Irish bands who made it here, but were good enough to make the grade elsewhere?

I don't know but honestly, I can't see many of the bands listed here as having any kind of appeal to an international audience outside Ireland.

Aslan for example, I personally really dislike them but to be 100% neutral here and stick to the OP's original question, I honestly don't believe it's unfair or surprising that they wouldn't be popular anywhere other than here. As for Christy's (*cough*) "issues", there was bigger dope fiends than him sold millions of records worldwide.

Likewise with groups like In Tua Nua, you don't have to like or dislike them to agree they were talented musicians, I just don't see any reason why anyone would be confused about why the UK and US record buying public are missing out by not making them go platinum. There must be a million bands fusing rock music with the trad/folk music of France, Spain, Russia, Italy, or whatever, and I'm sure many of them are great. It just doesn't surprise me that they won't be popular outside their own countries. Sure there's The Pogues but that would be the exception.

On the other hand...
I was in Gambia last week on a holiday. Went to visit a nature reserve, a sanctuary for snakes and reptiles in the middle of the African jungle on the border with Senegal. The park manager there is from Sierra Leone, and on hearing I was Irish asked
"Do you know Daniel O'Donnell?"
"You mean the singer?" I replied, "aamm... yes, I know who he is, yeah".
"I love his music"
My jaw dropped! :eek:
"Yes" he continued, "him and Mary Duff, listen to them all the time".

(I swear to God I am NOT making this up! )

A couple of Irish bands who I genuinely think could have been bigger abroad:

Therapy? OK, pretty big in the UK and playing 4 to 5 thousand capacity venues. But at their peak in the 90's I really thought they could do better in the US. I mean I'm not really into that kind of music myself, but I can at least agree that if you like the type of thing that these guys do then they do it really well. In my opinion they are certainly no worse than let's say Soundgarden who sold millions.

Whipping Boy. Did a really good performance on the BBC on Jools Holland which has a pretty big audience. Jools called them "a new band from Dublin" despite playing for seven years at that point. Anyway, most people seem to agree Heartworm was a great record, including Nick Cave. Whipping Boy started a huge tour with The Bad Seeds in support of Heartworm, except they got fukced off it shortly afterwards because of Fearghal acting the gom. Don't know what he was up to, but if it was enough to get guys like Nick Cave, Warren Ellis, etc so worried back in the 90's then it must have been bad. They lost momentum after that, got dropped by Columbia despite the reviews, and had already broken up as a group by the time their third album came out.

Golden Horde. Inexplicably stuck with Mother Records when Mother Records didn't do a goddamn thing for them in return. Took too many years to get the first "proper" LP out, got some big name producers in to do it, end result was just stunning, jaw droopingly brilliant album, but FFS it never went further than Larry Googan