BROADCAST #07
AIR DATE: 02-07-06

Alright Fanatics, tonight our Special guest was the drummer of Punk legends The Damned! As you saw on the notes last week, this all came together when Rat contacted me while in LA recently. Besides Heidi, we really have not had a guest on the show yet. While I was in Australia, I asked Mike Watt if he would come in and do the show with me some night. We’ll see if we can get that happening at some point.
     I am not trying to make you mad but I am off again for a couple of weeks. I have some shows, press, USO work and some other stuff to do and will be out but Engineer X and I have put together a good show for next week. I will be back soon and we’ll be live. I hope you enjoyed the company of Mr. Scabies tonight. For those of you wanting to hear this one again or any of the other ones from this season, you can check them out here: http://www.rollins-archive.com/
     If you have not checked out the first four albums of The Damned, you really should. Do whatever you must do but get yourself to Damned Damned Damned, Music for Pleasure, Machine Gun Etiquette and The Black Album as soon as possible.
     Since Rat and I kinda winged it on the songs, I have not had time to make many notes and I am in the air a few hours from now. So, what I am going to do is ask for your patience and I will jam on the notes for tonight’s show and post them here later in the week. I know it’s not like you’re going to lose any sleep over it but I want to get them all done, so please all me a couple of days to get them together and I will.
     I hope I didn’t wear you all out tonight. Rat sure was cool. It was strange having someone in there and it threw me a little. Thankfully, Rat is one cool guy and suffered me pretty well. I had so many questions for him! He was really good about it all. I just dropped him off at his friend’s place. Anyway, I hope you liked the show. I’m not all that good at the interview thing but hopefully you liked it. Thanks. Henry
     Here’s a list of what we heard tonight.

Stooges – TV Eye: I will never forget that as long as I live—seeing Iggy yelling at the beginning of this song the five times I saw the Stooges over the last few weeks. He yells and one of greatest riffs of all time comes in behind him and it’s on! I can’t think they were this good when they were playing this stuff the first time. I think those Stooges shows may have been some of the best shows I have ever seen. Every night while they were playing, I was on stage right checking them out. While they played, I felt completely invincible. Those songs are so well put together. There is not fat, there is nothing that isn’t a vital part of the whole. The way Scott Asheton and Mike Watt lock up gives those songs such violent power and precision. Every night the song Fun House got more and more intense as they took it farther and farther out. Every time I have seen Iggy play, it’s more than music. It’s more than a lesson but the sum parts of the Ashetons, Watt and Iggy, it’s perfection. Those were some lucky audiences. I hope they understood what they saw. They should measure all that pussy music they listen to up against that and see how it stands.

Beasts of Bourbon – Chase the Dragon: This is from a new live CD the Beasts put out called Low Life. All of the Beasts make records and we’ll get to them as the shows go on. A lot of them can be found on Spooky Records, I label I don’t know anything about. The Beasts gave me all this stuff when I was out there last week and I am looking forward to playing them. The band was so good on the Big Day Out shows. Best I’ve seen them in a long time. I don’t know how Tex keeps his voice together. He can knock walls down with that thing. Anyway, here’s an address for Spooky, these records might be a little difficult to find in America for now. http://www.spookyrecords.com/

Brian Eno – Baby’s On Fire: A pick by Rat Scabies. You can’t go wrong with this song or anything on the album it came from, Here Come The Warm Jets. This is one of those must-hear albums and Eno is one of those must-hear guys. One of the absolute not-for-discussion musical geniuses of our time. There’s info about the man all over the internet but I bet you Fanatics are already all over this guy so you don’t need me to tell you about how amazing he is.

Bad Brains – Stab Yor Back: I know you have heard me tell this story before. Many years ago, HR of the Bad Brains gave me a tape of the 2nd  ever Bad Brains show and told me to hold onto it for him. I did and still have it. The sound quality is surprisingly good. Anyway, on that night, the young Bad Brains did a cover of the Damned’s very cool song Stab Yor Back. I figured if I was ever going to play this one, this was the night to do it. The original version of Stab can be found on the first Damned album, Damned Damned Damned.

The Damned – Smash It Up parts 1 & 2 (Radio One Sessions version): From the Listen to the power of the one-two combo of these two songs together. I think the tracks from this session have some of the best sounds the band ever got. Rat is so solid. The Captain sounds great and Vanian’s vocals soar. These guys really had some music!

The Fall – Glam Racket: From the Fall’s The Infotainment Scan album released in 1993. A year later, the band followed up with the Middle Class Revolt album. I consider Middle Class to be a continuation of Infotainment. Not to say the band weren’t doing something new, but The Fall do seem to work through ideas and sounds in two album sequences and this is another one of them. Both albums are great. The new edition of Infotainment has just been released and it sounds great. You get the album, the singles, the corresponding Peel Session, some alternate mixes of Lost In Music and the complete Mark Goodier radio session the band did in May of 1993. That’s where we pulled the version of Glam Racket we heard tonight. The new edition of Middle Class will be out in March.

The Ruts – West One (Shine On Me): I know we listen to a lot of Ruts but what the hell. Again, it pertains to tonight’s guest so I thought we should play some Ruts. Tonight we are playing a single that should have been the start of the 2nd proper Ruts album. With songs already done like Secret Soldiers, Demolition Dancing and Staring At The Rude Boys, I think they were on their way. I don’t know how well the band was doing at this point. Rat was under the impression they weren’t really together when vocalist Malcom Owen passed away in 1980. This was the track I wanted to play and while Rat was picking out songs he wanted to play and he said he wanted to play some Ruts. I asked him which song and he said West One so that was a cool coincidence. A great song.

Johnny and the Hurricanes – Rocking Goose: Another Rat pick. You’ve heard us play Johnny and Hurricanes before. This from a 2CD best of on Charley. If it’s on Charley, there’s a good chance the band doesn’t know anything about it and the CD will be out of print as soon as they do.

Sonic’s Rendezvous – City Slang: I never got the single and never got the CDs when they came out. I don’t know why. It’s not like the music isn’t great and Fred Sonic Smith of the MC5 wasn’t the man. I just didn’t get it together to do it. So, I missed out as the CDs are seemingly out of print. I made copies of the two that I know of from someone in Australia the other week and had the files on my computer when Rat asked if I had the song City Slang hanging around. I made a copy onto CD and brought it in. Great song. I hope all that stuff comes out again so we can all check it out.

Black Market Baby – World At War: From the new CD on Dr. Strange Records, Could...Shoulda...Woulda…. We used to see these guys play as often as we could back in the early days in DC. Great band. This CD is a comp. of all their singles, compilation cuts, etc. I had not heard BMB for awhile and when I heard all these songs together, it really blew me away how good their music holds up. Just because you liked it at the time doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to stand any test of time. The song we played tonight, World At War, I was there at the sessions watching them track it. Below is contact info for the very cool Dr. Strange records and the band as well.
Dr. Strange: http://www.drstrange.com/
BMB Website: http://www.senselessofferings.com/.

The Saints – Demolition Girl (Live at the Hope & Anchor): You’ve heard us play this version of this song before. Rat had pulled the I’m Stranded album and wanted to play the studio version of Demolition Girl and I asked him if he had heard this live version

The Damned – I’m Bored: In a spectacular mistreatment Skip James’ classic track I’m So Glad, made famous by Cream, the band change the lyrics and then move with great ease into the utter ruin of Gary Numan’s In Cars. I hope Numan felt honored. I pulled this track from the Sessions Of The Damned CD. It’s a great one!

Skip James – I’m So Glad: The great Skip James. I have every record I have ever seen of his and have never been let down. Amazing voice. I bought Devil Got My Woman in 1984 or something and that was it, I was hooked. I’m So Glad was a Skip James song made more well known by Cream. Clapton has always admired the great bluesmen. I think all the James stuff

Edgar Tempest and the Wild Rockers – Chantilly Lace: So at long last, we get a little info on this track. I have this track on different Damned Bootlegs but never really knew anything about it. From what Rat said, apparently it was Captain, Rat and perhaps some others just letting off steam during the Black Album sessions. Rat seemed to enjoy hearing it again after I guess what had been a long time. I think it sounds great. I wish they had put it on the Black Album re-issue but again, the Fanatics get shorted. Not on this show!

The Damned – Rabid (alt vocal): Another track off the same bootleg I have had for many years. It’s basically the same backing track of the song with some different vocals. I think that’s the Captain singing in the middle part. A great song and a version that’s perfect for this show.

Birthday Party – Little Doll: From a tape of the band playing in Eindhoven Holland at the Effenaar11-06-81. So many gigs I’ve done there. That’s where Theo Van Rock, the Low End Ranger comes from. I have a lot of live Birthday party tapes. This is the only version I have of the band playing Little Doll by the Stooges. The other day I was sitting in Melbourne with Birthday Party and full time Bad Seed Mick Harvey and I asked him how many times they played it and he had no idea. As most you Fanatics know, the Birthday Party loved the Stooges and did killer versions of Fun House and Loose.

Don’t You Start Me Talkin’ Dept.: Here’s a thing I wrote over a few nights while in Australia. My pal Andrew up in Toronto is a Fanatic of the highest order. Weeks ago, he wrote and asked me to write out a report card on the first few Damned albums and get back to him when I could. I now forget if he said the first four or the first five albums. I went through the first four and one thing lead to another and I over wrote. You can file this one in the ‘way too much information’ section of your trash bin but perhaps you’ll get a kick out it. Sure was fun to write. Fanatic is as Fanatic does. Here it is:

I would say the first Damned album Damned Damned Damned is one of the best debut albums by any band I have ever heard. As great as the first Buzzcocks, Clash, Stooges and Ramones albums. It would be the first of the two albums that would define the first phase of the band. The driving force of these two albums: Brian James. The band was amazing after he left, certainly but never the same. Brian James brought a danger element and street level-toughness the band never had again. They certainly became lighter hearted and more pop oriented post Brian James. On Damned Damned Damned, the band achieved something the Sex Pistols and the Clash, with all their rage and fury did not; a sense of cool. Check the vocal on Born To Kill. Against a savage riff that smashes along, singer Dave Vanian sings with a detachment that makes him and the song James Dean cool. The song Fan Club that portrays the singer as the desired object of his fan’s worship and reveals his contempt for them (“…standing in the pissing rain must be a drag…”) and himself (“…I’m the freak that’s on display so stand and stare…”) shows more insight than their peers were displaying at the time. I can’t find anything wrong with this album. I am glad they kept their cover of the Beatles song Help! off the album and relegated it to single status. I would have been happier had they not done it at all. I have to give this album five stars because of the strength of the songs, the production and the vacuum from which the band pulled this one out of. Way more music on this album than on the Sex Pistols album.
     The Damned’s follow up Music For Pleasure was hated by the band and many critics and fans. It also marked the departure for Brian James. I remember when I bought this album. I remember putting it on and listening to it with great anticipation and liking it as soon as I heard it. I didn’t understand why people didn’t like it. People I listened to this kind of music with liked it as well. It was an interview with Captain Sensible I read around the time of the album’s release where he ripped it mercilessly that confused me. Your Eyes I thought was brilliant, You Know, Alone—fantastic, dark, deranged and deep. It makes the first album almost child like with its weight and daring arrangements and use of horn. It was a trip through the jagged unease of the mind of Brian James and it was great. I think this was one of those records that was truly ahead of its time. I know people who are now hearing this record for the first time and when they hear that the record was poorly received they don’t understand why. I hope that someday the band and Captain Sensible will change their mind about Music For Pleasure. I give this one three stars instead of four because of some of the lyrics. The lyrics in Don’t Cry Wolf, Politics and Creep are juvenile and below par. The album would have been better had they never put Don’t Cry Wolf on it at all at least not with the lyrics they used. Lines like “Their laws we don’t obey” The use of “fools” to rhyme with “rules” is just below them. Great music crippled by a less than mediocre lyric that even repeats at the end of the song, not allowing you to forget how bad it is.
     The Damned’s 3rd album, Machine Gun Etiquette came after the release of the Love Song EP, which came as relief to Damned fans eager to hear where the band was now with Captain Sensible on guitar. The sound had changed drastically and now owed more to the MC5 than to the Stooges danger element. The Damned now sounded rowdy by comparison. “Ladies and gentlemen, how do?” The songwriting was now dominated by Captain Sensible who was turning into quite the songsmith. With the thundering, attention demanding bass line of Love Song at the start of the album, you knew at first listen it was a whole different band now. Makes one wonder if the band had felt held back by the stylings of Brian James and his darker vision of the band. MGE is a crashing, loud album. Some of the band’s best material is contained on this album. I Just Can’t Be Happy Today is as near a perfect pop song as there ever was and made the band one to contend with where other bands of this era had used up whatever they had and were no longer interesting. The Damned seemed to be picking up momentum. The rock out leads of the Captain and the use of keyboards in certain tracks showed a maturity and sophistication that could not be denied. With Brian James gone, it’s an almost entirely different picture. The use of piano in Melody Lee sets up the guitar lead stampede at the top of the song brilliantly. The second side of MGE starts with easily one of the band’s all time strongest songs. Plan 9 Channel 7 is a tour de force of vocal melody, arrangement and instrumentation. The song soars and breathes. It almost single-handedly eclipses the band’s previous work. Side two continues strong with Noise Noise Noise but for me at least, takes a dip with the relatively weak Liar and the unnecessary would have been an ok b-side, cover of the MC5’s brilliant song Looking At You, which gets pounded flat and stripped of emotion by the Damned’s romper room treatment of it. Might have been fun to play but for me, not all that fun to listen to. The album redeems itself with the beautiful knockout combination finale of Smash It Up Parts I & II. I give this one four stars because I don’t think Liar and These Hands stack up to the rest of the songs and the addition of Looking At You is distracting and the album didn’t need it at all. How great would it have been had the band ended side one with the fantastic song Suicide?
     The Damned’s fourth album, The Black Album became my favorite record of theirs. I came to that conclusion about a week after I got it when it came out in 1980. When I think of TBA, I only consider the studio sides of the double album and ignore the live side entirely. I also include the b-sides as part of the same writing period and mark the overall as the greatest single batch of songs the band ever wrote. It is the Damned album I play most often and one of my all-time favorite records. Nothing like the first three, TBA is ambitious as hell and hits the mark without being pretentious or tedious. Where Machine Gun Etiquette was a kick-out-the-jams rock album, TBA is a darker moodier bit of work. Bass player Algy Ward was out and Paul Gray from Eddie and the Hot Rods was in. Keyboards, synthesizers, horns, layered vocals all over TBA. Elaborate arrangements and some amazing vocals that the demos and radio session versions only hint at. To this day, I can’t imagine how they came up with this body of work and managed to capture such a range of great sounds and performances. Some of Captain Sensible’s best writing is on this album. History Of The World Part 1 is as strong a single as I Just Can’t Be Happy Today. There are so many great moments on this record it’s hard to think of where to begin. The arrangement and instrumentation of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde with Gray’s understated bass against the acoustic guitar, horn and keyboard sets up Vanian’s vocal brilliantly. 13th Floor Vendetta takes the music into a fantastic psychedelic-goth realm that I have never heard before. The 2nd side of the album ends with the minutes-long decay of the rocking Therapy with Captain Sensible playing the hell out what sounds to me like a Stratocaster. Side three is one song. Curtain Call comes in at over 17 minutes. It is epic. How they came up with this and pulled it off is beyond me. It is hard to call the band pretentious as it’s impossible to think they ever took themselves seriously but that being said, it’s impossible to not take Captain Sensible’s rapidly evolving songwriting skills with great seriousness. The work on this song is intense as anything coming out of that scene at the time and I don’t know if the band ever got the credit they deserved. I never read any reviews of the record. I never did read reviews of the bands I liked, I just went out and got the records as soon as they came out. My favorite Damned song is a b-side off TBA. I Believe The Impossible registered as my favorite song of theirs as soon as I heard it and has never been lodged from that spot. I have rarely played this album or this song during the day time. This is night music and this is one of the all time great late night songs. My only problem with it is that it ends too soon. It sounds like the band is about to take off on an interesting jam when the song fades out. Two instrumentals, Seagulls and Sugar And Spite are also great. Another highpoint from this batch of songs is Rabid, no one ever talks about that one. I give The Black Album five stars. This is a monster body of work that will stand the test of time. Since this is a Fanatic breakdown of this record, I would like to propose something. I think TBA should be re-configured to include these b-sides folded into the songs on sides one and two to make three sides of music with Curtain Call being the fourth side and lose the live tracks altogether, thus making it a real double album in the spirit of Electric Ladyland. Here’s a potential sequence:
Side 1: Wait For The Blackout / Lively Arts / Silly Kid's Games / Drinking About My Baby / Twisted Nerve / Hit Or Miss

Side 2: Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde / Sick Of This And That / The History Of The World (Part 1) / 13Th Floor Vendetta / Therapy

Side 3: Rabid (Over You) / Sugar And Spite / White Rabbit / I Believe The Impossible / Seagulls

Side 4: Curtain Call

Ain't No Sanity Clause could be used as a b-side!