The Undertones - The Next Big Thing?

Pleading, quavering vocals fit to be drowned in an echo-chamber, a surging melody beyond the ken of their contemporaries, an unvarnished production, 'Teenage Kicks' is the word and the sound, an anthem from the most unlikely of sources - Derry. Come in Phil Coulter, your time is up.

These Undertones, a band from nowhere, a name mentioned in no gig-guides, featured in no New Year tip-sheets; the Undertones with a record set to follow Jilted John in its passage from local label to international eminence. They aren't completely unfamiliar even if the majority of their appearances have been in their home-town of Derry. In June '77 the Undertones came to Dublin, this writer's first witness of them at Moran's where they confronted a crew of unconverted metal marauders, scornful of punk and all its pomps.

The Undertones weren't intimidated. They challenged the crowd with a purpose that would have made a more experienced outfit envious. They were raw, they were raucous but they were uncalculating and convincing.

They didn't lack some supporters that night and for them they played 'Louie Louie' as encore, an additional cause for fury among their detractors. Even more provocatively, they repeated it with Radiator Philip Chevron aboard, infuriating the metal fans, one bunch of whom seemed set on invading the stage. The Undertones had both divided and ruled and as they walked off the stage, drummer Billy Docherty kicked over his drums and flung his sticks at the mob in a gesture of livid defiance. Clearly a band to catch again.

It didn't come to pass. Next night, they played the bloodstained Belfield punk festival. Other duties meant I arrived late, missing both them and the stabbing so my sole memory is of five exhausted Northern kids, huddled alone for self-protection in the backstage area, their faces wan and pinched.

Both the fracas of the previous night and their patently dubious Derry origins - punks were violent but Ulster punks must be murderous - even led to the police initially listing them as suspects and when they trailed back home the RUC visited Docherty to interrogate him, a deed, or so the story leaked back, that led to parental disapproval and by extension a break-up of the band.

The Undertones didn't come South again. Another good band gone down.

Then early this summer, reports filtered back that they were still alive and playing in Derry. Furthermore, they were preparing a demo for London record company consumption. That was to be 'Teenage Kicks'.

The gig for inspection is in Portrush but for three hours that Saturday afternoon, it was a candidate for cancellation. The band's equipment is to be hired in Belfast - they still don't have their own - but no one can be found to drive it up.

Belfast Car Hire aren't co-operating in renting a van. They reject two drivers because their licences are endorsed, a third because he's too young, so Andy Ferguson visiting promotions-person from Sire and Terry Hooley, head of Good Vibrations, the local label who recorded The Undertones, drive frantically around Belfast searching for a replacement.

This wasn't their intention. They should have been discussing a proposed compilation album of Good Vibrations bands. Instead, Ferguson gets to play chauffeur through the back-streets of a city he's never seen before.

A substitute is found, forms are hurriedly filled in.

"Last question sir, who do you work for?"

"I don't. I'm unemployed."

Belfast Car Hire are not impressed. No van will be granted and now no gear either since that shop has now closed for the evening.

For his final throw, Hooley contacts the X-Dreamists, a band who live in the Portrush vicinity. They charitably agree to lend their equipment but it's only 200 watts, not the 400 the Undertones expected.

About nine, Ferguson and myself drive into Portrush to find the band finishing their tea. They've changed little in the intervening year, few fancy clothes or poses. The Undertones are the epitome of an unpolished, impoverished teenage-band, snatched straight off the corner.

They'll wear the same clothes on the band-stand and singer Feargal Sharkey, dressed like a junior motorcycle mechanic, symbolises their sartorial stance, or lack of same, beneath his black leather jacket, that most unfashionable of garb, a blue wool polo-neck. He'll even flaunt it for the first numbers before stripping down to a navy T-shirt. They make the early Feelgoods look like mannequins. Will Sire tart them up.

Ferguson updates them on future plans. After all their rock dreams, reality interposes, the next move plotted, support to the Rezillos, a wrenching 37 dates in 43 days. The gag and protest in alarm as it's probable they haven't even played 37 gigs yet in their interrupted career. Now they're to be dove in the deep end, as yet managerless and equipmentless, without the accoutrements even the most struggling bands acquire en route to a contract.

We chat there and then, as the band leave for Derry immediately after the show.

All of them have their spake, but Feargal's the only voice I recognise from the tape, so the four other members remain anonymous in their contributions.

First topic of weight is their signing to Sire. The story goes that Seymour Stein, head honcho of the company, heard 'Teenage Kicks' on the John Peel Show while driving along with his radio on. It was a Damascene illumination. "Go get 'em," he ordered his underlings.

An Undertone comments: "We got these phone calls from Virgin, Polydor and Island and we were to play that Wednesday at Portrush and they were to come over and see us that day. Sire wanted to sign us up on that Monday, so that night we rang up Sire and they wanted to know how we stood. And Sire said 'if you want to go with Polydor, you go with them. If you want to stay with us, you sign now.' We're glad we done it now."

No auction was set up. The Undertones were wooed and won before the other more cautious contenders saw the band. The deed is done yet unequivocally the obligations on Sire go beyond the contractual letter. In a sense, they're baby snatched, so they'd better nurse, a delicate and time-consuming task for a record company whose British staff numbers but three, even if they're serviced and distributed by the WEA complex.

A vulnerable, inexperienced, albeit potentially sharp, band, The Undertones will be dependant on their advisors for the first months abroad. It's a position ripe for exploitation when dangerous agreements can be signed. They'll need more than luck.

Inquisitions about the band's philosophy reveal that they're essentially a good-time teenage band. Few will want to write treatises about The Undertones. The band are still becoming, in an evolution now to be accelerated.

They certainly won't flinch at playing 'Top Of The Pops', although they're not unanimous about 'The Old Grey Whistle Test', Feargal confessing to a desire for Anne Nightingale.

And as the talk continues, the band's sixties debts are revealed. Not, they say, that they want to be a replica like The Jam, but Feargal talks of 'Teenage Kicks' as a sixties single albeit due to the cheap production, it comes across like a "scratched sixties single".

Asked about favourites, the Buzzcocks are chorused by all, a choice that appears to underline The Undertones theme, that of accommodating mix-sixties melody with late-seventies power.

Their determination, their independence translates vigorously - "we did this ourselves, no-one was helping us," someone says. And that spirit may be the band's premier asset. Isolated from both Dublin and Belfast, a band doesn't survive without a special fortitude.

And the inevitable question, what happens if someone asks you about politics, the strife-torn streets, the bomb-damaged buildings and all that dreary scam.

A word for the wise - "Politics, that's private."

On the stand, it's a delirious evening. Many of their fans have trekked down from Derry and the atmosphere of a celebration is evident. The home-town heroes have cracked it.

And unlike the tempestuous Moran's set, The Undertones are smiling tonight. Feargal Sharkey is a true communicator, a talker, a joker, a cracksman, not one for doomy poses. The Undertones want to trade in exhilaration, not amphetamine laments.

Given the PA circumstances, announcements are garbled but this writer, even if he isn't familiar with the songs, hears enough to know 'Teenage Kicks' isn't' a fluke, hears enough to anticipate their first album with the one obvious reservation - that of the proper chemistry between band and producer.

The best shorthand comparison for The Undertones is with early Rods. 'Teenage Kicks' bears a passing resemblance to 'Do Anything You Wanna Do' and the band's geographical detachment has allowed them to progress at their own pace and choice, blending sufficient punk elements to remain contemporary but not allowing themselves to be swamped by it. Like a younger Rats, they've brewed their own combination of the best of past and present. The promise is immense.

After the show, the Arcadia disc-jockey Al Uminium rouses them off by comparing them to Morrison, Lizzy, Gallagher and the Rats - he doesn't mention the Radiators, but he's soon corrected on that - firmly placing them in the Irish pantheon. It's no home-town hype from the night's evidence.

There's another Irish tradition, that of misplaced contracts and trusts, mistaken policies, misunderstanding and inconsiderate handling.

Sire, don't do a Decca!