Music > Live Reviews

The Undertones

The Adrian Flux Waterfront

21/11/16

The 19th of July 1979 was the very first time that I ever saw The Undertones in Norwich, and rather luckily for me and their growing band of admirers, they were back just three months later playing at the same venue. Then just twelve months later, as their popularity rapidly increased they played the LCR, and they had made it to the big time.

At that time in my life as a seventeen year old, they were my band. Those memorable nights at St Andrews Hall are still very special classic gig moments indeed. I last saw them live in the summer of 1983, but at that point the original line up was on the wane and it was indeed their final tour in that guise.

So some thirty seven years on I have stopped sulking (just about) and I am back watching Londonderry’s finest sons without nerdy looking lead singer Fergal Sharkey who left in 1983.

A very buoyant sold out crowd eagerly anticipated their entrance and what an entrance it was as the opening guitar licks of Jimmy, Jimmy kick in. It doesn’t get much better than that when you’ve taken this long to see one of your favourite bands.

They even played Gotta Getta from their debut album and for me it’s still their finest moment, and still sounds bloody great.

All the hits including It’s Gonna Happen, Love Parade, You’ve Got My Number, Teenage Kicks, Wednesday Week, Get Over You, My Perfect Cousin and Here Comes The Summer are banged out in between some classic album tracks like True Confessions, When Saturday Comes and some quite fabulous B sides like Top Twenty and Family Entertainment. I could go on, but I guess you are maybe getting the picture by now!

Only during the more quiet restraints of the beautiful Julie Ocean do they take a breather and come up for air.

Paul McLoone has been fronting them since they reformed in 1999, as Sharkey declined the offer to be a part of it. He certainly works hard to fill the void of the original front man and he maintains that on stage fun and banter that was always so important at an Undertones show with his band mates and the audience and he is a bit of a looker too! As the shirt gets looser as the evening progresses, I can’t help but think of Sharkey in those early hedonistic days at St Andrews Hall, in his parka coat, tightly done up to the neck, covered in spit and gob (as disgusting as it was, that’s what used to happen at those punk / new wave gigs back in the day folks). It’s a real contrast, but it works.

For the encore, which takes them well past the 10pm deadline, they squeeze in a second play of Teenage Kicks, but this time they inform us that they have during today been to visit the home of the legendary DJ John Peel in Gt. Finborough, near Stowmarket. So this time around they play a classic recording of the man himself, their inspirational surrogate father, introducing the said song from an original BBC Peel session. It is a very touching and quite surreal moment and there ensues a round of applause from everyone. Magic is in the air.

As a band, in their time they were like no other with their fast fuzz pop new wave three minute songs; with every release the B sides were as eagerly awaited as the A sides. No one even came close, and judging by the reaction from the largely fifty something audience this evening, the Undertones are still flicking kicks like no other.