Soon after, the band began its slow decline. The next ten years were propped up with spotty live albums, dubious one-offs and rent-paying reunion tours. The band sputtered to a halt around 1995.
In the late '90s, Vanian and Sensible decided to put another version of the Damned together and started touring and writing. The band's current roster includes Vanian's wife/bassist Patricia Morrison (the Bags, Sisters of Mercy, Gun Club), keyboardist Monty Oxy Moron (Punk Floyd) and drummer Pinch (English Dogs). On Grave Disorder, the lineup is accomplished enough that songs brim with authority without losing the musical fisticuffs of the Damned's early days.
Neat, neat, neat: Dave Vanian (center), with the Damned in its current incarnation.
Details
With Pleasure Forever and the Swingin' Udders
8 p.m. Sunday, October 7
$15, 303-322-2308
Bluebird Theater, 3317 East Colfax Avenue
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Both a founder and inheritor of punk rock, Dave Vanian, in many ways, hangs true to his '76 ethos. For one, he conveys an almost frightening commitment to self-reliance. The Damned, for example, is self-managed. Vanian designs all of the band's merchandise and cover art. The tunes on the near-perfect Grave Disorder are unsullied by heavy-handed contemporary production. It sounds like a rock-and-roll record made for all the right reasons.
Vanian likens his personal philosophical views to the music he grew up on. As a kid, he tuned in to a weekly AM radio show hosted by Wolfman Jack that highlighted '60's American punk. The young Vanian moved from his old man's German tango and big-band 78s straight to the raucous noise of the Standells, Paul Revere and the Raiders, and the Seeds.
"Those records never came out in England. But these bands were literally making their records in the garages. I mean, some of that stuff is so inspiring -- some so badly played but so brilliant because of it. So when the Damned were first interviewed, we were asked what bands we liked, and I said, 'Well, we're kind of like these '60s bands,' and they just didn't know what we were talking about. So I said, 'I guess we're a garage band.' What happened was, the term 'punk' happened, which was only a few weeks later. We forever became a punk band."
Too stringently ruled for reinvention and already clinging stubbornly to nostalgia, punk rock was six feet under by late 1979. Based solely on the idea that any art form too comfortable with its own concept is therefore finished, punk became a sweaty, pitiable beast wallowing in parody.
"Eventually, punk got one-dimensional," says the man who pranced stages in the uniform of a vampire in 1997. "That's when it died off, but the first bands had real fire."
In a softer tone, one that sounds almost nostalgic, Vanian continues. "Of the bands that were there at the time, if you compared the Pistols, us and the Clash, and bands like the Adverts and, obviously, the Buzzcocks, they are all so different from each other. All these later bands kind of had blinkers on. They played only a certain type of music, only dressed a certain way, only listened to certain things. And that was the total opposite of what punk started off to be. Punk was never about that."
