The Undertones -Teenage Kicks (1978)

Are teenage dreams so hard to beat?

Once you leave home, you can never go back. Yet when I was 19, I did; for weeks and weeks. At home everything seemed smaller – the stairs, my room, the bed. I was welcomed and resented. I suffered from persistent, low level stress. I felt like a walrus in a teapot.

The dissolute lifestyle I had embraced was at odds with my parents’ ordered regime. I slept all day; I stayed out all night; I took their cars and drove all over the country.

I felt at odds with the city too. I had never felt part of it, but absence and return exacerbated my resentment. I judged it harshly for its poverty, its parochialism, its intolerance.

In short, I was a horrid snob.

I hung out with a couple of childhood friends. One was a contrarian and an aesthete. I adopted his puritanism. We affected an aloof disdain. We eschewed parties and clubs. Our only permitted vice was cigarettes. Whilst our peers were shagging and getting hammered, we’d be atop a Martello tower in the country, watching clouds.

Like all puritans, I was a hypocrite. In other contexts, I partook voraciously of drink, drugs, women and anything else I could get my hands on. But I could never let go when at home.

When not driving or sleeping, I would visit the numerous record shops in town, especially the markets; a largely nationalist area of small shops selling second hand goods. I had spent most of my teenage years, bus fares and dinner money there, buying vinyl.

A new shop, the Record Cabin, had appeared. It was small but had a regular turnover of good stock. It belonged to one of the patriarchs of the markets; a dour man who would stand in the doorway smoking and glaring at shoppers.

One day a girl appeared in the Record Cabin.

Her name was Aoife. She was 17 years old. I don’t know how I knew these things; I just did. She was beautiful. Petite, long brown hair, blue eyes and a pink mouth like a little bow. She sat behind the counter of the Record Cabin and stared into the middle distance. She never smiled and she never frowned. Except when dealing with customers she was completely still.

There weren’t many customers in the Record Cabin. It had a sepulchral air. The radio would play inaudibly in the background. Frequently I would be the only visitor. It would take me 10 minutes to browse the racks. Aoife would stare into the middle distance. I wouldn’t look at her.

I was rendered dumb by her unattainable beauty; by my class, and my supposed religion. I wouldn’t even say hello or goodbye. Our occasional spoken interactions were purely transactional. I would hand her an LP. She would say, “five pound”. I would hand her a note. She would put my record in a bag and hand it to me. I would say, “thank you” and leave.

My puritan friend was also a record collector and was also obsessed with Aoife. We would make endless plans to rescue her; to keep her in a walnut shell; to send her to finishing school. We imagined being kneecapped by the IRA; fantasised about being beaten by her numerous brothers; dreamed of her falling asleep without blinking her blue eyes.

It was hopeless.

One day I was in the Record Cabin browsing the racks. Aoife was staring into the middle distance. I flipped past a copy of Tomorrow’s Girls by the UK Subs, and there it was: an original copy of The Undertones’ Teenage Kicks, in perfect condition.

I felt a pain in my chest.

I listened to the Undertones a lot as a teenager; mostly in my bedroom or the bedrooms of my friends. We didn’t go out much, except to record shops. Our mothers would bring us bread, chips and vanilla ice cream to keep us docile. It rained a lot. The air smelt of damp red brick and coal fires. Cloud blanketed the numerous villages that made up the city. Nothing much ever happened, except when it did.

The Undertones inhabited an alternative universe of freedom and sunshine and girls. I can’t think of a single one of their songs that mentions rain. I don’t need to tell you about Teenage Kicks: one of the greatest, maybe the greatest, pop single of all time; perfect in its cleanliness and brevity. The final, closing, “Alright!” always brings a tear to my eye. You know the guy is going to get the girl.

I took the record to the counter and handed it to Aoife. My hand was shaking. “Twelve pound”, she said. It was a lot of money. I paid up. She handed me the bag. I left.

When I got home I put the record in a protective sleeve and placed it in my collection, where it remains to this day; immaculate and inviolate.

Sometimes you get so obsessed by the artefact you forget about the song.

I once heard the Undertones singer recalling when Teenage Kicks was played on the radio for the first time. I’m paraphrasing, but he said something like despite it being the very start of his career and despite his ambition and despite being only 20 years old, he was somehow obscurely aware that this was, in fact, the greatest moment of his life and that nothing in his future would ever measure up to it.

The next time I went to the Record Cabin, Aoife had disappeared. Her grandfather stood in the doorway. He glared at me balefully. The radio had been replaced by a record player. The Fields of Athenry was playing, loudly.

Some months later I was home again. I went with my non-puritan friend to a bar on the south side of the city. I was on tap water and cigarettes. My non-puritan friend was drinking steadily. A waitress came to take his order. It was Aoife. She looked older. She didn’t look at me. My friend ordered his drink. Aoife brought it to him. “Two pound eighty”.

The night wore on. Aoife brought more drinks to our table. My friend began a conversation with an older couple who were sitting next to us. It transpired they were from a part of the city that Aoife definitely wasn’t from. They got louder and more boorish. I lit a thousand cigarettes and tried to disappear into the smoke.

The evening ended. My friend decided I was driving him and the couple home. As I rose amidst the empty pint glasses and overflowing ashtrays in the last weeks of my teenage life, I caught Aoife’s eye for the first and last time.

Perhaps it was amusement; maybe it was pity; maybe contempt – but for a moment she held my gaze and smiled.

Alright.

By Mike McConnell