The Damned 21-22 December 2008, Komedia, Brighton

Lucy Robinson, Lecturer in History at the University of Sussex, teaches a second-year history course, Thatcher’s Britain. Ash Arcadian is a second-year student on that course. Finding that they both have a lot in common, they find themselves going to watch the Damned: one band, two punters, two gigs, two experiences.

The Damned closed their 2008 tour by selling out both their originally billed and spill-over nights at the Komedia, Brighton.

The first time I went to see the Damned I went home with a cracked rib; this time I was more concerned about getting home without keeping the babysitter hanging about for too long. Does it matter? Does it mean I’ve sold out? Does it Bollocks!

Punk and most writing about punk is hung up on issues of authenticity and the sell-out, steeped in elitism over who was there at the start and who were just derivative followers-on and cashers-in. The standard line is that at the moment punk went public, as soon as it spoke to a wider audience, it died.

Thirty-two years after the band started The Damned, and their audience, were less interested in authenticity. The audience were not searching for an accurate historical re-enactment. Whilst there were three decent attempts at the sort of impressive Mohicans that you never would have actually seen in the early days of punk in the audience, this was a kitsch and savvy Brighton audience, embodied in a sea of fifties-style Get Cutie dresses. After all, pantomime is closer to both British punk’s origins and The Damned’s attraction today - posturing, playing with gender and sexuality in a pubescent dressing-up sort of way, along with well recognised shout-along choruses. Captain seemed to prove my point when he stormed off the stage in anger over the apparent lack of any human being in charge of the lights. Once we had all shouted enough (‘We do believe in punk, we do, we do’), back he came.

This wasn’t a gig to compare to The Damned’s past triumphs, but it was all about the past. The band’s past – taking the piss out of Top of the Pops and Sensible’s solo chart hit Happy Talk, combining their classics New Rose, Waiting For The Blackout, Love Song, Smash It Up with new tracks from their latest album ‘So, who’s paranoid?’, like Dark Asteroid which Sensible dedicated to Syd Barratt. Here was a move to reclaim a more grown-up sense of punk’s heritage – embracing psychedelia and, particularly, Barrett. The dirty secret behind of all those ‘how punk changed the world stories’ is that punk didn’t just land from nowhere. It had a lot to do with those hippies that Malcolm Maclaren wanted us to set light to…

Sensible told us that guitars were back; the 70s had been all about guitars, and the 80s, when the band embraced Goth, were about electro. Now the guitar is back. As a move to accommodate how much punk has changed, how different generations have been affected by punk and how punk was informed by the music that preceded it as well as informing that which followed, it was an interesting way round the authenticity issue. The problem is, it brought with it some dull stadium-rock moments and a carnival collective style three-way drum interlude that proved some things never change; ‘Captain is a Wanker!’

Lucy Robinson

So, Who IS Paranoid??

Tucked away in Brighton’s bohemian, organic frappuccino-sipping, Vegetarian Shoes-wearing North Laine, the Komedia is an interesting venue to host the motley crew of the UK Punk scene. Upon entry, we pass through the Komedia Café, where we are invited to enjoy gojiberry flapjack before getting down to the serious business of pogo dancing, spitting and drinking cider & black in the main room.

I was obviously expecting too much – a world away from other Damned gigs I have attended around the country including Sheffield’s Corporation, the Northampton Roadmender or an apparently derelict warehouse next to a canal in Stourbridge. All my previous experiences led me to conclude that Punk lived and breathed in the dark, smelly underworld of the provincial alternative music scene. The dank interiors of some of these venues, where the smell of sweat, adrenalin and warm lager mixed with some of the scariest looking punters I’d ever seen, was the sensory cocktail that gave me my first taste of a Punk gig in the late ‘90’s.

These people were definitely not has-beens, despite the absence of hair, and when they saw a skinny dark-denim clad, emulsion-faced eighteen year old attempting to push to the bar I was greeted with a roar of laughter and a slap on the back. Returning now, as a well-seasoned rocker, the crowd and atmosphere at the Komedia took me by surprise. They were mixed to say the least; furnished with Brighton’s particular cocktail crowd including young kids of early teens, over 40’s – some in studded leather, some in jeans and tees, bedreadlocked women - high after taking too many lentils, the aforementioned vaudeville-cutie types, and everyone in between.

Such is The Damned’s far-reaching appeal, you may say, having deftly dodged many pigeonholes over the years. One thing remains the same, they are still content to play to a packed crowd around the country in back rooms of pubs, or wherever will have them, much like they did in 1976 after they were kicked off the Pistol’s tour. Unlike the Pistols, who recently played to several thousand people at the Isle of Wight Festival (yes, The Isle of Wight Festival of Hendrix and tie-dye fame), The Damned are not about reliving the past, and certainly not about driving around LA in a limo, like a certain Mr Lydon, after singing ‘burn Hollywood, burn’.

So where is Punk now? Punk could be seen as the grandfather to Goth and the New Wave, Grunge; Soundgarden to Pearl Jam, Digital Hardcore; from Atari Teenage Riot to the Prodigy, EMO and the Warrior free party scene. Or it could be with those kids who I saw at the Komedia who were not just coyly smearing their eyes with kohl and sporting a few scars, they were finding something they want to hear and be part of, the same way I did, because they just can’t stomach anymore Coldplay, and it does not make any difference if it’s new music or over 30 years old (coz they still won’t play it on Radio 1 or Radio 2!).

The Damned represent the youthful attitude, the panto, the cheeky subversiveness of Punk which is a timeless thing. Not to say the Damned will be timeless (even though I hope I look as Good as Dave Vanian in 25 years), but as long as there is someone with the spirit and somewhere for the kids to say what they want (even if “everyone’s happy as a lamb” in our liberal, modern Britain) that’s where it’s at, call it what you will; the Kids are the Music, the Kids are the Future, just ask Neil Kinnock or Tony Blair.

Punk is the 17-year-old in all of us, not the 40-something year-old arguing about who was there first and whether it was all over by the end of 1977, or when Joey Ramone died (would he be so hot if he weren’t dead?), that’s who’s paranoid. It’s the spirit The Damned evoke every time I see them live, no ostentations.

You think I’m being young and sentimental? OK, I’ll concede; the moshpit two songs in, when they rip into NeatNeatNeat, makes me pretty damn sure Punk’s not dead.

Ash Arcadian