1977. 16 year old Colin Fletcher (Fletch) feared he was the only person in East Belfast to love the new sounds coming from London and Manchester spear-headed by the Sex Pistols and the Buzzcocks. When his school friend Bryan Harbinson told him he knew of two other punks called Dessie Potter and John Stevenson (soon to be known to all as John Perfect) who lived on the Cregagh Road Fletch set out to stalk them down!

His first encounter with John was on the 3rd of August 1977 when they watched BBC2’s Brass Tacks documentary on the Manchester punk scene at a mutual friend’s house. A meeting with Dessie soon followed and the trio would soon be attending many of the early punk gigs together. They are all captured together in UTV’s “It Makes You Want to Spit” documentary filmed in January 1978 watching a Stiff Little Fingers gig at the Pound club in Oxford Street (see above).

Like numerous others, thoughts turned to forming their own band. Dessie already had a guitar and would practice for hours using a reel-to-reel tape recorder as his amplification. Fletch used a Woolworths Audition (lead) guitar with 4 strings as his bass and John bought a microphone. Karl Scott another local lad was recruited as a drummer on the basis that he looked the part. Several “practices” where held in Dessie’s Titania Street home, a small terrace just off the Cregagh Road. Songs were chosen based on their simplicity and included Wire’s “12XU” and “Lowdown”, Sham 69’s “Ulster” and Eater’s “Why don’t you get Raped”. Fletch named the band “The Batteries” after a Buzzcocks song on the Roxy WC2 album and also because the battery was an energy source much like the punk rock explosion itself.

Dessie arranged for the band to make its stage debut with the Androids, Protex Blue, and The Idiots, at an infamous (dry) night (no booze) at the Glen Machen Hotel Stables. Before this gig the Batteries had never played together with a full drum kit, a bass amp or a PA system. Unsurprisingly, and by their own admission, they were rubbish. The band received two reviews for their performance in local fanzines – in (Gavin Martin’s) Alternative Ulster and in (Alywn Greer’s) Private World. Alternative Ulster declared the Batteries to be “really atrocious” while Private World recognized that the band where giving it a go in the best tradition of punk.

The band dissolved after the gig. While the Batteries never really made a mark on the Belfast punk scene this performance was to be the catalyst for Dessie and Fletch to form Stage B and for John to front the Basics. The links established with the Androids also helped Stage B find rehearsal space in the Art and Research Centre in Lombard Street and ensured that the band members attended the very first punk gigs in the Harp Bar. Dessie continues to play with the Dark Wave band the Stiltwalkers while Fletch has fun with Stop! Stop! Start Again…

If anyone has any further information or photographs of this band, then please contact Spit Records via spit77to82@aol.com