Halloween was extra special this year because the city of Chicago had the opportunity to celebrate this beloved holiday by seeing The Damned at the Concord Music Hall. This very nice venue hosted the band a couple of years ago and it was great to have them back in such a nice place again.
First up was The Courettes, a two piece band hailing from Denmark. The configuration of this band is like the opposite of The White Stripes as they have a female guitarist/lead singer and a male drummer. The band played super catchy and energetic garage rock with some great guitar riffs and catchy hooks. The lead singer/guitarist was a huge bundle of energy and was moving around the stage a lot when she wasn’t singing. The drummer was rock solid and also performed background vocals in a handful of songs. They quickly won over the audience and their 45 minute set was very good. I can guarantee they are now on a lot more people’s radar after their performance last night, myself included.
The Flaming Groovies were supposed to play this show as well but they had to cancel for some reason, so that just left The Damned to take the stage earlier than originally scheduled. No one was complaining about that as they were the reason everyone was there. As it was Halloween, many people were dressed in costumes, the two real standouts were a guy dressed as Vivian from The Young Ones, and a young woman who was right upon the barricade the entire night who was dressed up as Dave Vanian from the Phantasmagoria era of The Damned. There was a lot of other fun and interesting costumes but those were the clear winners.
The Damned took the stage and opened with “Street Of Dreams”, which was unexpected and such a great and special way to start their show. When Phantasmagoria came out, it was somewhat divisive among Damned fans, with the closed minded “punk purists” dismissing it and the smarter folks realizing what a great album it is. I think that over time more and more people came to appreciate just how great that album is, it stands up alongside anything in their back catalog and it easily in my top three favorite Damned albums. Everything sounded amazing as the band was playing this, and Dave Vanian was dressed up as The Shadow for Halloween! The one thing that was a little odd was that Captian Sensible didn’t start with any witty banter as the band took the stage, and he didn’t really say much between songs either, but we’d soon find out why.
It turns out that Paul Gray got sick during this leg of the tour (though kept performing) and while he was on the mend, Captain Sensible now was sick with whatever it was Paul had, and he was in the thick of it. Were it not for the lack of the entertaining stage banter, you wouldn’t have known anything was wrong with The Captain as his playing was spot on. I assume he just harnessed all his remaining energy just to play the songs and get through the show, and he did it with flying colors. The entire band sounded great, the sound in the room was fantastic as well, and despite two members battling some illness, the energy and quality of the performance was as good as it has ever been.
The band busted out a bunch of staples and fan favorites, such as “History Of The World (Part 1)”, “Eloise”, “Feel The Pain”, and a great rendition of “Ignite”, and they also went for some deeper cuts like “Gun Fury”, and a couple of newer tracks like their cover of “You Must Be A Witch” which is on their recently released covers album they did as a tribute to Brian James. After a dozen or so songs, the band closed out the main set with a hat trick of “Love Song”, “Machine Gun Etiquette” and “Neat Neat Neat”.
It didn’t take long for The Damned to return to the stage for an encore, and it was a great one! They started with an abridged version of “Curtain Call” (my personal favorite Damned song), a drum solo from Rat Scabies that led into a blistering version of “New Rose” and then their beloved anthem, “Smash It Up”. If that was all there was, it would’ve gone in the record books as a fantastic Damned performance, but a few minutes after leaving the stage for the second time, they came back for one more encore! Talk about a Halloween treat and what a treat it was as they closed the night with “White Rabbit” and then they surprised us all by ending the show with “Nasty”! That was something really special and the crowd went nuts for it.
The Damned billed this tour as the “Final Damnation”, hinting strongly that this is likely their last US tour. If this was the last time that Chicago will ever get to see The Damned, they sure left on a high note with a performance that despite two members feeling under the weather, was so memorable that fans will be talking about this for years to come. If you have a chance to see them on one of the remaining dates of this tour, DO NOT MISS IT! One of the best bands to ever do it proved that a half a century later that they are still one of the best bands ever!
