The Dixies With Sandie & Joe – ‘What Do I Do’

6 May 1972

A showband from Cork: already I’m nostalgic for when the British Army topped the Irish charts.

This is and isn’t the same Dixies that had already had a number one with ‘Little Arrows’ in 1968. Their two best-known members, singer Brendan O’Brien and drummer Joe Mac, had left to form a new band called Step Two. What’s more, their replacements, singers Sandie Jones—of chart-topping Eurovision entry as Gaeilge ‘Ceol An Ghrá’ earlier in 1972—and Joe O’Toole weren’t even from Cork. And what’s double more, they were from Dublin. As a Kerry person, I reflect on the likely discomfort and disharmony for these Dubs and Cork folk thrown together and I send my thoughts and prayers, though only after getting in some cans and pizza first.

If you’d told me this was Sandie Jones’s’ actual Eurovision entry I would have believed you. ‘What Do I Do’ sounds like ‘Puppet On A String’ performed by a German cabaret act in an Italian circus. And what do you know: it turns out this was actually the Dutch entry for the same 1972 Eurovision that Jones sang at for Ireland earlier that year. Only a minute in and already the parping and plonking of this sickly schlager whimsy overpowers me, like drinking shampoo. I suppose it’s a showband performing the latest ’70s bubblegum pop rather than a ’50s ballad, at least. Anyway, when their powers combined this is what Cork’s most prevalent showband, plus its two Dublin ringers, came up with: a cover in English of a song that finished eleven places above what their new singer sang in Irish at that year’s Eurovision.