~Winter Wassailing~#22: A Damned Fine Christmas

''Here comes Uncle Nick// Let's give him some stick''

Aaaah....The Damned!
That most under appreciated of bands!
Never given the Punk kudos dished out to The Sex Pistols or The Clash, and totally underrated as purveyors of fine pop/rock singles in the early 80s. Indeed, most people probably only know them for their superb cover of Barry Ryan's 'Eloise', but The Damned were always favourites of us here at the ~Streetlamp~, a fact that you can read about at length in my previous Blog about them.
So, as has been previously determined, The Damned (along with Crass) were pretty much the sound of High School for me and, as this is a Christmas Blog, we should take a look at their contributions to the canon of Festive ditties, beginning with their 1980 single 'Their Ain't No Sanity Clause'.
Released on November of 1980, '...Sanity Clause' was yet another classic recording by arguably the band's greatest line-up; Dave Vanian, Captain Sensible, Rat Scabies and Paul Gray. At this point the band were signed to Chiswick Records for whom fans reckon they recorded their greatest work, and '...Sanity Clause' came in a run of superb singles that included 'White Rabbit', 'The History Of The World (prt 1)', 'The Friday The 13th E.P', 'Generals', 'Dozen Girls' and 'Thanks For The Night'....magnificent singles all!
'...Sanity Clause' is a fairly raucous old wheeze complete with (probably ironic) sleigh bells and Ho-Ho-Ho-ing. What always makes me smile listening to it these days is the ''Here comes Uncle Nick// Let's give him some stick'' backing vocals that run through the second and third choruses. I'm guessing it was Sensible who came up with this as it seems like his sense of humour....


And speaking of the good Captain, it's hard to think of anyone whose career has seemed so schizophrenic! In The Damned he was a complete madman who took to the stage in tu-tus, nurse uniforms, or even completely naked. Yet running concurrent, he also had a bizarre solo career that saw him release show-songs, pop songs and (dare one even say it) children's songs! He pretty much became a light entertainer, even recording the theme tune to cringingly, God-awful, Jim Davidson-starring, TV snooker bollocks 'Big Break'....how embarrassing! Mind you, I suppose it pays the mortgage....but still!!!
Despite all that though, his solo career is still littered with some sublime songs; his debut solo album is a sounds-like-nothing-else-in-1982 bonkers classic, he made a brilliant single with Crass, he released the superb anti-war pop song 'Glad It's All Over', a fantastic serious Psychedelic double album entitled 'Revolution Now', and a rather fine Christmas single 'One Christmas Catalogue'.
Released in November 1984, the single sadly paled in the shadow of that same month's behemoth 'Band Aid' charity fest, and failed to even chart despite his previous single reaching Number 6. Even the comedy fluffy beard that bedecked the sleeve failed to lure the punters....


Given the endless rehashing of Christmas songs, both on the radio and on the music satellite channels, at this time of year, I'm always surprised that neither of these songs get much (or even any) airplay. It's always just the same old crap, year in year out....much like Christmas itself, eh cynics?

And to finish off, as a vegetarian, here's a little something for all you meat eaters out there....


~Gordon~

~Kitten Wine~#24: 'Strawberry Dross Killed The Boss'

Blah blah blah.....Summer of '83....blah blah blah....last days of school....blah blah blah....sensory evocation of lost time....blah blah blah....Marcel Proust.....yada yada yada.....little rooms smelling of orris root....yada yada yada....same old same old.................

Yeah, it must be said that I do tend to furrow the same old groove in these Blogs but, like my literary hero himself, I really don't know of, or have anything else to write about. Sounding totally pretentious, my life really is my art!

And so we find ourselves once again on the streets of Bannockburn under the blood red skies of a Summer's evening. That Summer between school and work was a special time, one that only now I wish I'd kicked back and enjoyed just a little more. All of my friends were, like myself, upon the very threshold of manhood....the 9 to 5, the nights at the pub, the sensible behaviour were what we believed we were heading for, just as our parents before us had. But, as we would soon discover, we were also heading into a time of wild drunken revelry, of the pursuit of that special girl, of playing live concerts with our best friends, of that short period of time when you actually LIVE!
And one band that was special to me in that strange Summer of expectation was The Damned. Now it has to be said that The Damned were a curious band who had arrived on the waves of Punk, but quickly developed their own divine brand of psychedelicized pop-rock. It could be argued that after Morrissey(both as solo artist and of The Smiths), The Damned are the band that I have seen live on most occasions. I've also seen them do randomly massively different shows; from all out Punk thrashalong(Govan Town Hall, Autumn 1988), perfect mainstream pop act(Edinburgh Playhouse, Winter 1986) and curious melange of both(Glasgow Barrowlands, Summer of 1989 with both Brian James AND Captain Sensible on lead guitar duties).
In October 1982 The Damned released what I still consider to be their masterpiece, 'Strawberries', a tremendous blending of psychedelic pop and punk energy. It also came with a strawberry scented lyric sheet which stills smells to this day and which has more of a nostalgic pull than all the orris root in Paris! It was an album I played endlessly, and one which even at the time, I knew I would play in years to come to remind me of those days.
"And always remember// This is the happiest days of your life".
Indeed!
But it wasn't just the album itself that conjured up such an evocative sense of time and place, but some of the ephemera and doodles that accompanied it, so let's take a listen to some of those choice offcuts....that, my friends, is why we're here.
First up is a track from the 'Friday The 13th' EP which consisted of tracks that didn't make the final album cut. Amongst them is one of the most nostalgia tweaking songs I know of; 'The Limit Club'. Beginning sounding uncannily like the theme music to Current Affairs TV programme 'World In Action'(which many people used to believe was performed by Pink Floyd...it wasn't!), the song tells in beautiful psychedelic hues of a love affair being enjoyed as the world heads to an apocalyptic end, "I saw the sun set low on you// In a blood-red suns final rays"....aaaahh, just those lines take me back to that Summer and those last times we would play football until it became too dark to see the ball. What a beautiful piece of music.


At about the same time as 'Strawberries', Captain Sensible was ploughing his own solo field to great populist acclaim, and on his second solo single 'Wot' he included, for the B-side, a small compilation called 'Strawberry Dross' which was demos and short pieces of music that had been intended as rough sketches for songs for the album. The songs are all recorded on a portable 4-track studio with Sensible playing everything and singing. The tracks last between 30 seconds to a minute and are quite indicative of the 60s flavoured music Sensible hoped to include on the album, "Kaftan, grow my hair// I wanna be a Hippy 'cos i really don't care". There are a couple of dreamy little instrumental sketches as well which, for me, are my very own 'Vinteuil's Sonata', dragging me kicking and screaming back to world where strange aches and twinges in your arms and legs would be patronisingly described as 'growing pains'.....


.....which brings me to 'Seagulls'. An instrumental B-side(to the single 'White Rabbit') which again transports me to a world where getting to stay up after 11:00p.m was a result, where we no longer needed a baby-sitter on a Saturday night, where meeting girls from your class out of school gave you weird electric shocks in your chest.
About a year later, the band I was in at the time decided that we would stop all the Punkish nonsense we had been playing and would start writing 'proper' songs. We used this track, 'Seagulls', as the basis of our new sound. Listening to it again here just now I realise we actually didn't just base our sound around it, as rip it off completely. Musical magpies? No, thieving bastards more like!!


And we end with the musical sigh that is 'Life Goes On', one of two vocals that Sensible contributed to 'Strawberries'. And what an aching, poignant, Jack-Daniels-at-4:00-in-the-morning-discussions-on-the-meaning-of-life track it is. Over a bassline that Nirvana stole for 'Come As You Are', Sensible finds himself in disparate, melancholy mood reflecting on the hardships and dreariness of life before jubilantly exclaiming that life is there for the taking, just grab it by the scruff of the neck and make it yours! "And always remember// This is the happiest day of your life".....I remember listening to this line back at school and wondering if they really were. You are always being told that they are, but I wasn't so sure then. I knew they were special but didn't reckon on having to wait over a quarter of a century to find out.


A lot of what I write is about the summoning up of lost memories or treasured experiences through the beauty of my favourite records, and sometimes I find that the deepest memories are evoked by the oddest of records. Can a bunch of unused demos or out-of-character instrumentals really take me back to happiest days of my life?

Damned right they can!!

~Gordon~