Not Like Everybody Else – The Damned (earMusic)
Growing up in Sydney in the ‘70s, betrothed to the rise of punk music, you and most of your fellow travellers understood that this music had roots. It did not appear out of vacuum. It was a folk art built upon a tradition.
While folk art maybe sneered upon by some, it creates a sense of community and shared history. And punk rock is counter culture. It celebrates the outsider by counter-intuitively placing the outsider within the shared myth of the outsider.
Humans love our smoke and mirrors.
When Radio Birdman played "Hanky Panky" and the Saints played "Lipstick on your Collar", it wasn't an idiot joke at the expense of the past. When X played "Runaway" and the Scabs played "Everloving Man", they recognised and paid tribute to the dust encrusted 45s that found their way on to our mono gramophones.
We did not have fancy stereos. We had the kind of junk shop boxes that had been discarded to so called improvements in technology. We dragged them home off the side of the road as we did much of our record collection.
More loved than be-flared copies of "Frampton Comes Alive" or the grizzled drone of "The Dark Side of the Moon", this was the music of the Teen Age; the opera of adolescent angst. We were back to mono. Girl groups screamed as motorcycles crashed.
Fuzz guitar won the day over orchestras and professionalism. The sneer was cooler than the show business smile. While your Pat Boones and your Colonel Toms wanted to tame the beast, teenagers the world over just wanted to fuck and get fucked up too.
We were creatures of a common dissent (sic).
There were, however, many who thought of 1977 as a kind of year zero. A quasi Pol Pot purging of an ignoble past. But even the UK bastions were not immune to pop's more chequered past. The more revolutionary-than-thou Clash "Fought the Law" in their "Brand New Cadillacs." The Pistols raided the Mod handbook more than the Jam ever did.
Only the most po-faced claimed immaculate conception. And what piss poor offerings drizzled from their underdeveloped loins.
Real punk was eternally teenage. Even at its most pretentious, it was never boring like the yacht loving drivel of the rock intelligentsia. The ennui these Rolling Stone journalists mocked but ultimately celebrated at the Hotel California had no place in our world.
Behind arthouse tongues placed strategically behind sucked-in cheeks, even the Banshees still unironically proclaimed themselves Twentieth Century Boys. The Devoto-led Buzzcocks took a stab at Beefheart and somehow made a pop song.
We spoke about the real trash. We wore make up to break up. We were the B-Side Babies.
Punk rock knew there was the Stooges and "Nuggets", the Velvet Underground and the Sonics. A foundation to be robbed, built upon, splattered by paint and useless additions nailed to.
When I lived in North London, I would often find myself in the record shops around Upper Street, looking for unknown relics of a golden age that never truly was. The Thirteenth Floor Elevators never bothered the UK charts. And in a world that asked who the fuck were the Sonics, only some of us knew.
More often than not, Dave Vanian would be heading for the exact same racks as I. The poor bastard must have thought I was stalking him. But, where pickings are slim, paths become well worn.
With that common interest in mind, "Not Like Everyone Else" is not an unexpected addition to the Damned's catalogue. Between you and me, it is also very much a follow up or companion piece to the Naz Nomad and the Nightmares' "Give Daddy the Knife" album Vanian blessed us with in the early '80s.
A collection of '60s covers ranging from American garage through to British Psych, it almost acts as a kind of Da Capo to an unexpectedly lengthy career; a return to the well from where the water sprung.
It also may mark an end to a recording career that cannot logistically continue to release too many albums into the future. Sure, the Damned can probably continue touring but the recording of new music has become an unnecessary and expensive addendum to the cause of credibility; the modern curse of legacy.
This new album does not entirely rely on its artistic demand as a new Damned release. It also plays tribute to original Damned guitarist Brian James with whom the band played a brief reformation before his death. So, clearly, hearts are in the right place and this is an important work to all concerned. Writing a review is essentially a poison chalice and any criticism will be viewed against a weighted wall of reverence and homage.
So, suck it up and buckle your boots, gentle reader. Here comes Captain Needs-A-Good-Smack-In-The-Gob-Hole to spoil the fun. Punk always maintained a healthy coat of disrespect.
It's not that this is a bad album. It tilts its hat towards that era of great Damned albums. It's certainly better than the parade of post-'80s albums you didn't buy and certainly never listened to. For my sins, I did purchase them out of loyalty. Like this one, they're good but not great. I've never turned one of these albus off mid listen. But, off of the top of your head, can you name me a track off of "Grave Disorder" or "So, Who's Paranoid"? To tell you the truth, even I've got nothing without returning to the racks.
When you have made a career out of summiting Everests, the view from The Alps just doesn't cut it. In a weird way, those bands who make it half way up a Welsh Hill have it easier and get more respect than a band still consistently releasing better-than-you'll-ever-be material.
Is that fair? No, it's not. But here I am being lukewarm about an album that I have now listened to about 20 times and enjoyed very much. I'm just not blown away the way I should be. This should be tailor made for me. I am the ideal mark for this. I am that Venn diagram.
In content, this record shares a lot with Bowie's "Pinups". Critics didn't really go a whole bunch on that record at the time of its release but the kids loved it. It was dirty and sexy and sneering and everything a teenager could want. Your parents hated it especially when Bowie tried to up the ante on "Let's Spend the Night Together." In hind sight there were moments in "Pinups" that were as cringy as fuck.
I'm a grandparent now and I quite like the new Damned album. But nothing here is cringy as fuck. It doesn't make me wish I was 14 again. On the odd occasion I listen to "Pinups", I remember being 14 and must experience the regret of no longer being 14. Despite multiple advantages to being old and grey, it does remains evocative.
And, as I said earlier, punk always retains something of the teenager including that love-hate relationship with loss.
Unfortunately, "Not Like Everybody Else" doesn't fill me with any notion of time or space. I find myself thinking the version of R Dean Taylor's "Ghost in My House" is too fast. It forgets that song's place in Northern Soul history, it's Motown beat and the original's quiet sense of loss so much a part of the genre. It rocks hard where it should roll.
I find myself wondering why it doesn't have the original's ghost shuffle half time march outro that worked so well on a dance floor.
Versions of "Summer in the City" and "Heart Full of Soul" are perfectly great and professional but so totally contained by expectations. They're totally superior to even the best cover bands but there is something not quite there.
Throughout the record, there is too much emphasis on getting everything right instead of just letting go. Even guitar freakouts sound overly considered. It should have been first take and out.
I don't so much "See Emily Play" as watch Emily perform a well-rehearsed interpretive jazz dance routine about the need for outdoor activity.
I also can't help think the version of "Gimme Danger" has too much keyboard and too much god damn metronome.
And if an album is great, I should not be thinking about stupid details like that. I should just surrender to the theatre of it all and the Damned, at their best, were always great theatre. "Gimme Danger" is the kind of misery Dave Vanian was born to wallow in.
Don't get me wrong. The whole album is worth buying if only for the fantastic version of the Lollipop Shoppe's "She Must Be a Witch". The album is worth buying because it's the Damned. The album is worth buying because it's probably better that ninety-five per cent of punk albums released this year.
"When we were young" also adds an interesting additional generation to the song's original conceit but it's difficult to discern if that was by intent or by accident.
This album's only real failing is that it tries too hard to put its arms around a memory.
1/2
