Dublin Opinion

“If anywhere in the world needed punk, it was Belfast”
(Terri Hooley - glass-eyed rogue)

I recall (that’s like remembering only a tad more middle class) my first and probably only trip up to Belfast. It started on a bus from Busaras that trundled up the pathetic excuse for an N1 that was only halfway decent to just beyond Swords. With Conor of these parts, and another friend, we were heading up to see a gig in Queens and a fusty B&B like only Ireland can do them. We were probably a bit too old for Autumn Gold but would’ve looked a bit too young for pints. Expecting hoards of rampaging taigs or prods with bricks in their fists and hate in their eyes - we found nothing more scary than a city centre overrun for the afternoon by teenage metalheads. At the time, the Northside was fairly well infested with the same - but Belfast appeared to have five Iron Maiden t-shirts for every one on the clotheslines between the Royal Canal and Balgriffin cemetery.

In any case, the highlight of the trip turned out to be finding the Good Vibrations shop (at the time somewhere along that stretch they call the ‘Golden Mile’ going out from the city centre to Queens). As I recall, the selection of records was threadbare and fairly shite but behind the counter was a living legend, Terri Hooley replete with his glass eye. Being shy wee free state bastards we couldn’t muster up enough courage to talk to the man, or even to buy a NTWICM 25 compilation second hand but we were chuffed to see him all the same (that’s like ‘delighted’ but less middle class).

That immense memory jogger, You Tube has managed to set me thinking on that trip nearly 20 years later - through providing us with a few minutes of the afore-mentioned Terri Hooley - the above tribute appears to be fairly recent - but the following dates from the couple of years, from ‘77 onwards, that Hooley made himself famous far beyond Belfast, as the courageous man who put out the Undertones’ ‘Teenage Kicks’ :

Hooley was a sort of svengali for the Belfast and wider Norn Iron punk scene through the label he set up run out of his wee shop. Seeing his face (where he manages to get more roguery out of one functioning eye that I’ve ever seen coming out of two) reminded me also of a film I once saw on Channel 4 but have never managed to track down since. ‘Shellshock Rock’ was made, I think, by a few people out of Belfast’s Art College (that place near the cathedral) and is a precious chronicle of that time. YouTube came up with two excerpts, sadly only performance - none of the documentary’s dialogue to be found. First off, the wonderful (and still sounds it) anthem of Ulster punk by SLF :

SLF bring us full circle to the gangs of metalheads we found in Belfast on a freezing winter afternoon. They started as a school band doing (among other) Deep Purple covers and many see their style and eventual success as owing a lot to an encounter with Daily Express journalist Gordon Ogilvie. Whether it was Ogilvie or the members of the band that saw the pertinence of marrying the Troubles and punk, I don’t care much. ‘Inflammable Material’ as still a great energetic album - in spite of the simplistic, cartoon punk politics…

Which brings us to the reason Terri Hooley will eventually be canonised - for he indeed saw that the Beach Boys had come back down to earth and re-appeared under the Foyle bridge, acne-puckered, bedecked with dodgy jumpers and doc martins and about 9 or 10 chords in their heads.. Again, from Shellshock Rock, the wonderful sound of the Bogside Surf Beat :

Through the chance encounters and meanders of You Tube’s incomprehensible way of showing us what’s ‘related’, I came across some of the lesser lights of alternative Ulster. Bands I’d often seen mentioned in print, but never heard. Of the clips I found, the group that come the closest to the two thoroughbreds above, though still some lengths behind, are Protex. Here they can be seen playing for the setdancing masses in New York, Paddies Day 1980 :

As ever with punk, there was a good bit of dross in among the quality. To wit, ‘The Outcasts’ - again cited frequently by Belfast people as a great band of the time but I have to say that, going on the You Tube evidence, they appear to be the worst sort of ‘Cartoon’ punk (à la Generation X etc.). The singer also reminds me uncannily of that Brendan Wotsisname (that fame-obsessed mullet-haired guy in Dublin that was born ten years too soon for Reality TV). Here they are, anyhow, doing what can only be described as a ‘Grand Guignol’ performance of an understated ditty by the name of ‘Winter’ :

To finish up, the group that are the hardest to track down on You Tube. A simple search for their name ‘Rudi’ yields a scary array of lederhosen clad Austro-Bavarians up to all sort of questionable practices (none of them punk). Again, often cited as ‘ones that got away’ North of the border - this song is more tending towards post-punk than punk - drifting into the waters of XTC, The Jam, The Blades etc. but I believe they had singles out contemporary to SLF / The Undertones. Rudi, then, playing a song live on Norn Irish TV sometime in 1980 :

We survived the metalheads, the RUC dogs of oppression, the black taxis, the gangs of Linfield fans, and the dodgy Guinness in the Queens bar…
We even survived the potholed N1 between Dundalk and Swords on the way back to Dublin.

I wonder, though, did he ever open his gob to Terri Hooley on his subsequent trips up, the Conor fella ??