THE DAMNED - 11 July 2026 / Ljubljana / Kino Šiška

Since the „damned“ won’t come to Zagreb, then off go the Agramers, and not only them but the Fiumans, the Pula lot and my own always-dear Zagorci too, sandwiches and beers in the rucksacks and straight on to Emona. And apparently for that date they did in fact have an offer to play Zagreb, with Tvornica Kulture and Boogaloo in the running, but the band’s management wanted a bigger hall, so the choice finally landed on the one with the smallest capacity of the lot, Kino Šiška, and that in the country next door. The upside is that Kino Šiška is, technically, acoustically and in terms of the bar, a far superior concert space.

The support act for the occasion was the Zagreb band Parnepar, who started at 20.00 h sharp. Apologies to the band straight away for missing their set, interesting as it is musically, judging by their studio releases, but as tends to happen, certain social-and-hoppy gatherings end up taking priority. In any case, I hope to catch them at a headline show of their own; being the support for someone of The Damned’s calibre is always a thankless job.

The Damned came to Ljubljana as part of the „Final Damnation 50“ tour, that is, the celebration of the band’s 50th anniversary. This was their third appearance in the territory of the former country; twice before they played Novi Sad, in 2008 at the Ritam Evrope event and in 2017 at the Exit festival.

I first saw them in 2014 in London, when for a token price they put on a solo show after the shameful cancellation of the „Alt-Fest“ event a couple of days before it was due to start, at which they were meant to play. They had no great luck last year either at the „Forever Now“ festival in Milton Keynes, where, again thanks to poor organisation, I witnessed them getting unplugged halfway through their set. But old tomcats and professionals that they are, they wouldn’t have it, and played the whole of New Rose „dry“ out of sheer spite, sent the organisers off to cunnus matris (even those without Latin will work out where) and withdrew from the stage like gentlemen. The rest of the line-up on that stage got the same treatment, and we’re talking about Jesus & The Mary Chain, Death Cult, Public Image Ltd., Happy Mondays, Theatre of Hate. The performers on the main stage, Chameleons, The Psychedelic Furs, Johnny Marr, The The, Billy Idol and Kraftwerk, were spared that debacle.

The Damned are all but in their original line-up. Singer David Vanian, first bassist then guitarist Captain Sensible (Raymond Burns) and drummer Rat Scabies (Christopher Millar) have been in the band since it was founded in 1976, bassist Paul Gray joined in 1980, and the only newer member is keyboard player Monty Oxymoron (Laurence Burrow), who joined in 1996. Naturally, apart from Vanian and „the newcomer“ Oxymoron, the other members have had periodic absences from the band. It should be noted that one of the founders, and the man who wrote almost the whole of The Damned’s first two albums, but who also stayed in it the shortest (he left the band in 1977), guitarist Brian James (Brian Robertson), died in 2025.

In front of getting on for 500-odd punters, at 21 h sharp, the concert began that many a surviving punk, post-punk, rocker and so-called darker had been waiting decades for. The Damned opened with Street Of Dreams, a song from the album Phantasmagoria, only to shift straight into a higher gear with Love Song from Machine Gun Etiquette. Unlike in their earliest days, after all those 50 years the band is superbly tuned and thus technically superior to its younger self. But the energy has stayed the youthful sort all the same. The one-time gravedigger David Vanian, always impeccably turned out like a proper British dandy, rules the stage with total authority, and his vocal cords with it; Cpt. Sensible is still there with his guitar, a red beret on his head, a red-and-white striped shirt and red plimsolls on his feet, as if he’d fallen out of some secondary-school punk band and not out of the band that officially released the first punk single; Rat Scabies behind his drums, behind the plexiglass, is some sort of cross between the Muppets’ Animal and Renfield from Dracula; Paul Gray on bass, with his Ray-Bans and his bass, is doing his best to be a bigger deal than the other three; and keyboard player Oxymoron is anything at all except the thing without the „oxy“ prefix. Out come the numbers from the Black Album and from Strawberries, then the odd cover, Making Time by The Creation and Eloise by Barry Ryan. The crowd is in a fine mood - admittedly there’s no gobbing, no beer-throwing and no mass pogoing as in punk’s „golden age“, but everyone is enjoying it. The odd person gets their own „The Voice“ or „Britain’s Got Talent“ moment when Vanian holds out the microphone, not exactly to great effect, but who cares, we’re at a punk gig, after all, not at the opera. The furious Neat Neat Neat from the first album is saved for the end of the regular set. The encore starts with the slightly lighter Curtain Call, then comes a drum solo from Rat Scabies, just enough to prove that skill is one thing and years quite another, then a neat cover of White Rabbit by Jefferson Airplane, and then complete mayhem on the closing Smash It Up.

This was no mere nostalgia trip, nor did the band just professionally clock in and out - quite the opposite, it was a pleasure in songs that marked some people’s youth, and are only now marking somebody else’s, given that there was a fair bit of the younger generation in the crowd. But since our favourite bands have a way of turning up for my generation, and some older ones, several decades late, I’m glad The Damned made it clear with this concert that it’s never too late and that perhaps we haven’t missed all that much. And thank you for that.

P.S. After the show the band were in very good spirits and very approachable, so the get-together carried on over the odd beer and some exceptionally pleasant chatting, the signing of assorted memorabilia and photographs.

P.P.S. For those who had a thing for the „lady“ on the cover of the album Phantasmagoria, that is Susie Bick, otherwise the current Mrs Cave of one Mr Nick Cave.