Ah! The Freshmen, I remember them well. Alot of the showbands had a lot of (often very badly paid) talented singers and musicians in them. They played a huge range of different types of music - the ballrooms they played in would typically house 400 people between the ages of 16 and 80 years old. Every self respecting town in Ireland with a population of more than a couple of thousand had a ballroom 27 years and today there's hardly one left. You could go dancing every night of the week in most areas within a forty mile radius. The drunk driving laws were never enforced and there would be five or six of us piled into every car. I don't know how any of us survived those years.
It was great though.