OH BABY, I’M DREAMING OF MUNDY

mundy

Edmund Enright was born in Birr, County Offaly, Ireland in 1976. Adopting the moniker of Mundy, he moved to Dublin at the age of 18 initially performing as a busker and later at open-mic nights

By the age of 20, he had signed with Epic Records with much expected of him, especially after one of his early songs, To You I Bestow, was included on the soundtrack for Baz Luhrmann’s modern update on Romeo + Juliet.

Mundy’s debut album, Jelly Legs, didn’t do anything like as well as his label bosses hoped, and none of the singles lifted from it got anywhere near the charts. By the age of 24 he had been dropped.

Two years later, and completely as a result of the royalties he had earned from the Romeo and Juliet soundtrack (which sold a staggering 11 million copies worldwide), he set up his own label Camcor Records upon which, since 2002, he has released six albums at regular intervals.

He remains hugely popular in his home country, regularly touring, often as the main support to internationally famous acts as well as under his own steam, while he is on many of the bills every years on the festival circuit. He’s enjoyed #1 singles and albums in Ireland but his music just hasn’t travelled well in terms of sales.

I picked up three of his mid 90s singles from a bargain bin after reading that he was possibly the Irish equivalent of Roddy Frame. I went in with reasonably high expectations but they weren’t really matched. I played the songs again recently for the first time in the best part of two decades and thought they weren’t all that bad, albeit they have that mid-90s production values that date them.

mp3 : Mundy – Life’s A Cinch
mp3 : Mundy – To You I Bestow
mp3 : Mundy – Pardon Me

You’ll hear all sorts of snatches of stuff that will bring other singers and bands to mind.

Enjoy

2 thoughts on “OH BABY, I’M DREAMING OF MUNDY

  1. Sony gave away an absolute ton of Mundy singles in 1996 to try and get him established, but to no avail. This explains why they turn up in charity shops with such frequency to this day. It’s hard to see why he failed from this distance. His music isn’t necessarily my cup of tea, but it’s no worse than some of the stuff that was selling in big numbers at that time.

  2. I’ve got the lp 24 star hotel which is one of those that I like listening to but for some reason never prompted me to go out and try anymore of his stuff. Hadn’t heard any of these 3. It has made me think of what used to clog up the bargain bins of Boots when I was at school. Someone somewhere orders a load of the Teardrop Explodes and Soft Cell 2nd lps which cluttered up the bargain bin for weeks afterwards, same with a Wild swans 12″. I could never figure it out as the only people who ever served on the record counter were middle aged women. I loved the idea that maybe one was secret Julian Cope fan. I now sadly realsie that one must have been swayed by a smooth talking regional sales rep

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