Block Rockin’ Beats: Back with another one at the Marquee in Cork 

“When we play the Marquee on the 12th of July, it’s going to be exactly thirty years to the day when I started my DJ career,” says Block Rockin’ Beats’ radio presenter and live disc-jockey Dec Pierce over the phone, a warm and friendly voice conveying a long-held grá for dance music and club culture that’s matured alongside him over the decades.

“I started off DJing in a pirate radio station in Dublin on the 12th of July 1995, exactly 30 years. The reason I know that is because my dad has a diary from 1995, and in it, he wrote, on the 12th of July, ‘Dec’s first radio show’, and it was on a pirate radio station in Dublin.”

A product of the 1990s, Pierce was part of a generation that witnessed firsthand the rise of electronic beats from subculture and subversion to the higher echelons of mainstream charting, radio play and festival headlining status – all of which plays into the core of what the live Block Rockin’ Beats stage show he oversees is all about.

“I’ve always been fascinated with dance music, I’ve always been fascinated with beats, and one of my dance music heroes is [legendary UK outfit] The Prodigy. What the Prodigy do with their live show is, they have their rave stuff, but they layer it with a rock sort of buzz, bring out live guitar players, bring out live drummers, and it just gives the whole show an extra bit of energy.

“So something that I’ve always wanted to do, for as long as I can recall, if I ever got an opportunity, was to put together a stage show where we have big tracks, but we bring on a full live band, and I’ve got an amazing live band that performs with me for these shows, including a girl called Rachel O’Donovan, who’s from Cork. She’s a teacher in one of the schools in Cork, she’s living this double life of being a teacher and a rockstar on stage.”

The live experience’s reputation has grown in recent years, stemming from the cult success of a radio show by the same name that Pierce cultivated on the graveyard shift at Dublin-based broadcaster TodayFM – perhaps better-known for a wider adult-contemporary radio format.

The covid pandemic of 2020 has had countless ramifications for music – one of which was audiences’ reappraisal of their relationships to music and its curators.

“When that happened, the radio show just grew in popularity – we had a situation where people were tuning in on a Friday evening at seven o’clock, they were trapped in their house during lockdown, and they started creating all these sort-of kitchen discos and back-garden discos, all this kind of stuff.

“When lockdown eventually ended, I put some gigs on sale, and we sold out Cyprus Avenue. I think in a day, the whole tour just sold out. And I wanted to get people into Cyprus Avenue, Dolan’s in Limerick, Mike the Pie’s in Listowel… show them what we were going to do, and hopefully that they all walked away at the end of it, after having a great night. It’s just snowballed from that point on. We found ourselves doing big gigs, the gig in [Dublin’s] Fairview Park in 2023, to like, 6000 people, the main stage of Electric Picnic… it’s been an amazing journey, and I’m very grateful for it. The Marquee’s been on my bucket list for god knows how long…”

The inevitable question arises as soon as Pierce broaches the topic of the Marquee – a dance-music show, for a wider mainstream audience, in the big tent in Cork city, on a Saturday night… What are the inevitable nods to the city’s own longstanding history with the genre, and the genre’s reciprocal impact on Leeside culture?

“There’s one particular track. I didn’t even know about this track, because it was such a Cork anthem. I was on-air during lockdown, and I kept getting messages going, ‘play The Ball and Chain!’ [laughs]. It’s not called ‘The Ball and Chain’, it’s Make This Love Right [by late American house producer Romanthony]. I actually have it at home now, so that will definitely be getting a spin. Now, I don’t know whether I’ll play it myself or whether I’ll leave it to someone as beautiful as Stevie G to give it a spin, but it will no doubt be played on the night!”

Since rising to headlining status on the festival circuit, and undergoing a corresponding promotion to prime evening-radio real-estate, Block Rockin’ Beats has become something of a media empire of its own, from 95 Records, a joint venture with indie record label Rubyworks, to collaborations with sportswear giant Umbro that have included a line of throwback-style soccer jerseys.

Perhaps the biggest and most important collaborations of all, however, are two charity partnerships that the live band are bringing on the road with them, including spreading awareness of Acquired Brain Injury Ireland, whose logo has featured prominently on previous Block Rockin’ Beats jersey, and whose work is close to Pierce’s own heart.

“Two years ago, I had what is called a subarachnoid haemorrhage, essentially a brain haemorrhage. It happened on a typical day, on a typical morning, as we were preparing for Fairview Park, which was bizarre. I look after myself, I’m a very healthy guy, I don’t drink an awful lot. I never did drugs, even during the 90s, when I was gigging in clubs all over the place. I went for a run on that particular morning, around the Sandymount area in Dublin, where I live. I was coming back up past the Aviva Stadium, when what can only be described as a bomb went off in my head. But I was coming towards the end of the run, and my endorphins were clearly flowing, so I made it back to the house.

“When I got back to the house, I suppose it’s when I realised that something was wrong, because I came in and there was an enormous pain at the back of my head, that started moving towards the front of my head, and then it kind-of felt like it was moving from the back to the front, to the back, to the front. Eventually I passed out on the bed, and I was very lucky… I don’t know whether it was divine intervention or what it was, but I knew that something really bad was happening. And I forced myself back up to a seated position, because all I wanted to do was just fall asleep. And I often have reoccurring nightmares about what might have happened if I had fallen asleep at that moment or passed out.

“But I managed to send a text out to my sister and my wife, told them to come back to the house. They were both at work, and thank God they saw it, they came back and they observed me for a while. I suppose, long story short, with a head trauma, you vomit quite a bit. So I did. Before I knew it, I was in an ambulance to the A&E in St Vincent’s Hospital, and they quickly transferred me, after a scan, to Beaumont Hospital. I ended up in the critical care ward in Beaumont Hospital for just shy of two weeks where they kept an eye on me.

“They did a scan, and they found the blood at the back of the brain there. So, yeah, it was, it was a brain haemorrhage, and mine was non-aneurysmal, which has a better chance of a full recovery. The recovery from that was, it was a healing process of months and years, and even to this day, even doing an interview like this would fatigue me, y’know. When the pains sort-of died down, what I was left with was, a lot of sensory issues, a lot of balance issues, fatigue and things like that, y’know, but I’ve learned over the last two years how to cope. and how to handle and to readjust my life.

“And y’know, I often say to people that I am a different person than I was before, because this whole experience made me re-evaluate life. The nature of my business is to feel like you have to do stuff all the time, and you have to be saying yes to things. And I learned how to say no. That was quite a freeing thing for me.

“The last two years have been a rollercoaster. A lot of people that follow me and support me, and come to the gigs and listen to the radio show, would have seen me recovering and getting back onstage. I was determined to get back onstage. I managed to get back onstage at Fairview Park, in June 2023, and survive the hour and a half on stage. That was really important. It was really important that I had a goal.”

With the heft of a life-changing experience spurring on a new chapter in Pierce’s journey, whether onstage, behind the radio mic, or in the real world, the temptation is obviously to ask about how he feels in approaching big gigs like the Marquee now.

“I’m so excited. People ask me, ‘do you get nervous before gigs?’, and I go, ‘no, I don’t’, because it’s such a genuine blessing to be doing it, and every day you have your health is a bonus. I don’t say that in a heavy way, but I remember on that day, when it happened, I had loads and loads of worries. Paying bills and things like that. When I got sick, I only had one worry, that worry was my health. So it’s amazing, how those things can be a leveller

“I sit back and I look at the [next] tour, y’know, and we’re doing Fairview Park again, we’re doing the Marquee, the Docklands in Limerick again, which is sold out. They are ‘pinch me’ moments. It’s back to that mentality where, y’know, you’re afraid it’s gonna be ten people out there, and there’s five or six thousand people out in the crowd. To get a chance to do the Marquee, to come down and to experience this, and to have an incredible night with the people that are coming to the show, I’m just so grateful, and we are really, really looking forward to having a massive, massive party.”

• Dec Pierce’s Block Rockin’ Beats plays Live at the Marquee on Monahan Road, Saturday, July 12, at 8pm; tickets from €55 from ticketmaster.ie.
• Pierce’s weekly Block Rockin’ Beats radio show airs Fridays and Saturdays from 6pm to 9pm, on TodayFM; available on 100-102 FM and todayfm.com.