From the Vaults (2007)


I had five beers tonight and listened to The Damned. What a glorious, glorious thing. How sublime life can be at times.

 I wish there was some way I could repay the service these men have done for me. I wish there was anything I could say to impress upon them how their music changed me, turned my brain around, made me think differently about music, then art, and then, logically, life itself. I wish I could tell each one of them, without sounding like some goddamned lunatic, how they helped saved me as a young man.

 I reckon it would sound really, really bad. Psychotic, probably.

There’s no way you can explain to people how the most profound art stirs your soul and acts, as Bukowski once said, like a vast bridge across the things that claw and tear. But The Damned have been that bridge for me, and they’ve stirred the deepest depths of my soul for over 23 years now. It was a revelation for me in the summer of ’84, innocently discovering punk rock with my friends, grabbing Burning Ambitions: A History of Punk on vinyl at a record store in Coronado Mall in Albuquerque that no longer exists. Amongst the abundance of gems on that double-LP (The Buzzcocks’ Boredom, The Stranglers’ [Get a] Grip On [Yourself], The Heartbreakers’ Chinese Rocks) was a song by The Damned called Love Song. I’d seen pictures of these guys – the singer who looked like Dracula, the guitarist who dressed in furry Okapi outfits, women's dresses, or nothing at all, and their red-headed drummer, eyes bugged out, looking like he was coked up.

 It sounded pretty damn good. 

Before having my jaw operated on, resulting in my jaw being wired shut for six weeks, my father caved in to my shameless begging and bought me The Best of The Damned. Shit friends, there’s no way to describe how sublime it was, hearing New Rose, Smash it Up, Wait for the Blackout, and Rabid for the first time. Explosive bar chords, absolutely soaring melodies and harmonies. Proof positive that you could be a drunken, insane punk band and still be bona fide musicians – these guys could PLAY. They were fucking GOOD.

 On a trip to San Francisco to visit my grandparents later that year I picked up Machine Gun Etiquette and The Damned Live at Shepperton. This was as good as life got. Etiquette is one of the greatest albums of all time; that I discovered it at a time on my life when my thoughts and feelings were so out of control and needed it so badly… Sometimes you just get lucky. I Just Can’t Be Happy Today, Liar, Anti-Pope, Melody Lee – holy shit. Dave Vanian's voice was like a balm for my psyche. Just hearing him improved life's odds. You could be down five runs in the bottom of the ninth with two outs and an 0-2 count. Then you put Smash it Up on the turntable, crank up the volume, and suddenly the bases were juiced and your clean-up hitter was digging in at the plate. What was boring was suddenly exciting. Where there was abyss there was suddenly gamble. The Damned became my soundtrack while learning about girls, getting through high school, dealing with the shit that we all deal with trying to escape that volatile time in our lives.

 

I remember once sitting in Chemistry class with Mrs. Najjar, a dumbass kid who simply COULD NOT FOCUS on school work because there were girls to pursue, and records to listen to. That’s ALL I wanted to do, ALL I was interested in – girls and rock’n’roll. I wanted to be anywhere but there. I always sat in the back, doing my best to get my Ds and Fs anonymously. I had a feeling this afternoon that she was going to call on me and try to humiliate me. I could feel it. She knew I was a loser and enjoyed calling me out in front of the GOOD students. She worked a problem on the board, and I knew it was coming. “Russell, can you walk us through this…?” I didn’t care. I was ready for anything. I had bought The Damned Live at Newcastle at Merlin’s Records in Albuquerque the weekend before, which contained an incendiary version of Ignite from The Damned’s Strawberries LP. It was this particular version of Ignite that blared through all the corridors of my brain at this moment, ricocheting hither and thither through my neurons and conciousness, electrifying me as I sat there. Captain Sensible's guitar solo was like a power cable charging me with a million watts of energy. I was 100 feet tall, I was a fuckin’ monster ready to tear the roof off the chemistry building. I was a one-man army with state-of-the-art incendiary devices, hell bent on obliterating anything stupid enough to get in my path. I had The Damned kicking almighty ass in my head, and I wasn't taking shit from anyone. Life couldn’t have been better. Nothing scared me right then, nothing mattered; bring it on, world. Give me your best. Sure enough, Najjar called on me 30 seconds later.



Damned Damned Damned, Machine Gun Etiquette, The Black Album, Friday the 13th EP, Strawberries, Live at Newcastle… Thank you, boys. God bless you. You’re the very best the species has to offer.