The Prongs - Hey! Dandy (Official Music Video)

Hey! Dandy is the latest single by Irish band The Prongs and serves as a signpost for their forthcoming second lp. Time-travellers back to pre-EEC Dublin, John Fleming and Niall Toner Jr offer you a vivid sociopoetic portrait of Ireland’s early-1970s velvet (coat) revolution. Hey! Dandy is an infectious and striking paean to young blades who left Ireland not as migrants but Byronic adventurers on a pre-decimal coin Celtic beatnik grand tour. Escaping monochromatic economic dourness and pervasive poverty of the mind, these brave vagabonds sought not work but European adventure.

After stints in Amsterdam, Berlin, Rome and Paris, our Hey! Dandy pioneers returned to Dublin circa 1972 fuelled with sharp new tastes and revolutionary ideas. Their culture found form in the Dandelion Market. Hey! Dandy’s epic narrative sweep is propelled by the swagger of Toner's early-1970s proto-punk rock as Fleming sketches an EEC prehistory often forgotten in later Irish new wave countercultural triumphs.

In a stylish Dandelion Market time-tunnel video shot and edited by the hugely talented and cinematic Susan Gleeson/Rebeldiamondz (filmed at a convincingly fake junk retail outlet at the Digital Hub Flea Market on Sunday, 28th September, 2025), The Prongs set out their punk beatnik stall.

The Prongs thank all the people of the Digital Hub Flea Market (especially We Love Markets' Emma Brereton), and our friends and loyal customers Eugene Connolly (Prongs Underground painting purchaser), wig procurer Joe Kelly, Prongs badge buyer Niall Toner Sr and Psychogeography ditherers Drew Meldon and Paul Rooney. Special thanks to Paul O’Brien for his Now Now Express novel-inspired Underground painting (reserve price is still 75,000 guineas, inquire within), Dave Clifford for his treasure trove of live bootleg cassettes, Dee Murphy for the glam cowboy hat, the late Michael Talbot for his Airfix Model plane and the late Teresa Talbot for her red anglepoise lamp and 750-piece jigsaw. Eagle-eyed students of popular culture will note a sinister brazen appearance by The Photographic Brains at the end of the video: The Prongs warn you to keep a sharp eye out for these dastardly chaps going forward.

To celebrate the release of Hey! Dandy, The Prongs play a show at Dublin’s wonderful Grand Social on Sat, November 15th, 2025, with very special guests from Cork, Big Boy Foolish.

Tickets are available from eventbrite.

HEY! DANDY
(Fleming/Toner)

Hey dandy, what you got in that sack?
Albert Camus and Jack Kerouac
No 50s migrant. No building site Mick
Let us present the splendid pre-EEC Celtic beatnik
A line of dandies
Coming back
A line of dandies
Coming back
Europe is no longer under attack
Hey dandy, what you got in that sack?
You hung out in Amsterdam,
You wasted weeks in Cologne
You split from Berlin at dawn and you hitch hiked to Rome
Wore winklepickers and your Kraut officer coat
Eating Bombay samosas and neglecting to vote
One-way ticket and the rule of thumb
The back of an envelope, the address of a slum
A bicycle pulled from the Prinzengracht sludge
In canal city you’re stoned so it’s time to budge
Punctured dreams on the Zuider Zee
Sick of this generation of me me me
It’s the Grand Tour from Dublin
It’s pre-EEC
It’s the Grand Tour from Dublin
Before 1973.
You’re not a migrant
You are on a quest
This is not economics
You want to see Budapest
The age of the decimal coin
The verb for Astrid’s heart: purloin
A child begat in the region of Dordogne
The only fruit of your grapepicker’s loin
The only fruit of your grapepicker’s loin
So fleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
Sleep damp under a tree
In a Greek woman’s shawl
You now hear Paris call
In a 20th arrondissement garage you are struck on the head with a wrench
It seems to improve your incoherent broken French
The stench of petrol, urine, wine
Bagnolet park bench, Bagnolet park bench is mine!
European vagrant, one day you repair
Back to your own Dublin lair
Part of a line of dandies
Coming back
Hey dandy what you got in that sack?
Does it really contain all
You need to set out your stall?
Brown paper, a ball of twine
To wrap up ideas in the market called Dandelion
Velvet jackets, incense, motorik tunes
Earings, samosas, secondhand silver spoons
Ambassador dandies
They came back
Funny cigarettes - of that have a whack!
Punk rock looms and they’re ahead of the pack
Dandy catalysts poised for punk rock attack
Dandelion dandies
They came back
Subculture fades. Attack attack!

Lyrics/vocals: John Fleming
Music/production: Niall Toner Jr
Cover photography/video: Susan Gleeson/Rebeldiamondz

Copyright The Prongs 2025/All rights reserved The Prongs
Released November 1st, 2025