Lee - re TPE I agree - their farewell gig (at the Astoria? Or that other one on charing X road) was one of my top gigs ever. I really liked the album from Steve Mack's subsequent band Anodyne - it was quite Petrol-ish. They have/had a good website. http://pages.prognet.com/anodyne​/home.html You used to be able to hear the entire album on the website - needs Real Audio. p.s. great news about the Vapors. I may well go down to London for that one.

Well done Lee,pint of Banks's bitter or mild for me please.Best beer in the world.I saw TPE on one of their first ever gigs in North London somewhere(Camden?).They were excellent, but I went to live abroad not long after so lost track.

Right,I've taken the plunge and booked 21-23 July.That means all of Saturday with little to do,any of you locals allowed out for a couple of beers? Lindsay and Alastair, are you coming? Come on its only money,you only live once.400 capacity indoors,sounds perfect to me.Wilke could you leave me your address,I seem to have mislaid it,thanks.

If anybody else is considering either the Derry or Letterkenny gigs these are the B&B prices of the place we usually stay.Double room £36 with en-suite,£32 without.Single Room £25 with en-suite or £20 without.Its clean and comfortable(5 minutes from the centre)and the landlady talks as if shes known you for years.She'll even clip your ears if you're cheeky.

There was (is?) a dogs toilet of a pub in Finsbury Park called the George Robey that put on gigs every day and had a capacity of about 100 people at a push. I saw one of the first Petrols London gigs there in 1984 and thought they were great and couldn't believe it when I was standing next to Mickey Bradley and DAMIAN at the bar afterwards. Around 84/85/86 they seemed to be gigging almost every day somewhere so you couldn't blame them for lack of effort. I saw them about 6 or 7 times (including a very noisy messy gig in LIverpoool where they must have been well out of it). Manic Pop Thrill was a great album but I kind of drifted off to listen to people like JAMC and all the Def Jam stuff after that. I liked some of the acid house/dance remixes of some of their later songs around 1990 though (after John had left?).

I reckon that might have been the place Rick,is there a canal nearby? I remember it being a long narrow place with the band at one end.

Why does DAMIAN get capital letters but poor old Mickey Bradley only gets italics?

TPE: They also did a free gig in the park in Stoke Newington, and I saw them a couple of other times in London but have forgotten where now. They turned out some really great songs, well up with the Undertones' best. No, really. I picked up the first single for a pound in an Oxfam shop a couple of weeks back. The one with V2, and Lettuce on it - the studd they did in the first Peel session.

Studd? I meant stuff. I think.

DAMIAN gets capitals Cliff because he deserves them (I'll leave it to your imagination as to why I might think that - Lyndsay should agree).

At last something we agree on Rick!! (or is it just something else to fight over!).

Just discovered British Airways fly direct to Derry from Manchester and Glasgow. Cost incl. taxes is £93-98.00 going 21-23 July - more than from Stansted but I'd save that on petrol AND the flights are at a much more civilised time of 11.40am out, 12.15 return. It's all looking quite positive!

Congrats Lee and a pint of bitter for me please! I like TPE too, recently bought the vinyll Lp's secondhand but I need quite a few pints of bitter to tell about my memories relating TPE!! Hopefully it will happen some time this year at an Undertones/Moondogs gig!! By the way anyone remeber "Local Heroes SW9"? I was relistening an audiotape of the TV-series Going Out and in the end I had a track by this band, kind of Guitarpop mixed with Joy Division style-bass-lines