Here’s another oddity from the depths of my singles collection. It’s either by Chris Sievey or by The Freshies, depending on how you look at it.

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Xdreamysts were signed up by Polydor at the same gig as Protex. Their single, Right Way Home, was one of the first releases on the Bad Vibrations but unlike most of their labelmates they didn’t even pretend to be punks.

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The Outcasts, a kind of rootsier Undertones also featuring three brothers, were another of the first wave of Ulster bands, but bad luck blighted their career. One of them was killed and another badly injured in two separate car crashes.

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On a sunny day in 1976 I joined 150,000 other people in Knebworth Park to see The Rolling Stones. The line-up that day included Todd Rundgren’s Utopia, 10CC, Hot Tuna and, immediately before the headliners, Lynyrd Skynyrd.

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“Following an incident at a press reception in Kilkenny for Thin Lizzy, it was decided that it was in the band’s best interests if the band’s manager – and drummer – Nigel Hamilton left immediately following the tour.” That may be the most interesting thing about Belfast band The Tearjerkers. Sadly it seems that whatever happens in Kilkenny stays in Kilkenny.

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I wonder what the actor Colin Salmon (three Bond films, two Resident Evil movies, and lots of telly) thinks when – all right, if – he listens back to the solitary single released by The Tee Vees in 1979.

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It’s facile to think of all Northern Ireland punk bands furiously raging against the Troubles. Apart from Stiff Little Fingers, most of the New Wave bands from Ulster tended more towards power pop. Like Starjets.

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Long-forgotten by all but hardcore punks, Belfast band Victim were the second group to put out a single on the city’s Bad Vibrations label. This is it.

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So here is, to mark the 65th birthday this week of Jake Burns – the very first punk single to come out of Northern Ireland exactly 45 years ago.

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Here’s another slice of Ulster punk from Protex. With their primal power pop sound they were Belfast’s answer to Buzzcocks. And with their ear for a good tune – like this, their debut on Good Vibrations – it’s a surprise they weren’t bigger.

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