Well this one was hardly going to be rocket science to review. After all it’s not like there’s not been enough Damned gigs that I have witnessed over the years both in the flesh and indeed on album. With the band having been going since 1976 (yes that is nearly 40 years) there is no real excuse not to have caught the gothic punksters at least a few times and I have always enjoyed going to see them live, limping out injured one way or another at the end of the show. Indeed the likes of ‘Machine Gun Etiquette’, ‘The Black Album’ (not Metallica’s you prune) and ‘Strawberries’ are among my top played discs of all time and that is something that won’t be changing at all in a hurry. Sure I miss the classic line up days when James and Scabies were in the band but we do still have second best with original lead singer Dave Vanian, Captain Sensible alongside drummer Pinch and flamboyant keyboard player Monty Oxymoron on this recording made at The Manchester Academy on the 2010 tour.
This one so the promo blurb says is partly being sold to us for its great sound and I have to admit I almost jumped out my skin when the words “We are The Damned and we sound a bit like this” burst loudly out my speakers. Yep it sounds a damn sight better than some of the old bootlegs I have knocking around that’s for sure. As for what they sound like, well if you don’t know most of these songs such as opener ‘Waiting For The Blackout’ word for word you must have been living under a rock. So I settled down on a Sunday afternoon to give this 21 track double album a play and croon along to the vocals and shout out “shut the fuck up Sensible” at pretty much every between song break. Yep they are in fine form and spend plenty of time with the quick fire repartee between songs whether enforced due to the occasional technical screw up (what song are we playing) or just due to the fact that Sensible loves to annoy the audience as he always has. As for the crooning my neighbours had a particularly bad time as I got carried away and even found myself joining on Eloise (especially found myself joining in on Eloise) and I normally cringe when they do that one.
As a long time fan I had actually found myself suffering enough by the time they followed up the fantastic ‘Phantasmagoria’ (cheers for ‘Shadow Of Love’ here) with the rather awful ‘Anything’ and missed ‘Grave Disorders’ completely. So it’s nice to get a few tracks off this one that I did not know so much amidst all the classics. Familiarity aside each and every one of them is instantly recognisable as being by The Damned and some of them are pretty good too, even if I’m sure Michael Jackson would not have been very happy with the rib taking before ‘Neverland.’ Seriously you are going to be hard pushed to not be happy with this set-list unless you are a complete nutcase and find the non-inclusion of the 20 minute psychedelic sprawl of Curtain Call a glaring omission or just be a bastard like me and moan about Lovely Money and Melody Lee not being on it! Thankfully Happy Talk is apparently banned and so it should be but that does not stop the Captain from saying Wot! There’s also the surf and turf of ‘Song.com’ which is frankly the worse song I have never heard by them before and sounds like Tiffany’s I Think We’re alone now done by a pop punk band (not Snuff). Before you can say thanks for that shite though they make up for it with ‘New Rose’ and it’s time to jump off the furniture and cause a mini riot on your own (or with friends if you have any round).
Anyway I think you should know exactly what to expect from this a good camp fun gothapunkarama show and a half and one that makes you want to go and check to see when these ageless disgraceful pensioners are next coming to town so you can go and cause one of those pit injuries that just don’t heal as quickly as they used to all over again. The Damned still smashing it up and as fun as ever; neat neat neat and all that.
(8/10 Pete Woods)
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