The Sultans of Ping
Irish band
The Sultans of Ping are an Irish band formed in 1988 by Niall O'Flaherty, Pat O'Connell, Paul Fennelly and Ger Lyons.
The band's name is a play on the 1978 Dire Straits song "Sultans of Swing", dating from a time when "it was sacrilege to say anything whatsoever funny or nasty about Dire Straits".
History
Following a number of line up changes including the loss of lead guitarist Ger Lyons, the band came to the attention of the Irish and UK music press, when "Where's Me Jumper" was released in January 1992. After several other independently released singles, the band signed to Epic Records, through a deal organised by Rhythm King Records's Martin Heath.
With Epic, the band released their debut album Casual Sex in the Cineplex, and its follow up Teenage Drug, with additional tracks gaining a Japan-only release. Teenage Drug was renamed Teenage Planet Sexy War in Japan, and included the single "Michiko".
Renaming themselves as The Sultans, they released their third album Good Year For Trouble in 1996. It included a cover version of The Third Bardo’s 1967 single “I’m Five Years Ahead Of My Time” listed as “Five Years” on the track listing. However, the album cover's artwork caused problems, as major record chains like HMV and Virgin decided that the display of bondage and S&M was too explicit. By this time, Rhythm King had been absorbed into Arista Records, as Martin Heath became the head of the department.
“The Sultans of Ping” enters the record as irish band. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Sultans, Ping and Irish can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7767239. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1988, 1978, 1992 and 1996.
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This entry incorporates text from “The Sultans of Ping” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.