Terri Hooley, Teenage Kicks, and the Belfast punk scene at the height of the Troubles 

A new book delves into the era when Hooley's famous record shop provided a venue for afternoon gatherings, as it was often too dangerous to go out at night 

Terri Hooley outside his Good Vibrations shop in Belfast. Stuart Bailie's book details that era. 

Punk rock faced the ultimate test when it arrived in Northern Ireland at the height of the Troubles, says music author and journalist Stuart Bailie. It was all very well affecting a snarl and singing about storming the barricades from the relative safety of New York or London. In Belfast and Derry, where the bombs were going off and paramilitaries flexed their muscles, punk’s manifesto of brotherhood and defiance resonated differently.

“Proof of concept for punk was Belfast. The King’s Road could talk about revolution. New York could talk about radicalism,” explains Bailie, who tells the story of those times via a new book about the Godfather of Belfast punk, Terri Hooley: Seventy-Five Revolutions.