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Damned for all time

And these politically minded punk veterans are proud of it
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By Marika Ley
For The Prague Post
August 22nd, 2007 issue

COURTESY PHOTO
The band that was punk before the genre existed.
The Damned

When: Sunday, Aug. 26, at 8:30
Where: Futurum Music Bar
Tickets: 380 Kč in advance through Ticketsream, 430 Kč at the venue

The Damned are near-professionals at constantly reinventing the soul and sinner within, and vice versa, without losing a sense of self. They were arguably the first punk band from England to invade the United States, with a single (“New Rose”), album and tour circa 1976.  Their initial raw sound mutated toward Gothic psychedelia as they challenged what punk was supposed to be, before there was such a term.
“You’ve got to remember that, when we first started, the word [punk] didn’t exist,” says singer Dave Vanian (aka David Letts, no relation to Don Letts). “The bands were extremely different from each other, and they didn’t sound the same.”  
Guitarist Captain Sensible’s (aka Raymond Burns) heroes from the ’70s were Tony McPhee from The Groundhogs blues band and T-Rex. “If I met David Bowie, I wouldn’t cross the room to shake his hand,” the Captain says with a mischievous smirk that matches his red beret. “I’ve got no time for David Bowie. But meeting Mark Bolan meant everything to me.”
Vanian’s musical tastes drew from a well of influences only a boy with a secreted transistor radio could draw from, tuning in Wolfman Jack from U.S. military bases in Germany. Psychedelic bands like The Seeds, The Shadows of Knight and The Strawberry Alarm Clock cascaded along with German tango songs from the ’40s, eventually tempered and matured with ballads of Scott Walker. Vanian has defined a style of singing that is deep, sinister in its depth and melodramatically sardonic. Some might say he’s a crooner for the dark lord, or at least the dug-in-deep (like six feet).
“People frowned down upon that, but I always kind of liked crooning,” Vanian says.
He taught himself to sing while grave-digging, a job that afforded him plenty of time and little heckling as he honed his high notes — no small feat for a baritone. Blatantly lying to join The Damned (he never sang in a group before), it took him a few years to figure out who and what The Damned was, or what his role should be. Finally, he says, “I realized instead of me screaming and shouting all the time, I should actually sing properly.”  
On the whole, their era and the punk subculture genre were shaped by the corporate arena rock popular at that time — think Aerosmith and Foghat. “We were reacting against the rock ’n’ roll bands of the time, with their feet up on the monitors and swaggering attitude,” Vanian says.
Adds Captain Sensible, “The rock gods with their feet on the monitors, hair blowing in the wind, the fans — honestly, I thought it would be back and people would prefer it to punk.  Punk is fairly challenging.  You have to listen to the words, and sometimes it’s not that pretty a noise.”
The Captain hates that same crap today, too. “There’s nothing I hate more than heavy metal,” he says. “It’s the right dressed up as the left.  They’ve got these skull rings, ripped T-shirts and studded jackets, and it looks like rebellion. But they’re saying nothing, absolutely nothing. They don’t want to change the world. Read their lyrics.”
The Damned have always had a different ethos. “I thought the original thing about punk was, punk doesn’t have a set of rules,” Vanian says. “If you’re going to make music, anything’s possible.”
In his other project, Dave Vanian and the Phantom Chords, Vanian leads by example, writing songs as if he had been teleported back to the beginning of the rockabilly era.
Meanwhile, Captain Sensible has taken his voice from grandstanding on stage to a party platform — a political party, that is. He describes the UK’s Blah! Party as an “anti-politician party: It’s not about getting elected, it’s about getting members. When you get a certain amount of members, people from the TV and newspapers have to respect you.”
The Captain knows his press: The Blah! Party has 8,000 members and is still growing.
“I’m lucky to have a wacky stage name and people will listen to me,” the Captain says. “What I want to do when I look back at my life is think I did my best. And if I stirred up the shit a bit, that’s great!”

Marika Ley can be reached at features@praguepost.com


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