Michael J. Sheehy

I will never forget those pictures that hung from the walls of the various places I lived as a child. A Sacred Heart of Jesus; you know the ones with a red light bulb on a little ledge just beneath the picture of Our Lord baring His burning heart for all to see and the other was a huge framed photo of Elvis circa 1974 resplendent in a white rhinestone encrusted jumpsuit slashed to the midriff, guitar slung about his hips, jet-black hair, bronze skin, a little overweight but not yet the bloated grotesque he would soon become. In our home Jesus was God; but Elvis wasn’t far behind.



At five years old I was beginning to show a little artistic flair so my teacher got me to depict the Sorrowful Mysteries of The Rosary to be displayed in the church during Easter week. I took to the task with relish; I particularly enjoyed drawing The Scourging At The Pillar and The Crucifixion; the blood, the whip, the nails, the crown of thorns and the foreboding black sky over Golgotha; the suffering of Jesus really inspired me. I was working from my imagination and what I’d seen in the epic TV series Jesus Of Nazareth starring Robert Powell.



As a teenager I began singing in the church choir encouraged and inspired by the parish priest Father Pat Brown who had one of the greatest tenor voices I have ever heard. I met Mother Teresa and sang for her when she visited our church; she gave me a Missionaries of Charity medal (she was handing them out like lollipops) that I wore around my neck for a year or so. The first time I went down on a girl, the medal kept getting in the way. Maybe it was God’s way of letting me know I shouldn’t have been eating pussy outside of Holy wedlock.



I quickly realized I had failed miserably in my quest to be Christ-like so I thought I’d have a crack at being Elvis for a while; naturally this didn’t work out too well either. I formed the band Dream City Film Club, we signed to Beggars Banquet in 1996 and made some records. Sometime during 1999 the group imploded in a hail of fists and forked tongues. My hair began falling out so I continued making records as a bald solo artiste mainly because I had no idea how to do anything else. After three artistically over reaching but commercially under achieving albums I was dropped by Beggars Banquet and spent the next five years contemplating my navel. In 2007 I decided to start making music again.