Teenage Kicks...

 The Troubles’ as they have come to be called featured heavily throughout my childhood due to the fact that the horrific images were on the 6 O clock news every single night. The names of places and events got hotwired into my memory; strange sounding places that I had only ever heard of but had never actually been to or knew nothing about. The Falls Road, Milltown Cemetery, The Lower Bogside, The Maze and The Shankhill Road to name but a few. Throughout the 70’s, 80’s and the 90’s the violence escalated into the U.K. as hotels, shopping centres, politicians and innocent bystanders became targets and victims of sectarian attacks. Both sides had uncontrollable factions and were as bad as each other, both blamed each other.

They weren’t just the ‘Troubles’ then, it was nightly display of carnage and violence. Car bombs, shootings, masked men, army soldiers, politicians shouting, bitter tears, marches and flags, petrol bombs and sectarian violent protests that were all very confusing to a young lad watching the news back then, but the images have stayed with me all my life. Only now do I understand what the hell was going on back then.

People said then that it would never end, they would never find peace, but somehow, against adversity, they have. Thankfully the Good Friday Agreement agreed only 12 years ago is intact and hopefully people have learned to live in peace and things have moved on for the better.

It’s time to go and have a look, so it’s out with the ‘Fenwicks’ bike cleaner to see if I can scrape a bit of mud off ready for the tour!

Music by Northern Irish bands or musicians definitely get an airing too in the forthcoming blogs as a tribute to their inspiring music. Following on from SLF here’s another band from this area and I make no excuses here, the only links are that all the bands featured in these blogs hail from NI, that way I get to choose all my favourite tracks!

Kick off here with ‘Teenage Kicks’, an absolute classic from Feargal Sharkey OBE and the boys from 1978 and a firm favourite of mine and of the late John Peel. How happy is that drummer..?