![[Undertones]](/ub4.png)
This excellent article originally comes from IrishNews.com where it is nicely formatted and part of a comprehensive web site. It is only presented here for archive purposes.
Gearing up for their first gigs on home turf in over 20 years, Derry's prodigal sons The Undertones are determined to make a triumphant return to the city that spawned them.
After a disappointing gig at the West Belfast Feile last weekend, the band will be practising hard to ensure their set at The Gasyard Festival is a return to form, and more importantly that they blow Bryan Adams off the stage at the Prehen Playing Fields.
The band's drummer, Billy Doherty, is brimming with anticipation about the band's homecoming.
"It's the first time we've ever played in Derry in 23 years and for it to include such a huge event is great," he said.
Billy has been clattering through The Undertones best loved hits since the beginning. After a lengthy break from the band's split in 1983 until their belated reformation in 1999, Billy is once again happy to be back in the band's driving seat.
The return to Derry is foremost in his mind, almost blocking out any worries about the problematic gig last week. Almost.
"We didn't play great" he said. "I don't know why we didn't. I guess we made a couple of stupid mistakes and had some problems with the sound on stage, and then they had this big gap between the stage and the crowd which was very off-putting. There's no need for that at all."
Billy was diplomatic about who in the band was making the errors. "Some guys are just going to have to lose their jobs. It's unfortunate but it's going to have happen!" he jokes. "No, everyone makes mistakes, but you feel more guilty about it because people have paid their money to see a good show."
With hundreds of successful gigs under their collective belt, The Undertones can perhaps afford to feel glad that they've got the bugs out of their system before the big homecoming at the end of the month.
Although happy to blast through the reams of classics in their back-catalogue for the fans, to keep things interesting for themselves the band are looking to include a few more album tracks into their set-list.
Billy informed me: "For the Bryan Adams gig we'll be doing Bittersweet, Listening In and a song called Jump Boys."
The last two are both from the groups seminal self-titled debut, while Bittersweet appropriately enough hails from Billy's personal favourite, swan-song LP The Sin of Pride. He muses that by this stage the band were all collaborating together a lot more musically, even if things were drifting on a personal level.
With the current line-up gelling so well, Billy is not dismissive of the band recording some new material.
"I suppose we've all thought about it," he said. "Sometimes we're kind of thinking 'what's the point of doing this if we're not going to do anything new'. We'll probably get round to it sometime, it's just a question of when and where."
New singer Paul Mcloone has well and truly made The Undertones his band, and is almost universally praised as a worthy successor to the mighty Fergal Sharkey. Billy admits that he and the rest of the band were surprised at just how well the reunion went.
"We always knew he'd fit in," he said, "but I don't think we realised just how well he would take to it. In fact, if it wasn't for Paul I think we would have just said 'no thanks' to the whole thing".
Praise indeed. However, those nostalgic for Fergal's warbling can look forward to getting misty-eyed over the forthcoming Undertones documentary which is due to be screened on the BBC next month.
Among the highlights of this masterpiece will be the band's first real meeting and discussion with their foremost champion, DJ John Peel.
Billy said: "We'd never really hung out with him before, so we were a bit worried that we'd have nothing to say to each other. But when he came over to Derry last year to do it, we couldn't get him to shut up! He was brilliant!"
While the band cross their fingers that they can pull off two amazing shows in their hometown, we'll just have to cross our fingers that one day soon there'll once again be an Undertones single in the charts. It's been too long.
This excellent article originally comes from IrishNews.com where it is nicely formatted and part of a comprehensive web site. It is only presented here for archive purposes.
A NIGHT TO REMEMBER: Bryan Adams on stage at Prehen in Derry last night
thE Derry air had a distinctly Canadian flavour last night as megastar Bryan Adams rocked Prehen Playing Fields in front of a 10,000 crowd.
The gig had everything you would expect in Derry - good music, great craic and the obligatory British army helicopter.
Adams looked to a darkening sky in amazement as a low-flying helicopter circled the ground, interrupting an acoustic version of Everything I Do, I Do It For You.
Adams, in his usual white t-shirt, kicked things off at 9pm with Back To You.
Two hours of hits followed, including what he called the Derry blues A Night To Remember.
It was also a night to remember for a student called Anna from Limavady, who joined Adams for an impressive version of Baby When You're Gone.
Earlier Adams told the crowd: "I don't know Derry, I don't know what you're like."
By 11pm he had found out as happy punters departed to a fantastic fireworks display.
The Undertones almost upstaged the man with a brilliant 20-song greatest hits set.
Derry's finest were in good form with quick-witted ad libs separating punk-standard after punk-standard.
The night began with an enthusiastic 40-minute accoustic set from Omagh singer/songwriter Juliet Turner.
The set, taken mostly from her Burn The Black Suit album was a perfect opener. She told the crowd her ambition was to one day blow Bryan Adams off the stage.
Sorry, not this time Juliet.
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