Captain Sensible and The Damned to mark 40 years since first UK punk-rock single, New Rose, with a concert at London’s Royal Albert Hall in May 2016
The Damned are to mark the 40th anniversary of the first UK punk-rock single, New Rose, with a concert at London’s Royal Albert Hall in May 2016.
The Dammed are still performing regularly, often with middle-aged fans indulging in some nostalgic slam-dancing in celebration of a band that includes the preposterously named keyboard player Monty Oxymoron. Captain Sensible joked that rival punk contemporaries The Clash and the Sex Pistols will also soon be celebrating their 40th anniversaries but “not until 2017”.
While The Clash and The Sex Pistols gained more acclaim, the Damned led the way in making punk commercial and were the first UK punk band to tour America. The band were also part of the early early package tours of Stiff artists, and the tours were hotbeds of creative rivalry, with the acts splitting into factions and occupying their own spaces on the tour bus. Once, the Damned played a prank on a sleeping Elvis Costello by tipping the contents of an ashtray into his mouth, then setting fire to his shoelaces to wake him up.
During the eighties The Dammed started to distance themselves from their established punk sound, successfully navigating their way to the forefront of the UK’s burgeoning Gothic rock scene.
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