you can fire them over something and they can work on it on a laptop somewhere and then fire it back to you and you can collaborate that way, and it's all about collaborations these days. There are loads of people I'd love to get through. I'm working on that slowly but surely."
Finding someone that you want to work with today is 100 times easier before the days of no Internet and no social media but it seems if someone has stayed off all forms of social media then you need to go all out, Liam Neeson in Taken style : "There are a few people at this moment in time that I'm trying to track down that it's impossible. I can't find them, even in this wonderful age of everybody being online and so accessible, there are people who prefer to remain offline and they do a really good job of it. And when you're offline, it's actually pretty hard to get in touch with people unless you kind of go to the country they're in and knock on the door of where they potentially might be. There is somebody currently working very hard to find them, track them down."
Mark wouldn't tell us who he is trying to track down in case it compromises the operation and we would rather hear the completed track rather than a scoop. We will keep our ear to the ground.
Mark McCabe for Eurovision?
The AO Show on iRadio recently spoke to Aimee who revealed that she and Mark McCabe had put a song together for Eurosong 2013. Ireland's qualification process for the Eurovision Song Contest.
How would Mark McCabe restore Irish glory at the Eurovision?
"Like everybody in this country, I love the Eurovision, but I hate what we've been doing for the last decade, at least. I grew up, I suppose, with Paul Harrington and Charlie McGettigan, and Rock'n'Roll Kids. That was Eurovision for me and it was such a good song and it was at the end of our golden run with Eurovision"
Paul Harrington and Charlie McGettigan. Eurovision Winners 1994CONTD: "And then it all just went horribly wrong. I've made two attempts."
"One was with Aimee where we put together a song and she was entered into Eurosong. We were in the final two and I think we won the judges vote, but we lost the public vote, narrowly. She, unfortunately, didn't go that year. I think we placed last completely, and she should have gone because she was definitely the best there. And in terms of a song, a person, a package, she was really well-placed to do well."
"Last year, I got a call to see if I would be interested in producing "Together. So I did. So I produced together and we went out again and we did much better than we've ever done before. We're back now with a song that I think just isn't really ... it's a beautiful song, it's a nice song and it sounds good on the radio, but it's just not there in terms of what the expectation for Eurovision is. And when you've got three minutes to make an impact, you have to do something, which is either like what Ryan did last year, which is a really beautiful song that has a really deep meaning, or you do something outrageous. And if you sit in the middle, you just get forgotten about and you just get lost."
"But it's a tough one because there's so much talent in this country and everybody says, "Oh, we should send such and such," or, "They should go, wouldn't it be great?" I mean, can you imagine if somebody like Gavin James or Picture This or The Academic went and did Eurovision for us? it would blow it out of the water."
Ireland's Entry for Eurovision 2019
'Sarah McTernan - 22'
"I think we've taken two steps back this year. I think we took a step forward last year. We kind of reestablished ourselves in the competition with a decent song, good staging, people fell in love with it. And I think we've just taken two steps back. At this point, to be honest, I just give up."
3rd time lucky for a Mark McCabe Eurovision production?
"If I had the right person and the right song, I would happily produce it because I love producing, I love making music and I love the thought of being able to put something on that Eurovision stage and create a moment that would really affect and touch people. But I don't know, I mean, the whole selection process now it's all through RTE. They do it and they do what they do. That's kind of it, really."
Summer 2019
A DJ thrives in the Summer months. Warmer temperatures, less rain, beer garden opened, terrace parties, sets on boats cruising on open waters and many, many festivals make a DJ come alive, what is Mark looking forward to this year?
"Just looking forward to getting out there. Looking forward to this ... There are a few gigs that happen every year that I'm lucky to be involved with and they're really good because you're driving there and it's bright, and when you're driving home it's still bright at three or four in the morning and everybody's in a good mood and you can play in a T-shirt and you don't have to wear a jacket"
And a lot of stuff is outdoors and everybody's just much happier, I think, during the summer. I'm just looking forward to the summer of 2019 in general. I think it's going to be a good summer. I think we're in a good place as a country, screw Brexit, screw all of that. It's time to just kick back and relax and enjoy the six weeks or eight weeks that we do actually get the chance to go out and really enjoy ourselves. I'm looking forward to it.
