The Undertones are widely regarded as Ireland's best ever rock band. They may not have drunk as much as Thin Lizzy, and they certainly never made it as big as U2, but when it comes to immaculate bursts of three-minute guitar pop, Derry's finest beat all-comers.

The band formed in Londonderry in late 1975 - five mates playing cover versions in local clubs. There was Feargal Sharkey on vocals, principal songwriter John O'Neill on guitar, his brother Damian also on guitar, Michael Bradley on bass and Billy Doherty on drums.

Snapped into action by punk, by 1977 they were performing their own material, but it would be another year before their debut single - 'Teenage Kicks', famously described by influential DJ John Peel as his 'favourite song of all time' - hit the shops. Their first single became their first chart entry.

The Undertones' most obvious precursors were New York's Ramones, who, after years of bloated stadium rock and flatulent prog-rock (progressive rock - such as Genesis, Yes or Marillion) indulgence, reintroduced the notion of short, sharp tunes to the music scene of the mid-to-late-'70s. By 1978, there were two UK bands excelling at this sort of buzzsaw guitar-pop with lyrics addressing the dilemmas of teen romance: Manchester’s Buzzcocks and The Undertones (although the 'Tones themselves always believed they had more in common, oddly enough, with The Skids).

As with The Buzzcocks, love - and how to get it - was the primary lyrical concern. As punk evolved into post-punk and bands like Wire, PiL and Joy Division began experimenting with form, employing oblique strategies and delivering obscure messages, The Undertones - like The Ramones before them - were almost cartoonishly one-dimensional, which many saw as a blessed relief at a time when rock was beginning to get pretentious again.

The Undertones were almost studiously anti-intelligent. 'We did it under the assumption that other people would get it,' says Michael Bradley of The Undertones' approach. 'Did we deliberately dumb it down? We certainly had no pretensions towards art; we were anti- that.'
Of course, even The Undertones couldn't resist the lure of experimentation, and listened to in straight succession, their four albums - The Undertones (1979), Hypnotised (1980), Positive Touch (1981) and The Sin Of Pride (1983) - evince a clear drift towards more complex, sophisticated territories, with soul and psychedelic influences coming to the fore by the end. Falling sales and increasing tensions within the band led to a parting of the ways after the commercial failure of their last LP. Feargal Sharkey enjoyed a brief but successful solo career, while the O'Neill brothers formed the highly regarded, pioneering techno-rock act, That Petrol Emotion.

Now, with a decade and a half's worth of water under the bridge, The Undertones look set to reform for the first year of the third millennium. Whether or not Feargal Sharkey (a part-time member of the Radio Authority who hand out commercial licences, he also works for a music consultancy firm) will be a part of the reunion line-up remains to be seen ('We'll ask him' says Bradley, 'but I suspect that he won't want to do it').

It also remains to be seen whether or not this will involve the players giving up their day jobs once more (Michael works for BBC Radio Foyle, John works for Stream International giving advice on computers, Billy works for Seagate - who make disk drives - while Damian is a freelance musician/guitarist).

Comprehension questions (for all the answers, scroll down and click on the link):

1. Where and when were they formed, and what inspired them?
2. Who were they compared to, and who did they see themselves as similar to?
3. What were their songs about?
4. How were they different from Wire PIL and Joy Division?
5. Why did they split up?
6. What have the various members of the band gone on to do?
7. What may happen this year?

Look for words (in bold) and phrases (in bold and underlined) which mean the same as:

Before you listen to the song, match the rhyming word below:

do alone game well world hell name bad home that you girls