Who Said Lautrex Wasn’t Classy…?

Boom!

espite the fact that over half the population of Greystones today were conceived in their car parks, it has been surprisingly tough to find images of the town’s two big nightclubs.

Sure, the rugby club would sometimes push the chairs to the side and twist in the red light bulb, but it was Cabana’s and then Lautrex that got the townsfolk truly a-groovin’, a-gropin’ and a-grovellin’ every weekend.

Cabana’s was part of The Woodlands Hotel’s gradual transformation into a Soho theme park, with not only the nightclub offering up the chance to finally sate your teenage lust but, for the hairy rockers, there was also the snooker-hall-turned-Cavern-Club that was The Stables and the quite possibly illegal and most definitely seedy Bitz Disco Bar.

Ah, who can forget the latter’s heyday, when a certain merry young lass decided that a grand finale each night would be a striptease show, aided and abetted by a bewildered young Murphy chap dragged up onstage as both cheerleader and, as yet another item went flying through the air, garment grabber.

So, how come no one brought a camera with them in those heady days? Isn’t there always at least one camera at a celebratory gathering, and Greystones’ nightspots would definitely had more than their fair share of birthdays, confirmations and court case wins…

Luckily, someone who always had a camera whilst the town tripped the light fantastic was the notorious Farrelly brothers. Having temporarily strayed from the family vocation of slaughtering innocent lambs and stray cows up in Delgany, these future craft butchers were, for a few short years, crafty barmen down at Cabana’s. And they liked nothing better than taking out their trusty Instamatic to embarrass the patrons whilst in Full Snog mode. You can catch their handy work here, agus here.

And then there was the mighty Suzanne Fox, who charted her Saturday night fevers, and the Lautrex rebrand, Club Life, and their short-lived Phaze disco nights for the young ‘uns.

We did manage to find a Bray People report on Cabana’s opening night too, back on Friday, July 8th 1983, and, more recently, got to take a Travolta-esque strut down memory lane with its no.1 DJ, Dave Purnell.  And then there was the time that Hurricane Higgins ripped The Stables a new one, and then The Baskerville ripped it an even newer one, whilst drummer extraordinaire Aaron Kennedy held his Drum Academy Student Of The Year 2004 in home of the beat, Lautrex.

The Baskerville Sisters

Well, after our call went out over the interweb once again, groovy GG reader Tara Crawford unearthed the super-classy Lautrex theme night cards above. Which has merely made us even more determined to source some more…

So, during the big lockdown spring clean, keep your eyes peeled for more pieces of this jivin’ jigsaw. Just, you know, check for nudity and/or illegal activities before emailing them right about here.