King Kong Company
The Kong Company story so far…. They’re a band from Waterford, five blokes, a girl and a
Boxhead. In 2011 they started putting out one video a month, put on the first gig in 2012 and
played Indiependence on the back of a truck. There was almost the same amount of people at
the gig as was in the band. But soon after Body & Soul heard a track and booked them for an
early Sunday evening at Electric Picnic where they got lucky and played to, maybe, thousands.
Thinking they had now made it, they tried to get a Dublin gig and, a well known, but won’t be
named, Dublin venue turned them down saying they’d be lucky to get 100 people to it. But the
Sugar Club offered them a gig, and it sold out. Then countless sold out gigs at the Opera
House, the Button Factory, The Academy and even a sold out gig at The Olympia (yes, just the
one, they’re not The Script).
They’ve also stuck 13,000 people in a tent at Electric Picnic for Sunday Mass, had thousands of
hedonists lay siege to the Body & Soul arena for their stuffed to the gills lock in that closed the
legendary stage. And in between there’s been tracks, an album produced by The Prodigy’s
producer Neil McLellan, a Buckfast beer, Glastonbury, a robot, All Together Now, late nights,
parties, early mornings, ferries, Prague, London, Newcastle, the engagement proposal, broken
down vans, Spraoi, a Best Band in Ireland award and stuff that should never end up in print or
online. Then some sort of pandemic, a weird far flung feeling that was miles away from the
pandemonium of a King Kong Company gig. It’s time to bring it back.