In 2023, Blue Monday will be forty-years old. Forty years of filling the floors at house parties, discos, indie nights, techno nights, 21sts and weddings. Brian McMahon asks the question, “How Does It Feel?”

This month we present a selection of vintage Christmas adverts promoting long-standing Irish food and drink brands.

For a time in the 1960s and early 1970s, it was acceptable and fashionable for young Irish women to wear wigs.

“208 is my magic number. It’s a throwback to the early 1970s when I and thousands of other music-starved Irish teenagers listened every night to Radio Luxembourg 208”. – Brian McMahon

Yellow Press was an Irish comic published from 1991 to 1994. Describing itself as the ‘premier periodical for the nineties kind of person’ and ‘not suitable for young children’ it ran for eleven issues and featured work from over twenty Irish cartoonists.

Too Late was a Dundalk-based homemade magazine that was also sold in Dublin between 1978 and 1981. Brian McMahon asked its editor and publisher, Eamonn McMahon (yes relation) to reflect on his post-punk fanzine-making days.

During Lockdown, fashion photographer Paul Martin unearthed boxes of negatives that inspired him to publish his new book First Face: a collection of photographs of new Irish models shot in the 1990s. Brian McMahon of Brand New Retro met Paul for a trip down memory lane.

Whether you were a walker, a sponsor, or just an onlooker, it was impossible to avoid the charity walk fad of the early 1970s.

“After 11, there’s nothing.” When i-D visited Dublin in 1985 they found a backward and grim city beset by unemployment and emigration.

This photo, taken in May 1968 at the top of Grafton St, shows six lead singers and four DJs from the Dublin beat scene – all young, all looking smart, all looking mod, all very style-conscious.

“The Bay City Rollers were my first crush, my first love. They were a sexual awakening for most of us.” Mary McNally recalls her teenage years as a Rollers fan in 1970s Beaumont, Dublin

With revamp building work now underway at the closed Central Hotel, it’s hard not to get nostalgic and reflect on the good times spent there.

The decor at Creation House took inspiration from Berlin too. It was modern, elegant, sleek, sophisticated – just like Creation magazine, whose office and photographic studios were conveniently located on the third floor of their Grafton Street building.

From tins of biscuits and tobacco to packets of cheese and nylons, Brian McMahon of Brand New Retro takes a quick look at vintage adverts for Christmas gifts produced by leading Irish manufacturers.

Rent or buy? Betamax or VHS? Brian McMahon asked Greg Molloy, the man behind the KillianM2 TV Archive, to tell us more about the early days of video and this new and exciting period in home entertainment.

“Without central heating it was almost impossible to keep a home warm. The main room could have a roaring fire of coal, slack, turf or wood but the rest of the house remained cold.” – Brian McMahon, Brand New Retro

The Brand New Retro exhibition on Dublin Discos 1965-1980 goes on display at The Other Hand Bar (The Circular) 536-538, South Circular Road.

It’s ice pop weather right now so, what better time than to revisit pops from the past courtesy of Brand New Retro.