The Damned
Damned Damned Damned

THE REVIEW

What was the first English punk band in chronological order to release a 45 rpm? And which one released the first LP? And went on the first US tour? And broke up first, just a couple of months after the release of their second album, for which they wanted nothing less than to work in the production room with Syd Barrett, having instead to settle for his buddy Nick Mason? And reformed, keeping a band name alive even to this day, although this is most likely not a good thing?

If you answered Damned to any of the above questions, you've won a spit - or if you prefer, a can - right in the forehead. Yes, them, the Damned Londoners. Those who beat both the Sex Pistols and the Clash to the appointment with vinyl and therefore with history. Those who chose as a singer someone who was an undertaker and liked to dress up as a vampire, obsessed as he was by the myth of Count Dracula. Those who originally had a brilliant guitarist, but - alas for them! - let him slip away too soon (note no. 1: someone someday will take the trouble to glorify Brian James and his Tanz der Youth). Those who the writer is willing to forgive all the countless ugliness of the past twenty-and-a-half years - and how many they have given us! Enough to fill a couple of the niches that Dave Vanian loves so much...-, in exchange for a debut album that showed in the midst of the Seventies what regenerative juice punk could bring to the dying body of a (certain kind of) rock.

But how punk were the Damned? Here's the busillis. If the theory of punk as an attitude rather than a genre increasingly ready - and it was only 1976... - to become stereotyped is valid, the Damned of that very first and unrepeatable season were an extraordinarily punk band. Precisely for this reason, they contributed to revitalizing the dying music that surrounded them as much as their other peers. Maybe more.

Look at the cover of their epochal debut. No slogans or proclamations or much less politics, no provocative aesthetics and not even the angry sneer of a Sid Vicious. Just four cheeky young lads who preferred, unconcerned with an imagery soon to be confined to strict cliches, the youthful rowdiness of rock'n'roll boys who throw pies at each other only to lick them off each other later. More Belushi-Bluto from "Animal House" than Johnny Rotten. Not for them mentors like McLaren preparing the great rock'n'roll swindle, but a frank and rustic subject raised on bread and pub-rock like Nick Lowe, may he always be praised (note no. 2: someone someday will take the trouble to glorify him as well as other veteran lions like Brinsley Schwarz and Dave Edmunds).

In the twelve tracks of "Damned Damned Damned," therefore, the most genuinely sincere, desecrating, violent and sick spirit of rock resides. The same spirit for which it is rightly believed that in Detroit, well-known as the Stooges and MC5, as well as in Sydney, obscure as the Missing Links unknowingly invented punk-rock almost a decade in advance. If in those days, Iggy hadn't gone to "clean up" at the court of the White Duke but had instead happened to pass through London, very likely today he would not be alive but might have sung with those Damned. His rotten breath would have been the vital breath blessing songs that seem like genuine outtakes from "Raw Power" with the added value given by the explosive charge of those young idiots ("Fan club", the epic and unsurpassable crescendo of "Feel the pain", with Brian James screaming to the world what a massive bullshit it is to say that punks can't play). I also like to imagine the face of the average Seventies listener, the one well-nourished on Yes and EL&P, when out of the crackling speakers of the radio came surprising riffs accompanied by hyperkinetic rhythms and first-take sounds like in "Neat Neat Neat", "I fall", "Stab your back" or "See her tonite". Or the unprecedented martial intro to "New Rose", a cornerstone which is the first engine that motivated someone to form a band in countless instances.

Finally, since the "sins" of the fathers can sometimes rightly fall upon the children, here are the Damned grappling with "1970", a flagship of the Iguana and depraved family. Needless to say, treated in a seventy-seven style. More royalist than the king. No flights of fancy, no sax, no free expansions. Less than three minutes ugly, dirty, and bad as rarely (I say Radio Birdman, I say Saints) punk-rock was able to synthesize. Even changing the title.

"...Feel the pain... ...I'm doing just great..." Off with the stereo headphones, you could really go back to garages and streets.

The resurrection of rock once again passed through a damnation.