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The Undertones are set to celebrate their 50th anniversary with a Christmas weekender in Belfast.
The Derry punk legends will play the Limelight on Saturday December 19 and Sunday December 20, as part of an extensive tour marking five decades since the band formed.
They will be joined across the weekend by Belfast punk pioneer Terri Hooley, whose Good Vibrations label first released Teenage Kicks in 1978, with a further special guest still to be announced.
The band will then return to their home city for two shows at Derry’s Millennium Forum on Friday February 19 and Saturday February 20, 2027, alongside Scottish punk band Skids.
Formed in Derry in 1976 by John O’Neill, Damian O’Neill, Feargal Sharkey, Billy Doherty and Michael Bradley, The Undertones began as five friends teaching themselves to play rock and roll.
Growing up in a city with little in the way of a live music scene, they found inspiration in mail-order records, the few copies of the NME that reached Derry and, most importantly, John Peel’s BBC Radio 1 show.
After practising in their bedrooms, the band recorded John O’Neill’s Teenage Kicks and released it through Terri Hooley’s Good Vibrations label in Belfast.
The record famously caught the attention of Peel, who loved it so much that he played it twice in succession on his radio show.
The Undertones subsequently signed to Sire Records and re-released Teenage Kicks, earning their first appearance on Top of the Pops.
Over the following five years, the band released a string of enduring songs including Here Comes the Summer, Jimmy Jimmy, You’ve Got My Number (Why Don’t You Use It), Wednesday Week and My Perfect Cousin, as well as four albums.
The original line-up came to an end in 1983 when Sharkey left to pursue a solo career, with the remaining members deciding to call time on the band.
After 16 years apart, The Undertones reunited in 1999 with fellow Derryman Paul McLoone taking over as lead vocalist.
Read more: Damian O’Neill: ‘The Undertones got a lot of abuse in Derry for being punks’
They later released an album of new material, Get What You Need, showing that their knack for short, sharp pop songs had survived the lengthy break.
When the album track Thrill Me was released as a limited-edition vinyl single in 2003, it too found its way onto John Peel’s turntable.
Introducing it, Peel remarked that he never thought he would again be announcing a new single by The Undertones before, just as he had with Teenage Kicks 25 years earlier, playing it twice.
The band have continued performing around the world and are now also promoting their first live album, 16 Live Humdingers.
Recorded in Glasgow in 2023, it features a selection of old and new songs performed by the post-1999 line-up with McLoone on vocals. The album is currently available exclusively on green vinyl at the band’s live shows.
Day and weekend tickets for The Undertones’ Belfast and Derry concerts go on sale on Friday July 24 at 10am via ticketmaster.ie.
