It’s always so good to catch The Undertones live, with last Thursday night no exception… exceptional as they always are. What’s more, this marked my official North-West big show farewell before an impending move to Cornwall. And coming on the back of Carter, Cook, Jones and Matlock a fortnight earlier in Manchester (reviewed here), it seemed particularly poignant for this long-term fan to catch Derry’s finest again for my 501st live encounter since 1980.
It all unfolded at a new venue to me, involving a stroll up from the Albert Dock, along Jamaica Street towards the city’s Baltic Triangle, taking a more circuitous route than necessary up and down Greenland Street before spotting the spacious but somehow intimate Hangar 34. But while this was my 19th Undertones outing since 1981 and 15th live sighting of the Mk.II line-up since 2000, I’d somehow missed out until now on special guests and fellow punk survivors Ruts DC, the openers for this English leg of the tour and the following dates in Sunderland and Sheffield.
Formed in 1977 as The Ruts, they enjoyed a fair bit of post-punk limelight, revered debut LP The Crack spending its sole week in the UK top 20 this week 45 years ago, on the back of summer of ’79 top-10 classic 45, ‘Babylon’s Burning’. Sadly, a year later we lost frontman Malcolm Owen to heroin, the band having amassed two more hit singles by then, posthumous compilation Grin and Bear It following shortly after.
They soon returned, reconvening as Ruts DC, and while the post-Owen line-up disbanded after two more LPs, originals John ‘Segs’ Jennings (bass) and Dave Ruffy (drums) were back by 2011 and continue to impress, skilfully blending a potent mix of punk, dub, rock and reggae, ‘defying the norm for decades’ as they put it.
The appetite was clearly there, an earlier show in 2007 seeing Henry Rollins in Malcolm’s place at a benefit for fellow founder member Paul Fox, following his diagnosis of lung cancer (he died later that year, aged 56), an event also involving Tom Robinson, The Damned, Misty in Roots, UK Subs, Max Splodge, and John Otway.
These days Leigh Heggarty provides guitar duties for a formidable three-piece that went down well with this Merseyside audience. Personally, I see them as something of a cousin to The Members, that mix of influences inspiring the original punk movement key to their sound, not least a love of reggae. And as with JC Carroll and co., their new material fits well, not least 2016’s ‘Kill the Pain’ and 2022’s ‘Faces in the Sky’, the opener of that year’s Counter Culture? (the title track also aired at Hangar 34, along with fellow winner ‘Born Innocent’) and this evening’s entertaining set.
Ruts tracks ‘Something That I Said’ (first time I’d heard that new wave blast for a while), ‘S.U.S.’ and ‘Jah War’ also impressed in a dozen-song offering, and their skank-happy ‘Mighty Soldier’ positively smouldered. I prefer not to listen to bands before gigs these days, making their set choices more of a revelation, not trying to second-guess what’s coming. And it worked a treat here, ‘Staring at the Rude Boy’ certainly taking me back, while ‘West One (Shine on Me)’ – the last single with Malcolm – suggested where they were headed, and glorious debut 45 ‘In A Rut’ sounded as vital now and prompted a crowd singalong. All in all, I got a lot of it (out of it, out of it, out of it…).
And while I expected ‘Babylon’s Burning’ to signal their departure, there was time for a storming ‘Psychic Attack’, the opener of Music Must Destroy fusing the spirit of Damned classic ‘New Rose’ encased in Sixties sci-fi guitar on a number I could see The Rezillos – the next special guests on this tour (starting in Lincoln’s Engine Shed on Thursday 17th – take to live. Storming set, fellas. Here’s to many more.
There’s not much I can write about the Undertones that I haven’t scribbled down before, but seeing them is always a joyous affair, and this adventure on Greenland Street was rather epic. It’s never enough in a live review to list a set then sit back… but I was tempted to. They started with ‘Jimmy Jimmy’ and ‘Girls That Don’t Talk’ and we barely drew breath from there.
Much as I love the first two long players, I’m pleased to see them give further gravitas to the latter-day fare too (from the first and second incarnations of the band), ‘The Love Parade’ there to savour in its purest form before modern ‘Tones classic ‘Thrill Me’ set us off again. ‘Nine Times out of Ten’ and ‘Tearproof’ then had us hurtling back to Hypnotised before exclamation mark punk classic ‘Male Model’ and one of the finest singles by any band, ‘You Got My Number (Why Don’t You Use It!) stopped us in our tracks, the latter released 45 years and one day ago, yet still flooring me.
Then there was Billy Doherty’s wondrous ‘Wrong Way’ and Positive Touch two-piece, ‘It’s Going to Happen’ and ’Crisis of Mine’. I’m always caught out by a couple of songs I don’t expect to pull at my heart-strings so much, and that was the first tonight. Sublime. Speaking of which, we then got the whole of the Teenage Kicks EP, the iconic title track followed by ‘True Confessions’, ‘Smarter Than You’ and ‘Emergency Cases’. At that point, I reckon I needed a lie-down, let alone Paul McLoone and his somehow no longer 21-year-old bandmates. But a rather bizarre intro to ‘Wednesday Week’ after confusion on Billy’s part (not as if Mickey Bradley mentioned it… much) led eventually to that and (as I understand it) fellow wonder ‘You’re Welcome’ being dropped. Ah, well, there’s always next time… not as if I take any of this for granted.
Accordingly, the handbrake was back off for John O’Neill‘s ‘Here Comes the Rain’, which somehow gets better with every airing, then – on a night when the temperature dropped and all the talk was of Northern Lights, ‘Here Comes the Summer’. We were revving up for a big finish by now, lost in the moment on ‘I Gotta Getta’ from the first LP and ‘Dig Yourself Deep’ from the most recent, ‘Family Entertainment’ (deeper in the set than I’d envisaged) and further eponymous elpee delight ‘(She’s a) Runaround’, then ‘When Saturday Comes’, the O’Neill brothers on top form with those searing guitar lines, Billy keeping up on drums and sometimes powering ahead, Mickey’s bass lines continuing to leave me sent, and the ever-theatrical Paul in his element among it all, his banter with Mickey always a bonus. Besides, as Damian O’Neill once put it so succinctly, ‘It’s never too late to enjoy dumb entertainment’.
‘Oh Please’ is another example of how Mickey can also still come up with classy songs, and from there we were firing towards a big finish, ‘Girls That Don’t Talk’, ‘Hypnotised’ and ‘I Know a Girl’ as great as ever, ‘Listening In’ another somehow nailing the experience for me, then ’Get Over You’ bringing us to our latest climax with the North of Ireland’s foremost Humming, Leaping and Minging fraternity.
Back they came, ‘Mars Bars’, ‘More Songs About Chocolate and Girls’, ‘Jump Boys’ and ‘’My Perfect Cousin’ a total joy. And okay, that ended up sounding like the list I suggested I wasn’t going to scribble down, but if you’ve read this far anyway, you’ll know you missed out if you weren’t there, and it might reflect what you saw if you were. Furthermore, it might inspire you – if you need that push – to book tickets for any of the remaining dates (see details on the poster below), with either The Rezillos or the Mighty Wah-nderful Pete Wylie in tow.
So, thank you, one and all, and adios for now, Liverpool. I’ll be back, I‘m pretty sure of it, but what a way to go out, three decades after moving to Lancashire. I’m still in a spot. Their spell isn’t broken.
For the latest from The Undertones, links for tickets and details of the band’s live LP, available exclusively at their remaining dates, head here. and for details of the next Ruts DC shows, try their Facebook link.
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