Lone Justice tackled The Undertones’ greatest song Teenage Kicks when they kicked off the LA cowpunk scene and paved the way for alt-country.
This shouldn’t really work, should it? Arguably the greatest pop-punk song of all time from 1978 covered by arguably a female-fronted cowpunk band from LA.
But you know what? It’s fantastic. And it’s an apt cover since McKee wrote A Good Heart, which gave Feargal Sharkey his only No.1 single in 1985.
It helps a bit that they recorded it (I think) six or seven years after The Undertones, rather than in middle-age today. And it helps a lot that the band is Lone Justice, with Maria McKee blasting out those familiar power chords and belting out the vocal with as much youthful enthusiasm as Feargal once mustered.
No wonder Dolly Parton, after catching an early show, once called her “the greatest girl singer any band could have” and Linda Ronstadt made the call to David Geffen that got them their record deal and set them on the road to a U2 support tour.
As for the moment when Ryan Hedgecock comes in with the second guitar… Well it gives me the same sort of tingle I remember from the very first time I heard The Ramones do Blitzkrieg Bop. And the rhythm section of Marvin Etzioni and Don Heffington (from Emmylou Harris’s Hot Band) give it everything.
I’m not normally one for cover versions that sound pretty much the same as the originals – always far better when they take it in a different direction altogether – but this is an exception. Because it is in every ways exceptional.
Lone Justice started out in the early ’80s playing covers and this presumably dates from that period before they began writing their own songs and released their debut album in 1985, kicking off the genre that would become known as alt-country.
They never made it: McKee was the only member left on their second and final album and they broke up in 1987 but they’ve just released another one featuring some old songs brushed up for 2024.
I could play this song back to back to back… And I just have. I only wish there were a video to go with it.