It’s 1976 in Northern Ireland and Terri Hooley, a not-so-young, one-eyed pacifist hippie, is annoyed by the sectarian violence euphemistically known as The Troubles, so he decides to open up a record store. His store is called GOOD VIBRATIONS and is on Greater Victoria Street, known to locals as “Bomb Alley” due to the number of bombings on the street. To avoid an attack on his store, he invites a number of his old friends who are on different sides of the conflict over to the store. He shows them his record collection and offers them their favourite album if they leave him in peace. He wants his store to be open to everyone – republicans and loyalists alike.
Later a friend drags Terri to see the punk band Rudi and the Outcasts in concert. Punk is not Terri’s kind of music and he is at least 20 years older than most of the pogoing crowd. The police promptly end the fun and as they clear everyone out the lead singer of the band yells out, “Hey, we just want to have some fun.” At that moment, Terri finds his calling and launches the first indie punk record label in Northern Ireland. His label put out the Undertones’ single “Teenage Kicks,” the first line of which is on the gravestone of BBC DJ and punk expert John Peel. The film GOOD VIBRATIONS shows well how the escapism of pop punk, the more political punk bands were with a different label, became not only a refuge but also a form of aesthetic resistance against the hate and violence of “the Troubles.” Terri Hooley, an enthusiastic music fan whose passion is coupled with a miserable business sense (he sold the rights to “Teenage kicks” for a couple of pounds) certainly deserves this honour in his lifetime. In 2013 he reopened GOOD VIBRATIONS for the eleventh time. Teenage Dreams – so hard to beat.

Tom Dorow