I suppose you had to be there. In those horrible days of the mid to late 1970s, when the sun never seemed to shine and there really was "no future", something strange was happening in The Harp and in The Pound venues. First there was Rudi, and if that wasn't enough (and it would have been, believe me) they were followed by Protex and The Outcasts. Then the dam burst and it seemed like anybody who had ever set foot inside the Good Vibrations record shop was forming a band and gig places. They just kept coming The Starjets, Big Sell, T-be Male Caucasians, The Bankrobbers, Ruefrex...
Round about this time, John T. Davis entered the fray, carrying a camera. He took it upon himself to document this star burst of musical activity and the resulting lo-fi documentary, Shellshock Rock remains a mini classic. The Undertones had come down from Derry, got involved with Terry Hooley of Good Vibrations and soon found themselves in all their Dunnes Stores splendour on Top Of The Pops.
Stiff Little Fingers hitched up with journalist Gordon Ogilivie and unleashed a string of classics. This was all happening in a city which was witnessing a bigger displacement of population (because of the troubles) then any other city in Europe since the second World War. Quite remarkable.
And so it went on US and continental television crews would arrive in Good Vibrations wanting to know about this new Belfast beat and asking stupid questions about Protestants and Catholics. Just for the record conventional wisdom has it that Stiff Little Fingers did the political "stuff", leaving The Undertones to do songs about chocolate and girls. It's a myth. Listen to You're Welcome or It's Going To Happen on the magnificent Positive Touch album the former song is about a woman writing to her boyfriend who's resident in Long Kesh, the latter is a none too thinly disguised attack on Thatcher's treatment of the hunger strikers.
Almost passed over in that hectic "another day, another band" period was a bunch of kids from Derry, who were friendly with the Undertones and in possession of some of the best power pop tunes you'd ever heard. They were The Moondogs and while they have largely been written out of musical history, their story is perhaps the most interesting.
Poptastic songs like Who's Going To Tell May and Talking In The Canteen got them signed to a subsidiary of the Warner empire (where they shared space with The Pretenders). Destined for glory, tipped ahead of U2, they got their own television series in Britain and when word seeped through that Todd Rundgren was going to be producing their debut album in the US, it seemed like they were signed, sealed and delivered. Remember, Todd Rundgren has just finished producing Meat Loaf's Bat Out Of Hell It all fell apart quicker than the record company could say "can we have our advance back?".
The band split up, the record was never released and that, it seemed, was that. (The album, That's What Friends Are For was released years later in Germany, much to the band's astonishment.) Just last week though, a reformed Moondogs took to the stage in Galway for a one off gig and who knows what that might lead onto.
Sadly the impetus of those early days was never sustained and into the 1980s it was left to the likes of The Four Of Us, Tiberious Minnows, Ashanti and Ghost Of An American Airman to continue the tradition. Nothing much happened there but at the turn of the decade a hardcore band from Larne, Therapy?, kick started the "scene" and as Belfast and the North ride on the crest of their second wave of musical glory, much fun can be had standing around The Good Vibrations shop indulging in idle compare and contrast chatter.
After Larne's unlikely contribution, Downpatrick offered up Ash (and there's no stopping them), Fermanagh provided us with The Divine Comedy and Derry had a rush of blood to the head as it got back into gear with the Sch bands (Schtum and Scheer) along with Cuckoo and Rare (John O'Neill's new band). See what you make of this, it's two personal top five's from then and now.
