The Damned - Edinburgh Picture HOuse 20/11/11

[ceebs]

Couldnt resist going along to this one, whats not to like when your other favourite band are playing 2 great albums in their entirety in one gig?
Got in for the last half of the set by Viv Albertine, who i actually think was very true to the spirit of punk. A very stark style (just her with a guitar apart from the last 2 songs) with some no holds barred lyrics made for quite a quite mesmerising effect. For the last couple of songs Captain joined on bass and Monty on bongos(!), with occasional input from Pinch on drums, which did give the songs a bit more power.
And then after a short wait and the theme from 633 Squadron, on came The Damned. A curtain had been drawn over the stage prior to the start and when it was pulled back the set went straight Neat Neat Neat, with the band all wearing large paper bags on their heads in a nod to the cover for the single. These stayed there for the duration of the song which i was impressed with. The rest of the set was steamed through at breakneck speed with highlights for me being a blistering New Rose, 1 of the 2 and I fall. Monty didnt have much to do on keyboards for these songs and spent most of the set doing what can only be described as a Jane Fonda Workout, if Jane Fonda was doing the workout while being forced to run through a minefield when being shot at. Entertaining though and i have no idea where he gets the energy from. I would be dead if i attempted that. Judging by the pogoing downstairs (yup, im afraid i wussed out and hung around upstairs with only the occasional venture into the fray) was going the crowd seemed impressed with what they were hearing, as they didnt stop for more or less the whole set.

Then we hit half time, and got a chance to catch our breath before we headed for more psychedelic areas......The Black Album. This is one of The Damned albums i keep going back to, and i love the variation of songs on there, where you can veer from fairly thrashy stuff, to poppy, to atmospheric and all the way out to the musical equivalent of "Here be dragons". I did wonder how well they`d pull this off, but i needn't have worried. They played the songs pretty much flawlessly and with a great deal of enthusiasm and vigour, handling the straight ahead guitar driven stuff like Drinking About My Baby and the more moody ones like Twisted Nerve. Captains guitar work was really good tonight, and his playing reinforced my opinion that he`s one of musics underrated guitarists.
I knew from reading about previous gigs that the version of Curtain Call was set to be the full one, rather than the truncated one of previous tours and it came over brilliantly. You always worry that a 17 minute song will drag somewhat in the middle, but for me at least this wasnt the case here. Brilliant stuff from start to finish.

The encores were some great crowd pleasers, Eloise, Nasty, Love Song and Smash it up, with a detour through Happy talk and even snippets of Mull Of Kintyre for some reason! This must be one of the few bands at whose gigs you can see people pogoing along to Happy Talk. Bet Rodgers and Hammerstein never saw that coming.

[Toiler On The Sea]

Great review Ceebs.

Was pointed out to me all weekend I really need to go see the Damned at some point!!!

[ceebs]

You do indeed! We`ll arrange that next tour.....

[John]

Excellent review says it all, It was indeed a great gig last night, Dave V voice seems to get better with age.
Hope they do something like this again, Strawberries would be great to hear fully live.

[Freddie Laker]

Nice one, ceebs.

[Tracy]

Gutted I missed the gig but nice review

[Mr-Tele]

Really good gig i thought! Probably one of my favs so far. Quite liked how they came on with bags on their heads for Neat Neat Neat as well got Dave to sign my copy of Strawberries on the way out as well!

[theraven1970]

Not much you can add to that review, covers everything nicely.
It was a great gig and must have been energy sapping as they were on stage for the best part of 2 hours.
I wasn't looking forward to Curtain Call as it's one of those songs that I listen to for 5 mins on the ipod then skip to the next track when it goes extremely weird in the middle, yet the live version was a pleasant suprise and I really enjoyed it, much better than the recorded version.

[ThruBeingCool]

Great review!