The Libertines announced plans today for their first full gig since they revealed that they were re-forming.
The band, which centres around the songwriting partnership of Pete Doherty and Carl Barât, will play a warm-up show in north London later this month ahead of a reportedly lucrative appearance at the Reading and Leeds festivals. The band members have not played together as the Libertines since 2004.
Tickets for the 25 August gig at the HMV Forum in Kentish Town will not go on general sale but will be offered, priced £30, to fans, chosen at random, who register on the band's website.
A spokesman for the band said they "felt this was the fairest way to distribute tickets and to avoid fans being charged extortionate amounts for them".
The Libertines formed in 1997, with bassist John Hassall and drummer Gary Powell completing the lineup. The band's debut album Up the Bracket, released in 2002, won critical acclaim and earned them a devoted fanbase although they were arguably more notorious for the drug problems of frontman Doherty. His heroin addiction caused ructions within the band and he was eventually kicked out in 2004 by his best friend, Barât. Doherty went on to form Babyshambles while Barât became the frontman of Dirty Pretty Things, who split up in 2008.
The band announced in March that they would be playing the Reading and Leeds festivals, and performed a short set for journalists and a few fans behind closed doors at the Boogaloo pub in Highgate, north London. In an interview with the Observer in April, Barât said the time "just felt right [to reform]. There seems to have been enough water under the bridge. I hope."
Up the Bracket was named the best British album of the past decade in a survey of musicians and industry figures by the music magazine NME.
