Dead Boys: Young Loud and Snotty/We Have Come for Your Children

Dead Boys: Young Loud and Snotty

1977

Sire Records

Format I Own it on: Vinyl

Track Listing: 1. Sonic Reducer  2. All This and More  3. What Love Is  4. Not Anymore  5. Ain't Nothin' to Do  6. Caught with the Meat in Your Mouth  7. Hey Little Girl  8. I Need Lunch  9. High Tension Wire  10. Down in Flames  11. Medley: Not Anymore/Ain't Nothin' to Do




Special Note: I'm editing this while I'm blasted on beers, so it might work best of you read it with a drunken slur...Let the typos and rambling begin:

I used to have this on cassette back in high school...Definitely a favorite from when I was first discovering punk...I lost it when I lost all my tapes and never bothered to pick up another copy, since I kind of played it to death back in the day...They have this in the jukebox at the bar I frequent, so I'd been pumping it full of quarters recently to hear some "I Need Lunch" and realized how much I'd missed having the album around...

One day me and my friend Jonathan went to the Zia Records in Tempe and I snagged a used CD copy of "Young, Loud, and Snotty"...I took it home, eager to hear it again, put it in my CD player only to be greeted by a phat beat...

"Hmmm, I don't remember the Dead Boys ever rapping about AK's and blunts...And what does 'Thug for life! BEEE-YOOOOTCH!!' mean?" I though to myself...

I ejected the CD and took a closer and look, only to realize...

THIS WASN'T THE DEAD BOYS AT ALL!! IT WAS FLIPPIN' "THUG LIFE" BY TUPAC!!!!

So I went back and returned the Cd, where the clerk scratched his head on how this could of happened...They didn't have another copy, so I picked up something else...A few days later I went to Eastside Records and  picked up the vinyl copy of "Young, Loud, and Snotty" but when I got home and opened it up, inside was a copy of...



 ..BARRY MANILOW LIVE!!!

Nah, I'm just kidding...It really was the Dead Boys this time..I just wanted to post a picture of that Barry Manilow album cover...I always joke that when I was a kid everybody's mom owned that album, but I swear that's true!

Anyway, I didn't invite you here on a Friday Night to talk about Barry Fuckin' Manilow...I Brought you here so we can consume many beers and crank up the Dead Boys all night!  God, this shit rocks so much...I can still remember playing it for the first time somewhere in the 90's...It takes about 45 seconds for album-opener "Sonic Reducer" to cement itself as one of the all-time punk anthems...The cyclical, muted menace of the opening riff eventually gives way to churning punk as Stiv Bators pouts the classic opening lines:

"I don't need anyone
Don't need no mom and dad
Don't need no pretty face
Don't need no human race
I got some news for you
Don't even need you too..."

And that's it...That sums it all up...You could waste a million words dissecting it, but you're never going to nail it as eloquently as that single, stupid verse...You kind of go through the record trying to determine if these guys were a group of geniuses or a bunch of drooling morons...The way "Sonic Reducer" achieves a universality with its antisocial message is very calculated...

 And listen to Stiv howl, "Look at me that way, bitch! Your face is gonna git a punch!" on "I Need Lunch..." Why do you smile when he says it? It's a horrible, disgusting thing to say! But there's a writerly vividness to Stiv's character on the album...And he delivers the line so brilliantly, that when the verse kicks back in it suddenly has a pronounced air of triumph and majesty to it...It's a real payoff moment for his character...The charismatic villain that you can't help but love... The fact that the band's playing so effortlessly summons the stench of piss and warm beer probably help sells the illusion too...There's a reason that a live-recording of "Hey Little Girl", done at CBGB's is placed prominently in the track listing...Gritty, scene-setting...

 Even though there are albums form the late 70's New York scene that I like better,  I still have to declare "Young, Loud, and Snotty" the ultimate CBGB album...I've never physically been there, but my mind has been there via this record...Who knows...Maybe it's not an accurate portrayal of the time and place at all, but it sure is evocative...

The only criticism that I could possibly level at it is that it seems to just kind of fizzle out, due to the odd decision to end the album on alternate takes of songs that had already appeared on side one...And it's not like they're radically different versions either...Must have ran out of songs or recording time or something...Oh well..."Sonic Reducer," "I Need Lunch," "Ain't Nothin' to Do"...The whole thing is classic...

Here's "I Need Lunch" by the Dead Boys...Enjoy...

Dead Boys: We Have Come for Your Children

1978

Sire Records

Format I Own it on: Vinyl

Track Listing: 1. 3rd Generation Nation  2. I Won't Look Back  3. (I Don't Wanna Be No) Catholic Boy  4. Flame Thrower Love  5. Son of Sam  6. Tell Me  7. Big City  8. Calling on You  9. Dead and Alive  10. Ain't It Fun



This is a record I hadn't heard until maybe a year ago...I had grown up loving "Young, Loud and Snotty" and naturally I wanted more, but this album was just nowhere to be found back then...Pretty much all you ever heard was that it's so severely disappointing that it immediately did the band in...You know the old story...The sophomore slump...You have your whole life to write the first record, you have to write the second album on yer lunch break...

But I'm always suspicious of that story...Very rarely does a great band just suddenly, and out of nowhere, suck...Sucking is usually a gradual process, brought on by the loss of vital band members and/or  years of complacency, so I believe I went into "We Have Come for Your Children" with an open-mind...

And it turns out I like this record! No doubt, it's different than their debut...Ragged, sleazy punk and sexist lyrics are replaced by polished hard-rock and more diverse subject matter...And Stiv's vocals are much more restrained than his previous blood-curdling shrieks and sobs...It was almost shocking on first listen to hear that  "I Won't Look Back" is perfectly respectable power-pop! Listen to it, if you don't believe me!

I actually think they should have pursued this poppier direction a bit more...When they do the more traditional Dead Boys material like "(I Don't Wanna Be No) Catholic Boy," it comes across as a bit rote, but the songs with the more radio-ready hooks are sticky as hell...See their cover of the Rolling Stones' "Tell Me," "Calling on You," "I Won't look Back" and the awesome chorus on "Dead and Alive" for examples of when it goes gloriously right...

That said, the album's peak (and in the running for their best song ever) has to be "Ain't it Fun." Originally co-written by Cheetah Chrome for his pre-Dead Boys band, Rocket From the Tombs, it's the most perfect showcase imaginable for Stiv....It's almost like he was given a brief glimpse of his grim fate and came back from the void to do a presentation on it...Creepy, desperate, doomed...Ain't it Fun? I don't know, it doesn't sound like a barrel of laughs to me...If you're a Dead Boys fan, you've got to seek out this album for that track alone...On the other hand, this album seems to be best suited for non-Dead Boys fans...I still hear it get trashed by punks, but I think folks who are into punk/power-pop/hard rock would enjoy it very much...If one of those 3 genres isn't something you dig, then I'm betting its appeal will remain elusive...

BTW, as soon as I looked at the track listing, I just knew that when Stiv sang "Summer of Sam" it was going to come out as, "SUMMER OF SAY-YUM!" Well, the barking dogs are telling me to cut this short, so "We Have Come for Your Children" is good, Boko Haram is bad, and beers to infinity...

Here's "Tell Me" by the Dead Boys...I hope everyone has a great Friday Night!

The dB's: Stands for Decibels

The dB's: Stands for Decibels

1980

Albion Records

Format I Own it on: Vinyl

Track Listing: 1. Black and White  2.  Dynamite  3. She's Not Worried  4. The Fight  5. Espionage  6. Tearjerkin'  7. Cycles Per Second  8. Bad Reputation  9. Big Brown Eyes  10. I'm in Love  11. Moving in Your Sleep




I had never heard this album until recently...I was familiar with their song "Amplifier" through stray airings on 120 Minutes and from that swank old "Left of the Dial" box-set that came out about 10 years ago...

It's weird...Looking at pictures of that box-set makes me reflect back on its glossy, pink surface and suddenly I'm vaguely nostalgic for my days working at AOL, but I remember at the time listening to it and how nostalgic it made me for my younger high-school days when I had first discovered a lot of the music on it...I bet someday I'll be nostalgic for 2014 when I used to blog about box-sets that made me nostalgic for 2004 that made me nostalgic for the music I used to listen to in 1994! 

Thus, the mobius strip of nostalgia endlessly curves back into itself...Anyway, the point of all this was that I had heard "Amplifier" by the dB's but didn't think much of it...It struck me as a cute novelty song...That was about it...

A few weeks back I was at Eastside Records (for some reason I can't get used to calling it Double Nickels Collective...) and the owner let me take first crack at a big stack of records that he hadn't priced yet...As I browsed through the albums I saw the dB's and was mildly interested...It was one of those days where I could use a good, fun record...I asked the guy how much he wanted for it and the price he gave me seemed fair (six bucks) so I went for it...Honestly not knowing what to expect from it...

I got home, cracked open a Chelada (which is always good record-listening juice) , and tossed the "Stands for Decibels" on the turntable...

When "Black & White" came on, with its introductory big-jangle strums, I knew I had hit the jackpot... Handclaps! Clean, catchy leads! AM radio harmonies! Yes! It was late 70's/Early 80's power-pop in the vein of the Shoes or the Records!

 I settled in, thinking I had the album all figured out when suddenly the second track ("Dynamite") comes on and I hear  nasally, snide voices that sound like they'e singing backwards...huh?  Okay...Art-pop it is...

But waitaminute! "She's Not Worried" immediately follows and its something else completely! Its "Pet Sounds"-era Brian Wilson, scaled down for 80's college radio...And "The Fight" is thorny, shout-y punk rock! Then suddenly it hits me...I'm in love!

Turns out the reason the record is so diverse is because its the work of two distinct song-writers... Peter Holsapple writes luminous pop-rock while Chris Stamey writes the off-kilter experimental stuff, although their styles do overlap quite a bit (Stamey's "I'm in Love" is fine straight-forward pop , and I see Holsapple's name on "Dynamite" which is easily the strangest thing on the record)...

  While Stamey gets in some brilliant moments, I tend to favor the Holsapple material on here...I mean, have you heard "Big Brown Eyes"? It's one of the freakin' greatest pop songs I've ever come across! The song never makes a single wrong move...Every turn the melody takes happens to end up squarely in pop heaven...I'm telling you...It's a thing of wonder!

I can't believe that I missed out on this for all these years...I had heard people sing the band's praises for eons...Hell, I had even listened to them, but dismissed it...I was wrong...The band's fingerprints are all over the 80's alternative jangle-pop that followed, and in addition to being an important album, it's just plain fun as hell to listen to...A perfectly skewed toe-tapper..I should have put down my tinker toys, laced up my Osh Kosh B'Gosh's and drove my big wheel to the record store and bought it on the day it came out...I'm so sorry I went all these years without it...

 "Hey, God, it's me...Jamin...Is there any way I can get a 'do over' so I can go back and buy the dB's record earlier than 2014?" 

Poof!!

"Eh...I knew there would be a catch...I guess it could have been worse...I could have come back as Miley Cyrus or Donald Sterling or something...I've always kind of liked fish...And being an otter isn't a death sentence...There's been lots of great otters throughout history..."

 "Like Otter Von Bismark, Arch-Chancellor of Prussia..."

                                                
                    "...and Alexander the Grape..."

I was about to go into various important otters throughout history, but I've kind of been derailed by that picture of Alexander the Grape...Man, I haven't had an Otter Pop in a million years, but suddenly I have an insatiable lust for them...I can recall not particularly liking them, but I wanted them anyway because of the characters on the box....That trumped the fact that the sharp edges of the plastic tubes used to cut the shit out of the sides of my mouth and when I drank the melted liquid at the bottom it was always so sweet it made my throat-burn...

Wait, what were we talking about? Oh yea, here's "Big Brown Eyes" by the dB's...Enjoy...

Morris Day: Color of Success

Morris Day: Color of Success

1985

Warner Bros

Format I Own it on: Vinyl

Track Listing: 1. Color of Success  2. The Character  3. The Oak Tree  4. Love Sign  5. Don't Wait For Me  6. Love / Addiction

 "JEROME! BRING ME MY MIRROR!"

(I love the dollar-bill font on the front cover! I should do my whole blog in the  dollar-bill font! I think it would make rambling on and on about ancient Supertramp records seem much more ballin'...)

Like everybody else on Planet Earth, my fascination with Morris Day started the moment I first saw "Purple Rain" as a kid...

To me it wasn't about Prince, or purple motorcycles or Apollonia wearing lingerie on stage...

(Me and my wife were discussing how groundbreaking the  Apollonia 6 were...They look like modern pop stars! This is about the maximum amount of clothes you can wear if you want to make it in today's pop market...)

No, it was all about Morris acting like an asshole! That scene where he has Jerome throw that girl in the dumpster is the funniest scene in anything ever (closely followed by the scene where Prince's dad slaps Prince...)...I know it's unbelievably misogynist and disgusting, but that's the point! He's the film's charismatic villain and it's just an incredibly ass-holish thing to do...And it's even more fascinating that he plays this evil character under his REAL NAME!!  It's not Morris Day as Diabolical Glitter-Suited Band-leader...It's Morris Day as Morris Day! Which is brilliant when you think about it...After that movie came out everybody knew who he was...

Anyway,  this was Morris' first solo album after the Time broke up (which is covered in a news report during the title track...Man,  that's the problem with the news these days...Too much Vladimir Putin and not enough Morris Day)...It's the exact type of slicked-up, smoothed-over,  neon-suited, shoulder-padded, funk-pop that he made his name on, playing the same recognizable egotistical, lover-man character as always...The type of music that can only exist in the 80's....

 "You wanna make love or what?"

We're mercifully subjected to only one seven-minute slow jam ("Don't Wait For Me", which at least has a pretty good extended guitar solo to save it somewhat...) ...The rest of it is straight uptempo party music like "The Oak Tree" which introduces his latest dance (which basically consists of just waving your arms in the air...Watch the video for visual reference (and the chance to see the Pope, Ayatollah Khomeini and Nancy Reagan doing the oak tree))...

Yea, yea, yea...It's just "The Bird" part 2...Who cares?! Who doesn't want to hear "The Bird" again? I'm telling you, those were the days...We didn't know how good we had it! Gasoline was $1.20 a gallon and once a year we'd get a brand new dance from Morris Day!

It's been nothing but a big downhill electric slide since then! Five bucks a gallon is nothing to twerk about! Oh well...We still have our Morris Day records to fall back on...What day isn't made a little brighter by chanting "THE COLOR OF SUC-CESS!!" in your lowest baritone? You feel invincible! It was so effective that for a moment I thought it that it might just be acceptable to wear a canary-yellow zoot suit to a job intereview!

"Ain't nobody bad like me!"

So, if you're looking for introspective lyrics and complex, mathematical time signatures, you might want to check out "In the Golden Halls of Apollonia" by Xerus...If you want boyish, synth-heavy, lite-funk, look no further...Chances are you can pick up a used vinyl of this in any well-stocked dollar-bin and it's an 80's night party starter for sure...

Here's "The Color of Success" by Morris Day...Enjoy...

Dayglo Abortions: Feed Us a Fetus

Dayglo Abortions: Feed Us a Fetus

1986

Unrest/God Records

Format I Own it on: Vinyl

Track Listing: 1. Stupid Songs  2. Argh Fuck Kill - Die Sinner Die  3.Bedtime Story  4. My Girl  5. Dogfarts  6. Inside My Head  7. Wake Up America  8. Proud to Be a Canadian  9. Stupid World  10. Ronald McRaygun  11. Kill the Hosers  12. Religious Bumfucks  13. 1967  14. I Killed Mommy  15. I'm My Own God  16. Used to Be in Love  17. Suicide  18. The Idiot  19. Germ Attack 20. Scared Of People - Black Sabbath


I can clearly remember my first encounter with this album...It was back in the 90's and I went to Detroit with a few of my friends to see Avail and the Sex Pistols reunion that was going on at the time...

 (If I remember correctly, the opening acts at the Sex Pistols show was some shitty 90's Industrial Rock band like Gravity Kills or something...)

 Anyway, I was riding in the back of a friend of a friend's car and was going through his tapes and spied the "Feed Us a Fetus" cover and it was love at first sight!  What's not to like? A fanged Ronald Reagan about to dig into a fetus on a dinner plate (there's even a recipe in the lyric sheet for fetus chili)...So classic...Anyway, I filed it away in my mind and kept my eyes peeled for a loooong time, until I eventually got a vinyl copy....

Kids, if you're looking to scare your parents and piss off your neighbors, bring home a copy of this and it's still guaranteed to do the trick...Sure, all the Reagan stuff is outdated, but getting it on with the family dog never loses its power! I have a feeling people in the U.S. would have lost their minds if they knew about its existence (unfortunately they were very noticed in their home country (Canada), and caused a shit-storm there...).

(Here's an old video of a newscast outlining the hoopla..Kind of the Canadian version of the whole Tipper Gore/PMRC debacle from back in the day...)

This album still cracks me up...Here are some of my favorite lines:

"When I sing songs, I sing about what I know,
But I don't know too much so I don't sing about nothing,
I get my words from reading TV Guide,
I steal all my solos from the Rolling Stones..."

"Buy American,
Pledge your next car to be American,
Oh what a bunch of shit,
Nazi propaganda,
Thanks to crap like that
I've got a cruse missile in my backyard..."

"I'm Ronald McRaygun
McDeath, McNuclear, McWar,
McCommies, McFear, McMe..."

 One odd thing about the album is that side one was recorded in 1985 and side two was recorded in 1981!!! That's a long time between sides! And what's even more weird is that there's almost no audible difference between the two sides...Apparently the songs from side two originally appeared on the band's debut album "Out of the Womb"...



I'm not 100% sure if they're the same versions since I've never heard the "Out of the Womb" album, but the 1981 release date seems to back that theory up...Oh yea, I should probably talk about what the album sounds like...It's reasonably tight and catchy hardcore with some metal overtones...It kind of reminds me of a beer-guzzling, junk TV-watching version of Discharge at times...And in the proud tradition of Darby Crash, the singer goes out of his way to be as obnoxious as possible, but winds up in the "enjoyable" column anyway...I actually have to give Cretin some credit...His vocals are pretty inventive at times...Particularly his delivery on the chorus of "Religious Bumfucks" and his gut-bustingly hilarious series of blah blah blah's on "Argh Fuck Kill"...

Album opener "Stupid Songs" sets the scene perfectly...After a phalanx of thrash guitars, Cretin sings about pulling his wire to the 20-minute workout in a voice that sounds like he couldn't care less, but he's going to shout about it anyway... Also be sure to check out "I Killed Mommy," which is a catchy pop-punk track with some nice whoa-oh-oh harmonies...Imagine early Social Distortion, except instead of singing about their outlaw bad-assness, they sing about their mothers drinking bags of urine...

 Oh yea, that reminds me...Don't forget about Mother's Day this weekend!

 Anyway, this album isn't for the faint-of-heart, but if you've got a healthy (and sick) sense of humor and a thirst for 80's hardcore (and bags of urine), then, by all means,  check it out...

Here's "I Killed Mommy" by the Dayglo Abortions...Enjoy...

Dangerhouse Volume One

Dangerhouse Volume One

1991

Frontier Records

Format I Own it on: Vinyl

Track Listing: 1. Randoms:Let's Get Rid Of NY  2. The Weirdos: Solitary Confinement  3. Black Randy and the Metrosquad: Trouble at the Cup  4. Deadbeats: Let's Shoot Maria  5. Eyes: Disneyland  6. The Dils: Class War  7. The Avengers: We Are the One  8. Rhino 39: Prolixin Stomp  9. The Bags: Survive  10.  The Alley Cats: Nothing Means Nothing Anymore  11. Howard Werth: Obsolete  12. X: Los Angeles


Good God, I loved this tape growing up...This was another one of the cassettes I picked up from the  dollar tape bin at Camelot Music growing up (I think I went over this recently in the post for "Anything" by the Damned.)...I used to also have volume two (which I probably listened to even more than volume one), but I don't have either cassette anymore...However, I did eventually score a copy of Volume one on clear vinyl at Zia records...

Dangerhouse Records was a legendary, although short-lived (1977-1980),  independent label that manged to capture the origins of California punk...They only put out a little over a dozen singles, one full-length album, but just about every single track put out by the label is a ding-dong classic...

Picking high-points is pretty difficult, but of course, X and their earlier, grittier version of Los Angeles is arguably the definitive LA punk song...

 I'm also in love with "Obsolete" by Howard Werth...It's noticeably a lot more straight-up rock than a lot of the material present, but it's so exciting that you'll hardly notice...It's not too hard to imagine this track blasting on a classic rock station, actually...

You also get The Dils at their political-punk best on "Class War."I've always thought of the Dils as the American version of the early Clash... Righteously wired  punk-rock roar...I wish they would have stuck around a bit longer, though...Their discography consists of  a couple of singles and some compilation tracks as far as I can tell...Quality over quantity, I guess...

 "Solitary Confinement" by the Weirdos is another straight-up punk classic...That thick wall of guitars just blows me away...I should probably mention how great most of the Dangerhouse stuff sounded...For a low budget indie punk label, they sure had some professional sounding stuff...Often rivaling the sound quality in all those 70's major-label English punk releases...And "Solitary Confinement" is one of the label's best recordings...Check it out...

Man, so much classic stuff...The Avenger, the Bags, and the seemingly forgotten blur of Rhino 39...It's amazing how diverse and varied the early punk scene was...One second there's the avant-garde synth-punk of Black Randy,  the next song you have the comic-theatricality of the Deadbeats, and then before you know it you're hearing  X's incorporating rockabilly into their attack...Compare this to the current state of punk, where if you're not whining in a nasally voice over blocks of faceless guitar-blocks then you're not a real punk band...We'll probably never have it this good ever again, but at least we have the handful of Dangerhouse singles to soften the blow...

  BAM!! As the arbiter of what's punk and what isn't, my harsh judgement hath been passed! Fear the thunderclap of my awe-inspiring gavel and respect its rich, mahogany finish!

Here's "We Are the One" by the Avengers (featuring  The Incredible Hulk on guitar and Doctor Druid on bass, hardy har har...(secretly cry bitter comic-dorkus tears))...Enjoy

Dance Craze: The Best of British Ska...Live!

Dance Craze: The Best of British Ska...Live!

1981

Chrysalis/2-Tone Records

Format I Own it on: Vinyl

Track Listing: 1. The Specials: Concrete Jungle  2. The English Beat: Mirror in the Bathroom  3. Bad Manners: Lip Up Fatty  4. Madness: Razor Blade Alley  5. The Selecter: Three Minute Hero  6. The Bodysnatchers: Easy Life  7. The English Beat: Big Shot  8. Madness: One Step Beyond  9. The English Beat: Ranking Full Stop  10. The Specials: Man At C&A  11. The Selecter: Missing Words  12. Bad Manners: Inner London Violence  13. Madness: Night Boat To Cairo  14. The Selecter: Too Much Pressure  15. The Specials: Nite Klub




I picked this up at Revolver Records awhile back...This is the soundtrack to a 1981 film chronicling the height of the British Two-Tone explosion...

 I paid 10 bucks for it (which I consider to be a lot of money for an album) but looking at that line-up, I couldn't pass it up... It's a compilation of smokin' live tracks from ska heavyweights The Specials, The English Beat, Madness, Bad Manners, the Selecter and some band I hadn't heard of called the Bodysnatchers (turns out they never got around to recording an album...Just a coupla singles...). 

This was done right when most of the bands had just put out their second albums (some of them wouldn't make it to a third and the others largely abandoned the ska style after the second albums), so the timing couldn't have been more perfect...I can't really think of a better overview of the Two-Tone era, really..Unfortunately later versions of this album had to remove the Madness tracks and replace them with additional live Specials recordings, greatly lessening the impact (despite the greatness of the Specials material)...I mean, how can you have a proper "Best of British ska" without Madness?!?!  I bet lawyers are to blame for this...

Boo, lawyers...Hiss...Anyway, if you plan on picking up a copy of the album, keep your eyes open, because there's two version of it out there...I guess either way, it's a good listen...

On a side note, I like all the band's cool logos on the cover, such simple, crisp designs...I can't pick a favorite, but if I had to choose, I'd pick The Specials' classic two-tone man or the English Beat girl, (although I have to give mad credit to that Bodysnatchers mascot)...But why didn't the Selecter get a sweet mascot?  Couldn't they have that miserable-looking bastard from the "Too Much Pressure" album leaning against the big shoe or something?



It's a real shame that the "Dance Craze" film hasn't been released on DVD...I'd buy a copy in a heartbeat! Oh well, there's always youtube...Pop up some popcorn, and have a seat, cos here's the entire movie...Enjoy, while my account gets termed...

The Damned: Light at the End of the Tunnel/Smash It Up: The Anthology 1976–1987/Looking at You

 

The Damned: Light at the End of the Tunnel

1987

MCA Records

Format I Own it on: Vinyl

Track Listing:  Disc 1: 1. I Feel Alright  2. Anything  3. Lovely Money  4. Thanks For The Night (Rat Mix)  5. Plan 9 Channel 7  6. Grimly Fiendish  7. Stranger on the Town  8. Neat Neat Neat  9. Alone Again Or  10. Is It A Dream?  11. Smash It Up Parts I & II  12. Psychomania

Disc 2: 1.  Ignite  2.  Help  3. Rabid (Over You) (CD Mix)  4. I Just Can't Be Happy Today  5. Problem Child  6. Nasty  7. Disco Man  8. New Rose  9. Love Song  10. Feel the Pain  11. The History of the World (Part I)  12. In Dulce Decorum  13.Trojans  14. Eloise  15. The Shadow of Love 


This compilation was my introduction to the Damned...I scored a double cassette version from one of those "12 Cd's or cassettes for a penny" ads you'd find in comic books & magazines back in the day...

"Hey, Ma! Look at me! I'm only 11 and I have bad credit!"

 Holy cow, I (and almost everyone I know) took advantage of these things...You'd get the 12 or so in the mail, buy another one or two and then repeat the process ad infinitum. Looking through my Cd collection I still have at least a hundred that were procured in this manner...

You can always spot 'em by the barcodes...And this, ladies and gentlemen is what I do in my spare time...Comparing and contrasting bar codes...Live fast and leave a good lookin' corpse, I always say...

Anyway, I no longer have those cassettes, but a few years back I found a used vinyl copy of "The Light at the End of the Tunnel"...Looking back, the cassettes had a slightly different track listing..."Help" is in a different place in the running order and the 17-minute "Curtain Call" is omitted completely (due to the fact it'd probably eat up a whole side of vinyl!).  Like I said, this is what kicked off my life-long Damned obsession, however, it might not be the best place for everybody to start...

First off, the non-chronological track listing can get pretty jarring for a band who reinvented their sound every album...You tend to get whiplash as you jump from booming, lush goth-tinged 1986 hard rock to stripped-down, tinny 1977 punk...I found it immediately fascinating, but I can see how it might drive some listeners crazy...I think the song selection is also interesting since it was compiled in 1987, before it became clear that the Damned were going to be best remembered as a punk band...So largely forgotten albums like "Anything" are given just as much weight as stone-cold punk classics like "Damned Damned Damned" and "Machine Gun Etiquette."

Sure, there are a few head-scratching decisions (No "Wait for the Blackout" but the corny 80's sax-soaked mood muzak "Trojans" is on here?!?!"), but there are so many great non-album singles included that I'm willing to cut it a lot of slack...Without this album I might not have ever heard  "Lovely Money," "Nasty," Disco Man," "Eloise,"  or most importantly the final single-only release from the Sensible/Vanian/Scabies line-up, "Thanks For The Night"!

The random grab-bag of eras and styles is a dang blast for Damned fans who enjoy all of the band's albums, but I think I might be atypical in that sense... I guess, if you're an adventurous listener,  jump right in and you'll be richly rewarded...Here's "History of the World (Part 1)"...

Sorry about that mix-up...Here's "History of the World (Part 1)"...by the Damned...(by the way, this song rules...Their best balance between their goth and punk styles)...Enjoy...

The Damned: Smash It Up: The Anthology 1976–1987

2002

Castle Records

Format I Own it on: Compact Disc

Track Listing: Disc 1:  1. New Rose   2. Help  3. Neat Neat Neat  4. See Her Tonite  5. Fan Club  6. I Fall  7. I Feel Alright  8. Feel the Pain  9. Stretcher Case  10. Problem Child  11. Don't Cry Wolf  12. Your Eyes  13. Creep (You Can't Fool Me)  14. Idiot Box  15. Love Song  16. Smash It Up (Part 1)  17. Smash It Up (Part2)  18. Machine Gun Etiquette  19. Melody Lee  20. Plan 9, Channel 7  21. I Just Can't Be Happy Today

Disc 2: 1.  The History of the World (Part 1)  2. Wait for the Blackout  3. Drinking About My Baby  4. Silly Kids Games  5. Curtain Call  6. Lovely Money  7. Dozen Girls  8. Life Goes On  9. Under the Floor Again  10. Generals  11. Grimly Fiendish  12. Eloise  13. Anything  14. In Dulce Decorum


This, on the other hand, is a hands-down perfect Damned compilation...A brilliant place to start, if you're new to the group and a two hour set of favorites if you're already a fan...Chronologically sequenced with a track listing that pretty much matches my ideal Damned playlist (except I would have done everything humanly possible to include the pop head-rush "Is It a Dream.")

Similar to the "Light at the End of the Tunnel" collection, this covers the band's output from "Damned Damned Damned" through "Anything," but it gets the balance right...I think we can all agree more "Machine Gun Etiquette" and less "Anything" is a sound decision...And best of all they remembered to put on "Wait for the Blackout" this time! What a top-notch song...Easily one of their best...It's impossible not to love that electrifying opening riff...Or Dave's nocturnal crooning during the verses, or that anthemic chorus...Perfection, I'm telling you...Perfection...

Oh yea, I should have talked about "Lovely Money" a bit more...I've always loved this track...I can't tell you how many hours I spent as a teenager rewinding this song over and over...Something about the cheap Casio drum beat and lurching bass line never fails to draw me in...And who can forget Viv Stanshall's turn as the tour guide who provides a running soundtrack of tourist-trap atrocities? One of my favorite 80's singles...

If you're not going to buy the first seven albums then at least pick up this and "Machine Gun Etiquette" and those will probably get you by for awhile...

Here's "Wait for the Blackout" by the Damned...

The Damned: Looking at You

1998

Sudden Death Records

Format I Own it on: Vinyl

Track Listing: 1. Looking at You  2. Wait for the Blackout  3. Noise Noise Noise  4. Smash it Up (Part I)  5. Smash it Up (Part II)  6. Fooling Around  7. I Feel Alright



My good friend Russ bought me this as a birthday present! Russ is the man! My copy is waaaaay cooler than the one pictured above, because it appears to be signed...

I can't really make out exactly who signed most of it...The only one that's clear is "I...Captain Sensible say bugger the pope?"  I believe the big signature on the left is Dave Vanian, based on other signatures of his I've found online...

As for the record itself, it's a 10-inch live EP that was recorded in Mulhouse, France in 1994...It took a lot of digging around, but I found out it was part two of a series of live recordings issued of the Mulhouse show in various formats...The first part was a two-song 7-inch called "Disco Man/Pretty Vacant," and the third one was the 12 inch record "Molten Lager" which is one of their more popular live albums...



And I can see why...Judging by the "Looking at You" EP, the sound is fantastic...Very clearly recorded and the band appears to having a hell of a good time...Just about every track finds Dave breaking down into laughter mid-song...The highlight being when Rat blows his iconic drum introduction to "New Rose."

Apparently these tracks were recorded during the encore for the show, so the mood by this point is very loose and relaxed...If you expect your live albums to sound like studio albums with a little applause tossed in, this might not be for you, but if you're into very live albums, look no further...Plenty of blown lyrics, dropped basslines, and great songs...

They don't have any of this on youtube, and I don't really feel like making one, so here's a different live version of the Damned playing their cover of MC5's "Looking at You" from roughly the same time period...Have a great Friday everyone!