eat your heart out John Peel!

The Damned - Neat Neat Neat (Peel Session 11/30/76).


There's still a reason to buy cd's. It's obviously not for everyone all the time, including me. But sometimes, something comes along that will remind you what you love about the physical medium. This package for the 30th Aniversary of The Damned's "Damned Damned Damned" is one of those perfect examples. A package like this virtually commands you to sit down and get deep into the music, the art, the time and place. Along with the original album (produced by Nick Lowe), you've got two discs that give you such a rich picture of where this exciting band was at such an exciting time. Take out the liner notes, listen to three albums worth of tracks and argue about whether this is the first punk LP or not.

The track here is from The Damned's first Peel Session in November of '76 and the cocky punk swagger is in full effect. The whole session is great, with Dave Vanian at one point yelling "Eat your heart out John Peel!", just really capturing the punky mood and feeling of what it must have been like to be them at that time. Would you have had the balls to say that to Peel when your band had only been together for a few months?

The liner notes tell their story in first person with testimonials from the band. This is one of those rare reissues that serves both as a great introduction for the casual fan AND an essentail resource for the true believer.

On top of the orginal raw and bloody album, and the 76 Peel session, there's another Peel session and two concerts, including their first ever. The sound is about you would expect for the first concert ever played by The Damned, but the energy level is enough to make up for what it lacks in clarity (which is what punk's all about anyway, right?).