Songfacts®:

• "Reminisce Part One" starts off with Dexys Midnight Runners' lead singer Kevin Rowland reminiscing about a visit to Dublin. He undertook the trip in 1980, before Dexys' hit single "Geno" changed everything for the band.
• It was August 1980
  I was searching for the spirit of Brendan Behan in the bars of Dublin
  Uh, I mean, at this point, you know, I had a
  I had a bit of a reputation as something of a searcher
  
  It was the first time in a decade that Rowland had visited Ireland. "I was excited. I'd been reading Brendan Behan, all that," he told Mojo magazine. "Dublin wasn't commercialized like now and I wanted to go and look at the bars Behan may have gone to. I took a couple of the band with me. As the song says, I literally asked a guy in a bar where I might find the spirit of Brendan Behan. He smiled and said, 'New York.'"
  
  Brendan Behan was an Irish poet, playwright, and novelist who became a celebrity in the early '60s, known for his wit, charm, and love of alcohol. He spent increasing amounts of time in New York City, where he was a regular at bars and nightclubs. Behan was fond of the United States and expressed his admiration for the country in many of his writings and speeches.
• Halfway through, the song takes an odd diversion as Rowland begins moaning, smacking his lips and exclaiming, "It doesn't matter!" Rowland's bandmate and girlfriend Helen O'Hara inspired the detour.
  
  "We were going out, but we weren't that close," Rowland explained. "I was intense, not much fun to be around. I wanted more. That ad lib is just me pouring my heart out about her."
• The eccentric end to the song is a conversation between Rowland and Dexys' guitarist Kevin "Billy" Adams about controversial left-wing head of Greater London Council, Ken Livingstone. Rowland refers to Livingstone as a "folk hero" after he met with Sinn Féin President and IRA supporter, Gerry Adams. Clearly his bandmate didn't share his point of view.
  
  "The ending about Ken Livingstone was because he'd been giving absolute hell in England about inviting Gerry Adams over to London to discuss why the IRA wanted to bomb his city," said Rowland. "I thought that that was really brave. So, Billy and I have that conversation over the ending. All scripted, of course."
• Dexys' label, Mercury, released this as the B-side of the March 1983 reissue of "The Celtic Soul Brothers." Rowland wanted "Reminisce Part One" to be the A-side, not "The Celtic Soul Brothers," but Mercury said no.
  
  "I felt 'Reminisce Part One' was a big step forward for us," he told Mojo. "It was new and radical. I love the rhythm section on it, the production by Colin Fairley. I'd done spoken parts of songs before, but that was the first conversation I'd incorporated into a song."