From BBM Magazine Sept 99

Albums You Must Own No 8 - The Undertones - The Undertones 1979

Forget the Sex Pistols - they were just Pagan's gang with hair dye. Forget The Clash - their dads weren't bank robbers - 'they were civil servants. Oh - and forget the Stiffs - they just tried too hard.

The most authentic (if that isn't a contradiction in terms) punk band to emerge during that mad late Seventies Trans-Atiantic collision of rhetoric and feedback - were a group of five cheeky - pasty-faced gob-shites from Derry. Here's the theory - Punk was supposed to be a truthful response to volatile political circumstances.

It was supposed to honestly reflect individual experience in a fucked-up social context. Now - if that meant wearng swastikas and spitting in response to a declining post-imperial wasteland so be it. If it meant singing about Subbuteo and wearing snorkels - white growing up in the most genuinely crazed place in the western world - then so much the better.

In truth - Stiff Little Fingers were the exception. While they - especially on the amazing Inflammable Material - dove head first into Northern Irish politics - most bands from the North followed the punk template of the Bhomcocks and - as Mickey Bradley so memorably put it - concentrated on the important things in life "chocolate and girls." The Undertones were like the Beatles with bad complexions and no girlfriends.

They were the greatest pop band that Ireland has ever produced. One half doe-eyed romantics - the other half spiteful little bastards - and their debut album - still - sounds like the freshest - funniest - and warmest depiction of late teen frustration in all its jeal ous glory - that you are ever gonna hear. Yes - Teenage Kicks is on it - but then so is Jimmy - Jimmy - Jump Kids - and a host of other gems. It is a wonderful - dodgem ride through the eyes of an ugly - snotty underdog. And it is terrific. One day Northern Ireland in the Seventies will be remembered for the Undertones.