AMG Review of Damned Damned Damned [30th Anniversary Expanded Edition]

Mark Deming
All Music Guide

If you like punk rock at all, you pretty much have to have a soft spot for the Damned's epochal 1976 debut album Damned Damned Damned, one of the masterstroke releases of the first wave of British punk which still sounds fresh, exciting and brilliantly snotty three decades after it was released. But if you love Damned Damned Damned, well, this remastered and lavishly expanded edition will bring a broken-toothed grin to your face in no time flat. This three-disc set (yes, three discs!) opens with the original album, which seems to have hardly dated a bit. For all the group's manic energy, the playing is sharp and muscular, Dave Vanian's vocals are powerful enough to make his histrionics work, Rat Scabies' drumming holds the band tight, Captain Sensible's bass provides a solid foundation for the melodies and Brian James' guitar wails with primitive force. The songs still communicate, and the band's lack of an upfront political or social agenda means these songs aren't chained to their era the way the early Clash, Sex Pistols or Stiff Little Fingers discs are, great as they may be. Disc two serves up 26 demos, B-sides, non-LP single tracks and radio recordings, which equals nearly everything the band recorded during their first year of operations. The two John Peel sessions and a ten-song BBC live concert will delight anyone with a fondness for the band's first era, and you may want to give "Singalong Scabies" ("Stab Yor Back" minus its vocal track) a spin at your next karaoke party. And Disc three features a lo-fi recording of one of the Damned's first public gigs, a set recorded in London during the ~100 Club's first ~Punk Rock Festival in the summer of 1977. The recording quality is only fair, and the audience doesn't seem to be too enthusiastic, but the Damned give their all, and the show is both exciting and historically priceless. The set comes with a 16-page booklet packed with photos and featuring an excellent historical essay from Kieron Tyler. [The 30th Anniversary Expanded Edition of Damned Damned Damned not only adds plenty of fine music and historical perspective to one of the great album of the British punk scene, it actually improves on the fine box set Play It at Your Sister, which covers most of the same territory before sinking into the disappointment of the group's misbegotten second album, Music for Pleasure; this is simply essential stuff, and rock & roll fun at its most dangerous.]