Chalk it up to good luck, but I won tickets to see The Damned in concert at Sycuan Casino’s Live & Up Close venue last Friday. I had been trying to win tickets from radio station 91x all week. I got through a couple of times, but I was either caller 2 or 3. Last Thursday, deejays Oz and Steve West played my favorite song by The Damned called “Alone Again Or” (the single from my personal collection is pictured below), and something in me told me to try again. Lo and behold, the planets aligned and I won! I vowed this year to take my husband to see as many of my favorite bands from when I was a teen, and The Damned was on my bucket list of bands to see. This is definitely outside of Deon’s musical taste or experience, but he was such a good sport and wanted to share this with me because he knows how much I love going to these types of concerts.
(Click the picture above for the video.)
Steve West introduced the band, and it was his birthday as well. I saw him after the show, and he said that his birthday was actually Wednesday (I couldn’t remember if it was that past Wednesday or upcoming). I have to admit that I only know a handful of songs by The Damned, so I didn’t recognize very much from the first few songs, other than “Neat Neat Neat”. I’m more familiar with songs during the time of the Phantasmagoria and Anything albums, so I instantly recognized “Eloise” and “Grimly Fiendish” . The highlight of the evening for me was of course “Alone Again Or” , which sounds even better than I could have imagined live. When this came out back in 1987, I had no idea it was a cover version. The original is by a band called Love, and The Damned version is very close to the original (video here). The concert was a lot of fun and full of energy. At one point, 91x deejay Mike Halloran hopped on stage to play bass (I forgot which song). I feel the need to go back and familiarize myself with the rest of The Damned’s discography. In the meantime, here are some pictures from the concert. The set list below is from their House of Blues concert the previous day, but I believe it’s nearly exact to the show we attended. Hope you all had a great Memorial Day weekend!
Captain Sensible (loved his shirt)
Grimly Fiendish
Monty Oxy Moron (brilliant keyboardist!)
The Chris Perez Band also did a great cover version of “Alone Again Or”. Chris Perez was the widower of slain Tejano singer Selena.
I think I saw that on You Tube when I was searching for The Damned version. I’ll have to go back and listen to it!
xoxo