The Damned - March 21 2024 - Sydney

Not only was it the first time in 35 years that the 1980's lineup of Dave Vanian, Captain Sensible, Rat Scabies and Paul Gray have toured together, it was also billed as The Damned’s last Australian tour - talk about bitter/sweet.

As was fitting for the line up, the vast majority of songs played came from their earliest days, with more than half of them coming from two albums, Machine Gun Etiquette and Strawberries. They played a total of 24 songs. I recorded eight, concentrating of those I hadn’t captured before:

The History of the World (Part 1) (00:28)
Melody Lee (04:21)
Stranger on the Town (06:41)
Life Goes On (12:00)
Shadow of Love (16:13)
Dozen Girls (20:15)
Curtain Call (24:36)
New Rose (32:38)

As to whether or not it’ll be The Damned’s last Australian tour, that remains to be seen. There is already talk of a new album. Very hard to imagine that we won’t be seeing them back here in a few years, probably not with this line up, but in some form or other.