Last night, I went to The Metro in Chicago to see The Damned for the first time since I saw them there 10 years ago. This time was their 35th anniversary tour where they played Damned Damned Damned and The Black Album in there entirety. By the time the band hit the stage at 9:10pm, the place had a full house.
They tore into the first album after the Captain welcomed everyone to 1977. The Captain managed to break a string on two different guitars early on. Monty was a dancing fool most of the set as there was not much of a reason for keyboards. I was a little disappointed in the vocals as they seemed too low in the mix and Dave Vanian seemed to use his more goth vocal style. I have the same complaint about seeing the Sex Pistols reunion shows as Johnny Rotten uses his PIL Johnny Lydon vocal style. Guys, this is punk rock. I don't care if you can't actually sing. Belt out the vocals like you did when you were 20!!
The band took a 10 minute break between albums, and changed up their costumes. The Captain was proud to announce he was sporting his 1980 New Romatic look. It was great to finally hear some tracks from this album as I am not sure I have every heard anything live other than "Wait for the Blackout" before. Of course, I had only seen The Damned 2x before. A lot more keyboards during this set. Monty managed to play the intro to "History of the World" one song too early. The rest of the band busted his balls for that. Captain and Vanian traded laughs during songs. The band truely looked like they were having fun and appreciated the crowd being into watching them. I could have done without "Curtain Call" and the Captain and Monty trading keyboard sounds, but hell, this was a show for completist so I can say I saw them play the song live.
After a few minutes, the band came back on stage to play a 3 song encore. "Love Song" and "Antipope" drew the most excitement from the crowd the whole evening which was saying something considering people were enjoying themselves all night. I must say that I was probably the average age person in the audience.
All in all, the band played about 2 hours. It was well worth getting home after midnight. I am glad I witnessed this tour, and got to see them play songs they normally do not play. It was worth the price of admission alone to see them play "Drinking About My Baby". Many in the crowd appeared to enjoy it as much as me much to my surprise. I ran into MXV before the Damned came on stage. He then went behind the barrier to take pics. You can check his story out at http://www.punkvinyl.com/. I also ran into Daghouse/Riot Bill who low and behold was standing not too far from me the entire first album. It took me until about the last song to realize it. Good to see the young man again. Below are a few pics and a video. There are more pics on Flickr and more videos on youtube.
Damned Damned Damned Set
01 Neat Neat Neat
02 Fan Club
03 I Fall
04 Born to Kill
05 Stab Your Back
06 Feel the Pain
07 New Rose
08 Fish
09 See Her Tonite
10 1 of 2
11 So Messed Up
12 I Feel Alright
The Black Album Set
13 Wait for the Blackout
14 Lively Arts
15 Silly Kids Games
16 Drinking About My Baby
17 Twisted Nerve
18 Hit or Miss
19 Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde
20 Sick of This and That
21 History of the World, Pt 1
22 13th Floor Vendetta
23 Therapy
24 Curtain Call
Encore Set
25 Eloise
26 Love Song
27 Antipope
No comments:
Post a Comment