The Damned at the Exeter Phoenix

It's been a while since I went to the Exeter Phoenix and it seems to have shrunk. Maybe I've grown up a bit during the last three years. More likely it was the stature of punk icons The Damned. It certainly felt more intimate than last time.

I'm going to let you into a secret. The Damned are actually very fine musicians. I shouldn't have been surprised after seeing them perform over so many years. They've been doing it for long enough to get quite good. It’s just that their image and self-deprecating stage antics tend to gloss over this fact. Dave Vanian's got a brilliant voice and Monty Oxymoron tinkles the ivories very well. But Captain Sensible is actually a very good guitarist and can do all that back of the neck stuff. That's his neck, not the guitar’s. He usually does it after asking the rhetorical question, why punk?

"I'll tell you why punk - it was all those ten minute guitar riffs and half hour drum solos!"

Cue the good captain to do a ten minute free jazz number on his git-argh, followed by a drumming duet with Pinch.

So they are icons but also iconoclasts. If someone says The Damned are a joke band (like what's his face in Oasis), they become a joke band.

It was still a cracking set, though, with an interesting smattering of later releases that got me onto iTunes soon afterwards. I was particularly struck by Song.com and have downloaded not just this one but the whole of Grave Disorder. It rocks. And so do The Damned, even or especially after all these years.

The best thing about seeing them live was the obvious pleasure they get from playing live. And if you persistently shout out "Anti-Pope" as one guy did on the night we saw them, you shouldn't be surprised if they play it as an encore.