Everyone seemed to be wearing the same clothes, the same hairstyles and listening to the same music (Travis). Parents and children wore the same jeans and fashionable tee-shirts. Postmodern irony was the great leveller.

No one wanted to be different.

There were no stylistic peacocks trying to shock.

It was boring.

Now, however, thanks to the wonders of the internet and networking websites such as Myspace, birds of a feather can find one another. They can organise, congregate and most importantly . . . dance. Clubland is seeing a bit of counter-cultural revival. PATRICK FREYNE meets four people daring to be different. . . again

Rockabilly! Every Sunday night in the Dice Bar

ROCKABILLY was the first real youth culture (if you're not counting the 18th century Dandy). It erupted in the 1950s, the decade when they invented the teenager. So it's only fitting that it's still alive and well and jiving on Irish soil . . .boys in denim with quiffed hair and bowling shirts and girls in 1950s style dresses with Betty Page haircuts. The music of choice is the pummelling double-bass and reverby guitar of 1950s rock and roll. Oona DJs at the '50s night in the Dice Bar every Sunday and has just been asked to run a Rockabilly night in the Belvedere Hotel every Thursday from the 19 July (entrance for both is free). She explains the appeal.

"Rockabilly comes from when rock and roll and hillbilly music joined together in the '50s. It started off with Elvis who was the first one to get it really famous. But even before that there were a few bands and singers. Johnny Burnette and Bill Hailey were around before Elvis. We play early '50s and late '50s stuff on the night like Gene Vincent and Eddie Cochran and a lot of newer bands as well, like Big Sandy and the Gogetters.

There was a rockabilly revival in the eighties with bands like the Stray Cats and the Polecats and a lot of the people who're into it now are people who got into it then. But it's definitely growing. People keep coming out of the woodwork. In a lot of ways it's a community that's built up over the years and everybody knows everybody. There's the night in the Dice Bar, but there's also the Stomping Ground which is held in Voodoo once a month, and they bring great bands over to play.

Why's it popular? Because it's just great music to dance to. And the style of it is really cool, '50s stuff looks amazing. It's iconic and its influence comes through so many other kinds of music. I think when people listen to it they realise where everything else they listen to is coming from. '50s music is at the root of so many good things!"

Goth! Dominion every Saturday night in the basement of Fraziers on O'Connell Street

GOTHS have dyed black hair, white and black makeup, and black clothes.

They tend to like Victoriana and music that references death and mortality. Alan Doherty has co-run the goth club Dominion every Saturday night for the past eight years. He explains what attracts people to the dark-side.

"Goths tend to have a certain amount of appreciation for the beauty that's in the darker sides of life. Some people look at a grave yard and shudder. Goths might look at the same thing and see the artistry in the headstones. They tend to find beauty in things that are considered dark and morbid by others. My favourite definition of goth is that it's the "stillborn child of punk".

It came right after punk in the 1980s from bands like Siouxie and the Banshees, the Sisters of Mercy and Bauhaus. In my experience, goths were often outsiders and loners as kids and spent a lot of time alone in their rooms. They basically got into the music for company. A lot of Goths also tend to be involved in or employed as something in IT, because they're often the same kinds of kids who also had a computer in their bedrooms.

"There is a huge sense of it being an underground community and people get a sense of belonging from it. I grew up in a very rural area in Donegal and when I was growing up I probably knew about three other goth-like people. In college there were about four other people who were Goths and via the internet I was able to get in touch with lots of other goths in the UK who happened to be crawling around cyberspace.

"The kids who hang around in black clothes in Temple Bar aren't necessarily real goths. There are two different reasons people start into a music scene. Some are into the music and the lifestyle and others just want to annoy their parents. A lot of people who are hanging around temple bar are what goths call "spooky kids" . . . kids of a certain age who dress that way to shock rather than because they really love the music and the scene.

"I started doing the makeup and hair and everything else that's associated with the goth scene for one simple reason . . . I missed the fact that you used to be able to go the pub and see a lot of varied looks. All those looks were starting to disappear in the 1990s. You'd go the pub and everyone looked the same. Also, looking like I did, it was guaranteed that I'd only ever meet interesting and open-minded people!"

Indie-kids! Antics is Crawdaddy's Wednesday night Indie club

'INDIE' is short for 'independent' and initially referred to the wave of alternative guitar music released by independent labels from the late 1980s on (the Smiths, the Pixies, Nirvana). In times past indie music was the refuge of the low maintenance hipster. Simply growing a bit of a beard and pulling on a tee-shirt meant that you fitted in nicely. Over the past few years independent music is in the charts again with bands like Franz Ferdinand and the Artic Monkeys. The new wave of indie features kids in angular hair cuts, skinny jeans, and artfully designed dresses and they are decidedly more high maintenance.

Dave Parle who runs the Antics indie night in Crawdaddy was initially quite surprised at the effort that went into it all.

"I set it up with two mates in 2005 because there were no nights for students during the week that weren't these horrible pop things. Me and the two lads, we're very normal looking guys from Tallaght and we had no trendy connections in any scene.

But after three months the club was just filled with these. . . people! It's a young crowd . . . maybe 18 to 21. And it's all skinny jeans, converse runners and leather jackets for the lads. The girls tend to wear short skirts, fancy tights and a lot of accessories. There are a lot of highly sculpted hair cuts and hair-straighteners are trendy for the girls and the boys. People put a lot of effort into how they look and that's really nice to see.

Musically we play garage, indie, electro . . . anything that's fun really. And there's definitely a sense of community. It was easier to pinpoint about eight months ago.

Right now indie has gotten really popular with bands like of Artic Monkeys and the Cribs in the charts. Antics was definitely more of an underground thing originally.

But now there's a slightly more mainstream crowd. And there's nothing wrong with that because they enjoy the music the same.

There's a sense of community built up around our Myspace page. People get in touch to help out and ask what they can do.

It's a very warm crowd. I was talking to the guys from the Pod there the other day and they were saying the Antics is the only night in the Pod where they see constant regulars. We often have one band playing in the middle of the DJ set for about half an hour. And a lot of great bands have played at it. I love Fight Like Apes. The Immediate have played a couple of times, The Mighty Stef, the Warlords of Pez . . . most of the bands in Dublin have played at it really. Mainline have played it twice. The bands really enjoy it because they're playing to a full house, and there's nowhere else you can get that pure energy and excitement.

There's no mopey music. It's all about the dancing."

Mods, Chelsea Girls and Go Go Dancers! Sassy Sue's Go Go Inevitable is in the Sugar Club every Friday night

IN the Sugar Club on Fridays you'll find tight-suited mod boys in boots and helmet-like haircuts dancing with girls in Mary Quant-style clothes to garage rock and motown from the 1960s. At Sassy Sue's Go Go Inevitable the swinging '60s never ended and the Who are still in the charts. DJ and club visionary Dandelion explains what it's all about.

"We're trying to bring the underground over-ground. Ten years ago I had a vision that I was going to make everything bigger . . . open it up. I don't see why cool cult music has to be in a backroom with a bad sound system. There's an audience for it. People need to know that on a Friday night they don't have to go and stand in a cramped pub and get drunk. They can get dressed up and go out and dance. Dublin has really moved on so much in the ten years!"

"In my own head I see it as a go-go club, and that's why it's called Sassy Sue's Go Go Inevitable . . . it's meant to be this big mountain top of music. When a band is onstage you shouldn't be standing looking at the band you should be losing yourself in the music. I love that scene in Blow Up [classic 1960s movie by Anonioni] where the band is on stage and they're breaking everything up and there's a few hipsters not even staring . . . they're just dancing. That's my idea of a perfect club! The important thing is that people are dancing together.

When you see 50 mods on a dance floor together they're together but alone at the same time. For people walking into the place it must be so weird initially. The crowd are like comrades in arms . . . people who feel that this music is vital and important. It's a great thing.

"I think that subcultures are definitely back. This is a community but it's also an umbrella for a load of different scenes.

The hardcore regulars at Sassy Sues would be mods, but the fifties scene, the '60s scene, even the punk scene, it's all mixed up together now. Everybody respects each other, whereas years ago everyone was standing in their different corners thinking they were better than each other. But the music was always connected. If you listen to northern soul it's like '50s r'n'b, and that's like 1960s garage musicf which went on to influence punk. People are very musically open-minded nowadays.

"Everyone just wants a night where they can go out and dress up. And the Sugar Club accommodates that. You can walk in and your clothes aren't going to get messed up. Whether you're into glam, or punk or '50s or mod, you're there to be seen at the end of the day! At our birthday party we had people dressed as zombies, people dressed like Scarlett O'Hara, we had the booted and suited mods, and we also had people who just came in off the street.

Everyone is important and everyone has their place on the night."