At long last, Dollar for Your Dreams gets the full-length CD release we’ve been waiting for. Initially released in 1987 on cassette only, the cassette version has become hard and expensive to obtain in recent years. If you did manage to get your hands on one, what do you play it on?
The Radiators were the pioneers of Irish punk, full stop. Before U2 were playing church halls, these northside misfits were spitting out snarling anthems and giving the finger to showbands and bloated 70s rock. TV Tube Heart and Ghostown have rightly earned near-legendary cult status, but Dollar for Your Dreams, their reunion live offering, often got lost in the analogue shuffle—no more.
This one’s older, wiser, and soaked in the heartbreak and dispare of 1980s post-punk Ireland. There’s still bite—”Television Screen” punches like a knuckleduster to the jaw—but also reflection, melody, and maturity. Philip Chevron (RIP), the band’s beating heart, had by then joined The Pogues, and that influence seeps through. It’s punk with soul, politics with poetry.
For fans of Irish punk, this isn’t just a reissue—it’s a resurrection. If Dollar for Your Dreams slipped past you the first time, no excuses now. This is essential listening from one of Ireland’s most important and criminally underrated bands. A proper dose of Dublin defiance.
https://theradiatorsfromspace.bandcamp.com/album/dollar-for-your-dreams-expanded-version