Last week I started reading Nick Lowe's biography, Cruel To Be Kind written by Will Birch and it's so interesting it's hard to put down. It follows Lowe from (pre-) infancy up until I'm present day, as in a couple years ago when he recorded and toured with Los Straitjackets. I was looking forward to reading about his career in the 1970's where a lot of the action took place that followed Lowe through his early band's, Kippington Lodge, Brinsley Schwarz and of course, the great, Rockpile. He even crafted a pretty successful solo career as well. He made a lot of great music with those bands and played a ton of live shows while battling, believe or not, addition problems. The book provides a rare look at Lowe's personal life and there's lot's of insight from fellow musicians Lowe worked with, including his ex-Carlene and the author who had connections with Lowe back in the day. Elvis Costello spoke highly of Lowe as a performer and a producer who produced Costello's first five albums as well as Blood and Chocolate from 1986. Lowe got behind the board and started producing when Stiff Records was launched and he became the "in-house" producer for the label for a number of up and coming bands.
One of those bands was the Damned who were briefly known as Masters of the Backside with (believe it or not) Chrissie Hynde, who later formed the Pretenders. In 1976, the band released their first single, New Rose and followed it up the next year with their debut album, Damned Damned Damned. They became the first punk rock band from the UK to release a single, album and tour the U.S. Up until this weekend, I only owned the band's critically underappreciated second album, Music for Pleasure and had the first album on a cassette I made back in the mid-80's (backed with the Buzzcocks- Singles Going Steady!). This weekend, my sister was downsizing her records and I scooped up a vinyl copy of that first record (beautiful yellow vinyl!) and their third album, Machine Gun Etiquette which I'm enjoying a lot.
The live recording I'm posting is supposedly the Damned's 5th ever live show. It would still be another couple months until the band would release New Rose (October 22) and another six months until their debut album came out. The sound quality is definitely not great, but it was fortunate someone taped the show since they were still a fairly new band and it's a great setlist made up of most of the songs from Damned Damned Damned. I've had this for a while so it was nice to re-discover this recording again and any early Damned is worth sharing and a listen.
Enjoy!
#14yearsoftrouble
Please do NOT sell or profit from this recording!
Do NOT convert to lossy format (except for personal use)
Please share!
THE DAMNED
1st International Punk Festival
Mont De Marsan, France
August 21, 1976
source: unknown gen. audience recording
01. 1 Of The 2
02. New Rose
03. Help
04. Fan Club
05. I Feel Alright
06. Feel The Pain
07. Fish
08. See Her Tonite
09. I Fall
10. So Messed Up
1 comment:
Most excellent! Love this band and so happy they are still producing music that is worth listening to. This is great. Thank you.
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