The Damned: Manchester Apollo – live review

The Damned | Penetration | TV Smith And The Bored Teenagers | Smalltown Tigers
Manchester Apollo
3rd November 2022

The original line up of The Damned was always larger than life cartoon characters. As punk spice boys, you’ve got Captain ‘Silly Spice’ Sensible, Brian ‘Cool Spice’ James, Rat ‘Cockney Spice’ Scabies and, of course, Dave ‘Vampire Spice’ Vanian. Nowadays, they’re obviously all Old Spice so the question is whether they can still summon the energy which ushered in the punk era with the adrenalin rush of New Rose and the amphetamine-fuelled genius of first album Damned Damned Damned. The answer? A resounding ‘yes’.

There were raised eyebrows when the festival-like ticket prices for this tour were announced but, to be fair to the organisers, we are treated to an exceptional supporting cast. All the way from Romagna, Italy, we have Smalltown Tigers, a garage punk threesome very much in the tradition of The Ramones and The Runaways. Looking great with matching humbug stripes and headbangingly fantastic hair, the girls exude an infectious joie de vivre with their punchy and upbeat songs and provide the perfect opening to a celebratory show.

TV Smith And The Bored Teenagers look nothing like teenagers but, thankfully, they appear to be anything but bored as the high kicking, stick insect figure of Smith leads the band through a break-neck rendition of the classic album Crossing The Red Sea With The Adverts. Some bands spend a couple of hours reinterpreting their ‘seminal’ albums, but this is a no nonsense and highly entertaining 30-minute sprint. Smith apologises in advance for the lack of audience interaction required to achieve this feat and it’s a shame that we’re deprived of his usual warm banter and insightful diatribes. The Adverts, although short lived, were one of the most intelligent and inventive of the early punk bands and Smith’s vocals, now deeper and more abrasive, lend the songs real power. Kicking off with No Time To Be 21 and finishing with the hit trio of Gary Gilmore’s Eyes, Bored Teenagers and One Chord Wonders, this is a real crowd-pleaser of a set.

Penetration are another band who shone briefly but brightly in those early days of punk, producing the stunning Moving Targets and underrated Coming Up For Air albums along the way. Appropriately opening with their splendid cover of Buzzcock’s Nostalgia, the set sees the band on top form as they treat us to Movement, Free Money and Silent Community from that debut album. Hailing from the renowned hotbed of rock talent Waterhouses, Pauline Murray is resplendent in yellow blouse and black waistcoat as she buzzes around the stage unleashing her unique and powerful vocals, completely undiminished by time. The exhilarating single Danger Signs and Come Into The Open also make the cut and, if the band started with a whiff of nostalgia, they go out with a look to the future with The Beat Goes On from the 2015 comeback album Resolution. The only complaint is that the short set leaves us hungry for more.

Enter The Damned to the strains of the Doctor Who theme and a heroes’ welcome as we’re whisked back to a time when they were first taking the world by storm. Kicking off with a song which predates even them, a frenzied version of the Stooges 1970, (better known to the band’s fans as Feel Alright), they immediately roll back the years. Back in the day, this would have been the cue for frantic pogo-ing and flailing of limbs. The old punks are a little more sedate nowadays, so it’s more of an enthusiastic surge, but no less joyous for all that. This is followed by You Take My Money from the second album before the irreverent cover of the Beatle’s Help!, a live staple, gives an early indication of the riotous party to come.

The ever-boyish Captain quips his way through the evening looking as lean and bouncy as ever in his Dennis The Menace shirt and white sailor jacket. If he has any reservations about returning to bass duties (which he performs with aplomb), he certainly doesn’t show it. Rat also looks pretty svelte as he pounds out his thunderous rhythms from the back. The behatted and bearded Brian James remains mainly static throughout, but he doesn’t need to perform aerobics to churn out those jagged chords and oh so familiar riffs with the practised ease of a veteran performer. But it’s the immortal creature of the night Dave Vanian who hogs the limelight. Elegantly dressed from head to toe in black (of course), he whirls round the stage with a grace which belies his 500 years on this earth. How anyone can consistently look so dapper when they can’t even see their own reflection is anyone’s guess. The Damned introduce a huge chunk of theatricality into proceedings which punk, ironically, helped to eradicate and the evening is all the more enthralling for that.

Unsurprisingly the set leans mainly on the two albums this line-up produced together. While this means some of the later crowd favourites are missing, it frees up time usually set aside for the more morose gothic indulgences allowing the band to concentrate on the sub three-minute classic punk gems with which they made their name in the first place. Although a critical and commercial flop on release, second album Music For Pleasure had some real stand out moments and the likes of Stretcher Case and Problem Child are included on merit.

But it was the startling, effervescent debut Damned Damned Damned which first announced the arrival of the band in a shower of spit and lager early in 1977, and it is that album, packed as it was with potential singles, which provides most of the thrills tonight. From the rather silly Fish through the brooding Feel The Pain and disturbing Fan Club to the frantic I Fall, Stab Your Back and 1 Of The 2, the crowd welcome every song like long lost friends. Neat Neat Neat inevitably turns the surge of humanity into a tsunami before See Her Tonight and a spiteful, sax driven Alone end the regular proceedings.

The band return to encore with an ecstatically acclaimed New Rose, a rollicking version of Bo Diddley’s Pills and, having already done the Beatles, a meaningful cover of the Stones’ The Last Time. It’s obviously been decided that this is too melancholic a note on which to end and they finish for real with a chaotic romp through So Messed Up which sees Rat setting fire to his kit and the Captain trashing his bass, ably assisted by Vanian. All that is left is reconciliatory band hugs and wild audience acclaim with the realisation that this really could be the end of an era.

Those well-known afficionados of all things punk, The Telegraph, recently lambasted the London leg of the tour complaining that ‘…you might wonder how anyone can work as a professional musician for their whole lives and still play this badly.’ This (surprise, surprise) entirely missed the point that these songs were written and recorded by kids at a time when energy, attitude and songs were more important than technique, and the intention tonight was to recreate that very sound. The individual members have matured as musicians, but let’s face it, there wouldn’t be much point in re-imagining Neat Neat Neat in the style of Deep Purple. You might wonder how anyone can work as a professional writer for their whole life…

Taken at face value, this tour ticks all the boxes; an entertaining night of fantastic, visceral songs, probably the last chance to see a truly legendary band who prove that age is no barrier to producing great music, and lashings of nostalgia for an age long gone. And if it helped put a few extra quid in the lads’ pension pots, who could begrudge that?

God bless the Damned.

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All words by Robin Boardman. More writing from Robin on Louder Than War can be found at his author’s archive

Photos By Andy Von Pip. More writing by Andy on Louder Than War can be found at his author’s archive and his photography portfolio can be found here: Andy Von Pip Photography.  You can also follow him on Facebook and  Twitter 

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Source: louderthanwar.com