The Damned are currently enjoying their 35th anniversary, and are marking it with a tour playing both their seminal 1976 debut
"Damned Damned Damned" & 1980's
"The Black Album" in full. They're still on form, and although only
Dave Vanian and
Captain Sensible remain from the original line-up, it still feels like the definitive band.
Opening tonight was
Viv Albertine, of
Slits fame. She took to the stage with nothing but a rather beat-up telecaster and played through a set that was received an initially quite luke-warm reaction from the crowd. Her arty feminist punk didn't really fit in with
The Damned, more renowned for the
Captain's antics onstage and songs to pogo to but you can't fault her for trying. She did bring a warm presence though and it was hard not to like her even if the music was not to your taste.
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| Viv Albertine |
The Damned took the stage to the Dambusters theme, and proceed to belt out their first album like they'd released it last week. Opening with
"Neat Neat Neat" and even playing the
Stooges cover
"I Feel Alright", the band played as well as ever.
Captain Sensible wore a large fluffy pink outfit for the first set, and
Vanian was as ever dressed like Bela Lugosi. I felt a bit sorry for poor
Monty who didn't really have anything to play for the first 45 minutes and had to stand at the back and be content with wiggling his hands every now and then, but the crowd didn't care about anything but the music. I'm sure a large percentage had probably been around to see the original tour and lagers were still pressed into friends' hands when some of the old punks wanted to go in the pit and pogo to
"New Rose". Strangely, I don't think
"Stab Your Back" was played.
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| Dave Vanian |
After a short interval, the band returned to play The Black Album in full. The opening riff of "Wait For The Blackout" was enough to get the crowd straight back into the mood again. The band proceeded to roll through The Black Album, allowing Monty to get his fingers into the songs with his synths, and sometimes even the Captain got on a Nord. The band played all the songs with ease and showed how underrated their musicianship often is. I sometimes feel as if The Damned are the forgotten of the early punk bands. They got there first with everything while pushing punk into the 80's, and practically invented goth, but don't always get the recognition they deserve. However, I felt The Black Album doesn't entirely lend itself to being played in the live setting, while the crowd were definitely enjoying the show, the amount of tension leading up to the parts where they could actually mosh meant that a lot of the songs more intricate parts created lulls in the audience energy. That said, "Curtain Call" (all 17 minutes of it) was fucking brilliant. The Damned are an incredibly solid band, and always kill it live.
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| Throw stuff onstage and it's highly likely Sensible will either wear it or try to stick it up his arse. Sometimes both. |
The band finished the play-through of The Black Album and retired briefly before returning for a short encore of some of their popular songs. They played "Eloise", "Love Song", "Melody Lee" and finished on the petulant and awesome "Anti-Pope" with an extended breakdown. Once the band had gone off the crowd expected another encore, but one was not forthcoming unfortunately. The problem with playing both Damned Damned Damned and The Black Album all the way through is that it left little time for the classics from fan favourite Machine Gun Etiquette (I would have liked to have heard "Smash It Up", nothing beats that live). However, no one left feeling like they hadn't got their money's worth.
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| "Are you wearing a blonde wig and a lei?" |
The Damned are one of my favourite live bands and continue to deserve that title. The band are tight as a duck's arse, the Captain, Dave and Monty have great presence and the rhythm section of Pinch and Stu are great as well. They remarked that this iteration of the band had been around for the longest time in their history, and so I hope it continues.
