Damned, Damned, Damned (Part One)

‘Derek, Alan, Eric, we love you,

Les and Woody, do you feel the same way too?

You’re making all our dreams come true,

Bay City Rollers, we love you.’

Sorry, I’m getting ahead of myself, The main thrust of this post is the question: did ABBA rip off The Damned?

But before you start trying to work out which song the phenomenally successful and wholesome Swedes might have stolen from the demented British punk act, I should say, no, not that Damned.

Hands up, I know practically hee-haw about the first band to record under the moniker of The Damned. Only that they were Dutch and released their one and only single in Britain on the Young Blood International label in April 1974, a time when The Bay City Rollers were Shang-A-Langing their way up the charts, while ABBA were enjoying the first of many number one hits with Eurovision winner Waterloo. Their next chart topper? That would be SOS in the Autumn of 1975.

It’s compare and contrast time. Have a listen to The Damned’s Morning Bird and pay attention as their singer delivers the line ‘Morning Bird, have you heard? My Morning Bird!’ and then listen to the ABBA bridge from SOS ‘When you’re gone, how can I even try to go on?’

ABBA time now, take it away Agnetha:

Benny and Bjorn clearly possessed a knack for penning a more than decent pop ditty or two without resorting to ripping off other acts, but there is at least briefly a distinct similarity, isn’t there? I’ll file it under ‘In all likelihood a coincidence’. And, of course, Glen Matlock later took inspiration from SOS when finishing off Pretty Vacant, explaining in his recent book Triggers: A Life in Music that the song was ‘part Matlock, part Duchamp, part ABBA.’

I completely missed out on The Damned single on its release*, only coming across it decades later when it featured on the 2003 junkshop glam compilation Velvet Tinmine, along with tracks like Rebels Rule by the mighty Iron Virgin and The Tartan Horde’s Bay City Rollers, We Love You, a song intended to be so ghastly that it would likely extricate Nick Lowe from his unwanted United Artists contract. Or, then again, with Rollermania still on the rise, maybe manage to score a massive novelty hit with his pisstake pastiche.

To the surprise of Nick (who adopted the alias of Terry Modern for the release), record execs at UA were delighted by his efforts and got in on the act, claiming in a mischievous press release: ‘Terry chose the name Tartan Horde to express his devotion to Scotland, the home of the Bay City Rollers. As a confirmed Rollers fan, Terry wanted to express his dedication and wrote the song.’

The single did fail to make a dent in the British charts, but in Japan it proved much more popular. The suits insisted on a follow up. Nick remained on the UA roster.

From June 1975, here is Bay City Rollers, We Love You – and if you’re wondering about Nick’s voice, as Will Birch explained in his biography of him, Cruel To Be Kind: ‘Nick slowed the tape down in order to record his vocal, so that when it was played back at normal speed his voice would sound higher and younger, perhaps in order to appeal to the pre-pubescent Bay City Rollers fans.’ And he invited some local kids into the studio to help out with backing vocals.

Did Lowe rip off Shang-A-Lang for the song? Let’s just say, if it had been a huge hit in Britain, a court case would surely have resulted and I think we can all guess which way the verdict would have gone.

Nick wouldn’t like to hear me saying this – on reflection, he probably wouldn’t give a damn – but I’d much rather listen to this than anything by his previous band Brinsley Schwarz, a bunch of pub rockers that I’ve never been able to get a grip on, even though solo Nick is cool. The Jesus of Cool? That might be pushing it.

Interestingly, Rat Scabies (or Chris Millar as he would have been known as back then) is rumoured to have drummed on the track although it bears absolutely no resemblance to his vinyl debut with (the British) Damned. More on that in the not too distant future.

*Morning Bird is about to find itself once more on vinyl with independent Just Add Water Records reissuing the single to celebrate its 50th birthday. For more on the release:

https://www.facebook.com/justaddwaterrecords

Four Green Frogs, Britain’s Queen of Breakfast TV & The Return Of The Jesus And Mary Chain

Calderwood is East Kilbride’s second oldest housing scheme and provides the town’s population of around 75,000, with 15,000 or so inhabitants. For a time this included a young family who like most young families in the then new town had overspilled from Glasgow, in their case from Parkhead in the East End of the city.

In the 1970s, Calderwood had three pubs, a dozen tower blocks, a community centre (more on that later), a chippy that’s been misspelt as the Manhatten for many decades but which still sells a cracking fish supper. There also used to be four big concrete sculptures of green frogs in the car park of the local shopping centre where the Manhatten stands. New towns were big on public sculptures back then.

The town’s first sports centre is also located in Calderwood, although two young townsfolk, William and Jim Reid, were never destined to excel at sports the way another Calderwood resident Ally McCoist did.

The Reid boys instead concentrated their energies on music. One of their aunts gave both brothers a record token in 1973. Older brother William bought Bowie’s Drive In Saturday with his. The Sweet’s Hellraiser was to become the first ever single Jim ever owned, and he has even spoken of Sweet inspiring him to become a musician. Coincidentally, their singer Brian Connolly lived as a child in Blantyre, three or four miles down the road from Calderwood.

According to The Jesus and Mary Chain, nobody was interested in noisy guitar music in their hometown, but a smallish music scene did exist in East Kilbride, albeit bands generally bemoaned the lack of venues to play. Many pubs refused to showcase live music as they feared troublemakers might be attracted to these events.

Not every bar shared these negative perceptions of young music fans. When one local act The Electrix put on a show at The Salmon Leap pub on Calderwood Square one Sunday night, the East Kilbride News claimed it was so busy that hundreds had to be turned away. That weekly paper began around this time to take more interest in local bands with one young journalist Lorraine Kelly punting for young acts to get in touch regarding live shows and even interviewing some acts from further afield such as The Members, as well as reviewing albums. Haven’t followed her career since then, but she did her bit for many local musicians.

By July of 1980, a small ‘what’s on’ feature began appearing in the paper, spotlighting all kinds of music from heavy rockers like Red Ellis to bar room singalongs. Also, around this time, tapes of local acts became available from a local address, costing 50 pence per cassette. The Electrix, Sinister Turkeys and Complex Society were among those who found themselves showcased on the tapes.

There was even a couple of ‘alternative’ discos held within easy walking distance of the Reid’s home at the Calderwood Community Centre in the very early 1980s. These attracted very decent crowd numbers, although the second night ensured that the team who’d set up the event wouldn’t see any profit for their efforts. Punters weren’t searched going in, and this being Lanarkshire, more than a few attendees had a good scoop beforehand and then sneaked in half bottles or even full bottles of wreck the hoose juice.

By the end of the night, it was clear some girls had had a smashing time. They smashed sinks, smashed a toilet cistern and smashed a toilet lid, and anything else that a Doc Marten boot could do damage to in the female lavvy. Plumbers were expensive even back then and so ends the tale of one attempt to inject some much-needed life into the town.

Maybe William and Jim just weren’t aware of what was going on around them, too intent on procrastinating in their bedrooms. They admitted to switching on the TV just after getting up. Did they tune in to see Aztec Camera, another act from the town that Jim later decried as ‘the arsehole of the planet’ miming to their chart hit Oblivious on BBC One’s lunchtime magazine show Pebble Mill At One? Or where they, ahem, oblivious of the performance?

You can imagine the reaction of just about everybody they’d ever come across if they had dared around this point to suggest their plans for chart success. Anybody that had lived through the high point of punk in Britain and still been unable to make any kind of inroads into playing live more than five years later could easily be dismissed as deluded. Weren’t bands supposed to have been fired up by the punk revolution to the extent that they would be playing live within weeks of buying or borrowing their instruments?

I would bet that the Tote bookmakers on the Square would have been happy to offer generous odds on the boys ever releasing a record, let alone getting anywhere near the top thirty. And they might have let you choose your own odds on them still being around forty years later and releasing an album that would make the British top ten and recieve many glowing reviews from critics. Record Collector for instance announced new album Glasgow Eyes as ‘Age-defying magnificence from East Kilbride’s brothers grim,’ with Jeremy Allen praising it as ‘a staggering, swaggering achievement more vital than anything they’ve done in the last 35 years.’

Here is jamcod:

For more on Glasgow Eyes: https://themarychain.com/

And finally, a track that namechecks Calderwood Square (at least I think it does, my hearing isn’t so good nowadays, likely as a result of going to see too many noisy bands in JAMC back in the day). From her underrated album Little Pop Rock issued on Chemikal Underground in 2007, this is Sister Vanilla (Linda Reid, the younger sister of William and Jim) and TOTP with some sumptuous spacerock guitar from William. Wish she’d have released more music but sadly the project seems to have been a one-off.