Happy birthday Dave Vanian for next week (12 October). I’ve still got the badge.
I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve seen the Damned. I always enjoyed them.
According to my research (the gigography in Bill Sykes’ book), The Doomed played Eric’s on 8th December 1978 and The Damned (an evening show and a matinee) on 20th January 1979.
This is an early cutting of mine from before I was writing professionally: it comes from a Liverpool University student magazine (I was in my final year at the time). It’s funny now to see the talk of nostalgia and the “good old days” – in 1979.
I wasn’t quite right about Jet Boy Jet Girl, according to Wikipedia. Which I didn’t know at the time, because the internet hadn’t been invented.
Note the mention of local band Malchix at the end of the review. They were one of the Eric’s groups that I liked a lot.
The Damned - Eric's
Guild & City Gazette, January 1979
The first punk band to... re-form. They played two shows this time, both to a full house. Yet only a month ago they played Eric's under the name of the Doomed to an enthusiastic but much smaller audience. Since then they've reverted to their former name, and two letters have attracted more people. A (New) Rose by any name...
Well, it was a triumphant return, as the band arrived on stage: Rat Scabies behind the drum kit, the ugliest man in the rock business (apart from Bram Tchaikovsky), Captain Sensible his usual lunatic and obscene self, and the anonymous guitarist who's replaced Brian James, the only member of the original line-up not present.
They opened with "Jet Boy Jet Girl", the Captain's solo single skitting the brilliantly banal "Ca plane pour moi". Then "And here is Mr David... Johansen" from Captain Sensible and enter Dave Vanian, as cool as ever, the Dracula image still effective. A skinny figure in black, with slicked-back hair and black eyes, visually dramatic offsetting the buffoonery of the others.
To me he's still the focal point, although the Captain takes the weight of the communication (if it can be called that) with the audience, confined mainly to obscenities and invective. A bit too much effort to live up to the original punk image maybe, but everything is tongue-in-cheek. This is part of the appeal: they don’t seem to take themselves seriously but they do seem to enjoy themselves. Dave hurls himself around the stage, no longer trying to look sinister, Rat comes out to sing one number, putting on a leather jacket and asking "Do I look like Joey Ramone?"
The audience are enjoying it as much as the band, pogoing and spitting as if it was still 1977, there's energy in the air and it is like "the good old days", yet there’s no sense of anachronism. It might be an evening of nostalgia, but there’s a future for the band too. The music is immediate and exciting: all the hits and more.
"More" is a version of "Rich Kids", an MC5 number (I forget the name), the B-sides of the singles preceding the "greatest hits" section which formed a high point at the end of the set, and utter and brilliant chaos during the encore which began with a hilarious version of "Summer Nights" and ended with "Pretty Vacant" and a superb impression of Johnny Rotten from Dave. I enjoyed every minute of it.
As added bonus was Malchix, a local band who have been playing a lot of support dates at Eric's recently. The first time I saw them (supporting Penetration) I missed the last bus home, and it was worth it. When you're bored or disillusioned with the music business, watching a band like this is an experience which renews faith in the spirit of rock n roll. Because it’s not business, it’s a bunch of kids you can see any night posing at Erics (it could be you, that’s if you’re in the habit of posing at Eric’s) who are doing something enjoyable. That’s closer to punk music than any of those bands now signed to big record labels.
Yet they have that element which makes them different from your average local punk band – originality, stage presence… whatever it is, they’re good fun. Their music in fact owes more to rock’n’roll than punk, although totally up to date. And their obligatory cover version isn’t even by Chuck Berry but a Marc Bolan song Woodland Rock (which older readers will remember as the B-side of Hot Love). The most promising group I’ve seen in a long time. Catch them before they’re famous – or before they go the way of most bands of their status and disappear.
The Damned on telly
Here are the band on The Old Grey Whistle Test, also in 1979. Also brilliant chaos.
Back in the 21st century
I’ve got a chapter about Eric’s in Venue Stories, a new book from York St John University and Equinox Publishing. It’s a collection of creative non-fiction about independent music venues – an endangered species these days.
It’s only just out so I haven’t received my copy yet but I’m really looking forward to reading the other contributors including Polly Hancock and Ruth Miller of Punk Girl Diaries, Dave Gedge and Jon Stewart from The Wedding Present, Julianne Regan from All About Eve and Tom Hingley from Inspiral Carpets. There’s also a chapter about the early 80s Liverpool venue, the Warehouse, by Dawn Amber Harvey.
Love it - his I used to adore the Damned ... - and I love your line ‘Because it’s not business, it’s a bunch of kids you can see any night posing at Eric’s’ it was only fairly recently that I found out that Nick Caves Wife is the woman on the front of Phantasmagoria ...