110 - 50 Years of The Undertones with Damian O'Neill Undertones (Derry)

110 - 50 Years of The Undertones with Damian O'Neill Undertones (Derry)

Author: Rock n Roll Book Club April 4, 2026 Duration: 44:46

This week we celebrate 50 years of The Undertones with guitar player Damian O’Neill. 


Damien kept diaries during the early years of the band & reads extracts for us throughout & he tells us about joining the band age 15 & their first gig at a local scout hall. From there The Undertones honed their craft playing regularly at The Casbah in their hometown of Derry, Northern Ireland. 


His older brother John O’Neill starts to write songs & they record their debut release The Teenage Kicks EP - after which John Peel plays it & becomes a fan - resulting in the songs success & an appearance on Top Of The Pops. 


The day after their TV debut the band return to Derry for a triumphant homecoming gig at The Rocking Chair, a local pub.


Damien tells us about briefly touring with Joy Division & The Rezillos & their ill fated attempt to stage a festival in their hometown headlined by The Clash. The festival is cancelled after Joe Strummer receives a letter from local political loyalists. 


In return for the cancellation, the Undertones get to open for The Clash on a US tour in the Autumn of 1979. 


Damien also tells us about his favourite Undertones tracks, his brother John getting arrested on tour & previews the upcoming 50th anniversary gigs later this year. 



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Hosted, Produced & Edited by Simon Cardwell

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The Music Maps Podcast from the Rock n Roll Book Club isn't your typical music show. It's an audio expedition where geography is the guide. Every episode starts with a specific location-a city, a venue, a forgotten roadside attraction-and uses that place as a launchpad to explore the sounds, stories, and scenes connected to it. You might find yourself deep in the blues clubs of Chicago one week and tracing the underground punk threads of a small European town the next. The conversations are wide-ranging, connecting the dots between iconic artists and obscure movements, all anchored to a point on the map. Listening to this podcast feels like adding a new, richly detailed pin to a global atlas of musical influence. It’s about the context behind the chords and the cultural soil from which genres grow. The result is a continuously evolving, deeply human portrait of how music and place are inextricably linked, one fascinating destination at a time.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 100

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