The good Captain has his own YouTube channel, TVsMrHappyTalk! Loads of interesting, entertaining, and informative vids of course!
Friday, October 2, 2009
Monday, August 24, 2009
More rare early Damned footage...
Just found this little gem while perusing around You Tube. Neat Neat Neat live @ the Mont De Marson Festival 1977! Explosive! What the @#$% did we do before the internet and You Tube I ask? Thank ya verry much redpunk1 for posting this on the ol' Tube. Be sure to check out all this nice sharing punk's vids...LOTS more Damned clips from various eras on their list!
Saturday, August 1, 2009
Another US Mini Tour This October
According to Captain Sensible's MySpace page The Damned are planning a mini tour in the US this October. It looks like they're hitting cities they haven't been too in quite some time including some of the mid west. No Baltimore date >:(
Dates so far...
OCTOBER - MINI USA TOUR
Wed. Oct. 21 Cleveland, OH, House of Blues
Thu. Oct. 22 Cincinnati, OH, Bogart's
Fri. Oct. 23 Pittsburgh, PA, Diesel
Sat. Oct. 24 Detroit, MI, St. Andrew's
Mon. Oct. 26 Chicago, IL, The Metro
Wed. Oct. 28 Denver, CO, Bluebird
Thu. Oct. 29 TBA
Sat. Oct. 31 Seattle, WA, Showbox
Sun. Nov. 1 Portland, OR, Wonder Ballroom
Sunday, June 7, 2009
RARE early Damned footage on You Tube!!!
This is one of those legendary fabled things you always hear about as a Damned fan, but rarely ever see. Someone going by the name MrDamnedFan has posted some brilliant early live footage of The Damned on You Tube. Its a clip of I Feel Alright live at the 1977 Mont De Marsan punk festival in France. Shows just how explosive the guys were in those early days. Must've been incredible to witness that in person back then. Thank you MrDamnedFan whoever you are!
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
The Damned WFMU Radio Session
On Saturday 5/16/09, the day after they wrapped up their US East Coast tour in NYC, The Damned graced American radio (a very rare occurrance). WFMU in NY hosted a live session on their Cherry Blossom Clinic program. To listen/download the show go to the Cherry Blossom Clinic archives page here. Its available as Real Audio and MP3. Lots of other good sessions by other cool bands there as well.
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Washington DC gig set list/pics 5/12/09
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Limit Club Flickr Page Open
The Limit Club Flickr page is now open. I've started with 2 sets of 2002 photos from the Philadephia and Pittsburg gigs. At the moment those are the only photos I currently have as digital files so they were ready for upload. I have MANY more from other gigs going back through the 80's including some Phantom Chords gig pics. MANY more to come once I get them scanned!
www.flickr.com/thelimitclub
Friday, May 8, 2009
US EAST COAST TOUR STARTS TONIGHT!
Fri 8 Paradise Rock Club Boston, MA
Sat 9 The Chance Poughkeepsie, NY
Sun 10 Toad's Newhaven, CT
Tue 12 The Black Cat Washington, DC
Wed 13 TLA Philadelphia, PA
Thu 14 Irving Plaza New York City, NY
Fri 15 Stone Pony Asbury Park, NJ
Roman Jugg Interview
Roman Jugg Interview from The Limit Club Winter 2003.
This interview showed up later in 2006 on Roman's MySpace page, uncredited. Hmm...well at least I got a signed CD out of it.
With the news of a forthcoming solo album from Roman I decided to make an attempt at contacting him via Zingg Records for a possible interview. I got a response back very quickly from his bassist, Mark Elliott, who was kind enough to make arrangements to get me in touch with the good Mr. Jugg. Seems he's not as keen on email and the internet perhaps as much so as a lot of us are, probably a wise thing. In any case, after a few false starts (my fault....not Roman's) and Mark Elliott's kind help, I finally got the interview! The questions asked were from my guitarist/gearhead standpoint, so pardon me if that isn't your taste and you would have rather me asked questions about MCA Records, frock coats and hairspray, and whatever happened to Bryn Merrick...but hey, its my website...here's what I asked him and here's what the man had to say. The good, the bad, and the ugly hard facts from Mr. Jugg about his guitars, The Damned, Phantom Chords, how not to sound like a mess when playing slide guitar, and even...accordions?!
Q: First off, congratulations on the new solo album. I have to say, this is something I've been wanting to see for quite some time! The song on the Zingg website is great, can't wait to hear the entire album. Can you tell us more about it....when's it due out...how many tracks...did you play most of the instruments yourself or do you have a band?
Answer:
I've always planned to do a solo album but the opportunity never really never came up until now. There are old songs 10 years old, as well as new songs, the last song as written last week. There are 11 tracks in total, two covers, one of which is an old Damned song I wrote years ago "Is it a Dream" I chose to re-record it because I hated the fact it never materialised as I envisaged it but now I am quite happy with the final form. Yes I think I do have a band now. All the drums were done by Mole and Rich, Mark played some guitar, Dave (not Vanian...don't get all excited) played some Hammond and piano and Mark played all the bass.
*(According to Mark Elliott the album is due out sometime in early 2004, possibly as early as January.)
Q: What's your current guitar rig consist of?
Answer:
Same as the guitars I used to use in The Damned,a doctored Les Paul, an SG which I bought in New York, a Fender Telecaster and anything I can borrow basically. I use a Vox AC30 but all the guitars on the CD were put through an amp I bought in 1981 a Laney Session 45,very good for feedback at low volume.
Q: Can you give us a little musical background about yourself: How old were you when you first started playing and what were your first instruments? Your playing has always stretched over quite a few different styles. Who are your main influences?
Answer.
First instrument I picked up was an accordion, my father was a Slovenian refugee from WW2 and when I was born he cursed me 'cos as soon as he started playing I would crawl all over him. I learnt to play guitar when I was off school ill that was the first opportunity I could pick up my brothers guitar without getting beaten up, however he still beat me up when he found out I was better than him. I find a lot of guitarists that people hold up as icons to be very boring, I think one of the best guitarists I've ever heard in my life was Mick Ronson.
Q: You worked with a band called Dirty Water, can you tell us a bit about them and your work with them?
Answer.
I was roped in to produce them and ended up playing accordion on some tracks then they asked me to do one gig and now I've done a hundred. Its just a good excuse to get pissed (drunk).
Q: I have a copy of a CD by Canvey Island All-stars "Escape From Oil City". It featured yourself, Paul Gray, Clyde Dempsey (also in Phantom Chords), and a few others. Could you tell us a bit about that band?
Answer:
Paul you know about,Clive Dempsey was one of the best drummers I have
Ever worked with he is now back in Texas. The other two were a couple of
Rotters from Canvey.
Q: Prior to The Damned what bands were you in?
Answer:
None, well put it this way, bands prior to the Damned were like rooms I
passed through.
Q: Prior to joining The Damned were you a fan of their music? How did you end up joining them? What was it like going from keyboards to their guitarist after Captain?
Answer:
I was a child of the Punk movement and The Damned were part of a bigger
picture but yes I was a fan I thought their first album was blinding.
How I joined them is a long story I'll tell you another time. Going from keys to guitar was easy, while I liked being in the band there was always a bit of green envy in my eyes watching Captain play guitar so when the job came, job done.
Q: Could you tell us about the gear you used with The Damned?
Answer:
Masses, and it all got either nicked or taken away from me by a certain
drummer.
Q: Any comments about the Naz Nomad And The Nightmares project? How did that all come about? You've got some really great tones going on that record....what sort of gear were you using to achieve your sound then?
Answer:
That came about when Captain left. We did a gig in the Fulham Greyhound
and got an offer from Ace Records. We recorded the album in 5 days! The gear was Damned gear but we used effects to make it sound dated. At that time we were into West Coast psychadelia The Seeds, Elevators etc.
Q: The Phantom Chords of course stretched into yet other musical styles and genre. I saw you play live in Washington DC in 1993. You were using a Fender Stratocaster and a small 1X12 Marshall JCM 900 amp with a Boss Digital Delay and ProCo Rat as your only effects. Apart from the guitar, not a conventional setup for that style of music but it worked and sounded great! Was that pretty much the same set-up you used to record that first album?
Answer:
It was a Tele* not a Strat,the Boss delay was to try to create a
weird echoey sound more weird than normal reverb, it was like trying to outdo the Cramps which you cant do! The Rat pedal was good for boosting my guitar and I used to like stamping on it 'cos it was like stamping on a rat! *(Note from The Limit Club, it was indeed a Strat. I’ve written back to him about this but have not gotten a response as of yet)
Q: I could never get my Boss delay and Rat pedals to sound like that damn good! Haha! Any "trade secrets" you could share?
Answer:
Sometimes the pedal would only go so far you had to force the pedal to do things instead of relying on the pedal itself. Its all down to how you play the guitar really.
Q: What was the deal with that first Chords album never getting released?
Answer.
I got shit on!
Q: I hope you don't mind me asking... but what happened with yourself and The Phantom Chords?
Answer:
I got fed up with relying on someone who was unreliable.
Q: I saw you play some great slide parts with Phantom Chords, a technique I've found quite difficult to master without sounding like a mess...was slide playing something you were already familiar with before that or something you picked up on around that time?
Answer:
Basically slide is quite simple if you have the right guitar, by that I mean you have to raise the bridge and have the strings quite far away from the fretboard,otherwise,yes it will sound a mess.
Q: Who are some current bands your currently fond of listening to as of lately?
Answer:
The best thing I've heard this year is a new band called Jenny Hedge Cutters(also soon to be featured on Zingg). Apart from that I saw Bowie last Tuesday that's always a good crack. But I've heard rumours about a new band called Papa' Loco.
Nice one Steve. These are my abbreviations, but if you want to send me your postal address then I'll post a cassette tape of the full interview to you. Thanks again and sorry about the delay.
Thursday, May 7, 2009
Paul Gray Interview
In 2001 I had the honor of interviewing Paul Gray for the original Limit Club site. Here it is again for your reading pleasure...
November 16th 2001: Paul has always been regarded by most Damned fans as being their best bassist. He's definitely one of my favorites, Damned or otherwise. He joined The Damned in 1980 and stayed until 1983 recording Live At Shepperton, The Black Album, Friday The 13th EP, and Strawberries with them. He then joined UFO. Previously he'd been in Eddie And The Hotrods who's group photo, as most Damned fans know, graced the back sleeve of some of the first copies of The Damned's debut album in"error" in 1977. He also participated in several Damned reunion tours from the late 80's until the mid 90's. Paul's a busy guy these days and has his own website, www.paulgraybass.co.uk
I didn't ask Paul too many Damned related questions since pretty much everything related to his Damned days is covered in depth on his personal website. This interview mainly focuses on him and his bass playing history in general.
Very special thanks to Paul for doing this interview for me!
Q:How old were you when you first took up bass and what
made you decide on bass? Did you take lessons or are
you self taught?
Paul: Self taught - have a look on my website for more on the above.
Q:Do you recall the first song you ever learned?
Paul: er, no idea. Might have been "Is it love", a T.Rex b-side, only cos I
didn't know how to tune a bass and whenever I plonked along to it it
sounded about right! Probably something fron "Deep Purple in Rock" too
ad "Get down & get with it" by Slade - crackin' song.
Q:What was your first bass/amp setup?
Paul: see my website, I'll be addig loads about this later.
Q: What other bassists had the biggest influence on you?
Paul: Roger Glover, Lemmy, John Entwistle. Rather gives the game away
doesn't it!!
Q: How soon after starting to play did you form your
first band and what did you call yourselves?
Paul: First concert was school, I was 13, about a year after I got my first
bass. I played alomg with the school orchestra for some dodgy rock
operathe music teacher had written. It was actually the hardest thing I've
ever had to play! He wrote all the bass parts out in notation and it
meant bugger all to me, so I learnt the whole thing by ear and
pretendedto read along. Basically I bluffed it! After taht I did one gig in a
dockers club in Tilbury, Essex, with a bunch of older guys, i remember
doing "Black Magic Woman" by Santana and "Hey Joe", but the rest is a
blank. The rest of the time I was a bedroom bassist - Black Sabbath,
Hawkwind - until I answered the ad for Eddie and the Hot Rods in June
1975.
Q:What/Where was your first live gig and who were you playing with at the time?
Paul: Apart from the two above it was at the Queens Hall, Westcliff, near
Southend, a week after I joined the Hot Rods, supporting a local r'n'b
bloke called Mikey Jupp. I was 16 and had to learn 15 songs in a week!
There were about 300 punters and it was fantastic. Exactly a week
later we had our first London gig at a pub called "The Kensington".
Just four months later we signed to Island Records. I never really stopped
until a couple of years ago!
Q: You favor the Gibson Thunderbird from what I've noticed but earlier on you used Rickenbackers correct?What made you change to the TBird? And can you shed any light on the age old debate about Rickenbacker 4001's necks not being able to handle the heavier tension of roundwound strings?
Paul: Yeah rickies were great, but no two were the same, you had to be careful. The necks went on all the ones I used for gigging - hot gig,cold truck constntly I guess, nothing to do with the strings. The truss rods were a bugger to fix, there was only so much you could do. Thelast gig I did with one was in Budapest with UFO in 1985. It was my mono one,no character to it. I trashed it on stage during the last song. Too late I realised that basses werent exactly 10 a penny in Communist Hungary! The next gig was in Stockholm, and when we arrived 2 days later and my basstech JJ rang the record company and got them to take us round all the vintage guitar shops. He'd worked for Slade and was full of Brummieblag - "bet I can get the fookin' label to pay for it!" he said. And he did, too. I've never seen so many lovely basses, including a Gibson"fuzz bass" which i'd never seen before. Loads of Gibsons and fenders,all vintage, but no Rickies. I disliked Fenders and tried a couple of Thunderbirds - terrific! The best was a 76 reverse body reissue- I didn't even plug it in, it just felt completely right. And when I did, t growled, so i wanted it even more. It was $1500 - thank youPhonogram! They said they'd bill our British label but if they did Inever heard about it. I've used it on every single gig since, the headstock's been broken off 3 times and just superglued back!
Q: Your bass tone, especially with The Damned, is verydistinct. One song in particular that always comes to mind is 13th Floor Vendetta from The Black Album. You got an absolutely wicked tone on that song! Do you remember what sort of setup you using when recording the Black Album and namely how you got such a tone on that song? Its been the subject of much discussion on the Damned message board quite a number of times!
Paul: See "basstuff" to be added to my site in December, I'll go into this in some detail.
Q: Billy Bad Breaks is one of my favorite Damned songs, from probably what is my favorite era of The Damned(Fri 13th EP circa 1981) It has what I condsider one of the best bass parts of any rock song ever, still blows me away everytime I hear it. I'd always assumed it was one of your songs due to the bassline being the main part of the song, is this correct? If so did you write the lyrics as well? Is "Billy Bad Breaks" based on anyone in particular?
Paul: Well thank you kindly! It was one of the first things I wrote on my portastudio. 20 minutes it took I think. Yes lyrics as well. Its about a character in a book called "Snowblind", about cocaine
smuggling, who was always getting busted, silly sod. Captain played drums on it I think.
Q:You mention on your site that you've also been teaching bass, have you found that to be a rewarding experience? Do you ever have students come in wanting to learn Hot Rods or Damned songs?
Paul: I don't have a traditional way of teaching - too bloody boring! I show'em the shortcuts and teach them how to work stuff out for themselves. I've got loads of stuff pre-recorded on cassette and use Cubase or Logic Audio too. It all depends what they wanna learn. I draw a line at musos and Mark King fans, they can go elsewhere!
There's so much crap written in rags like Guitarist. The bass line to "Beginning of the End", a Hot Rods track, was tabbed out a few years ago. They made up a load of guff that wastotally misleading about how I played it and it was full of mistakes. It took me 2 days to work it out! Since then I've had an anti - crusade against tab! Funnily enough I did a seminar a few years back for "Bassist" magazine at the Wembley Music Fair in London with the unfortunately named Guy Pratt who is Pink Floyd's bassist. "What are we gonna start with" I asked him. "Fucked if I know, lets go get a beer" he replied, so we did. His approach to inventing basslines turned out to be the same as mine, just go for it! The assembled muso masses couldn't comprehend this at all. I'll be putting more about this up on my site next month.
As long as you know wether its major or minor and you know your pentatonics the world's your lobster. Its like a musical "join the dots".
Not many want Damned or Rods stuff, oddly enough more want UFO. At the moment its Blink 182, Sum 41, and Alien Ant Farm with a bit of Slipknot (a bit tricky on a 4 string bass!) that they're into god help me.
Q: Can you tell us a little about tinnitus? What are the symptoms like? Any advice you can give for others who have it or how to prevent it?
Paul: Its a bloody nuisance. Its effectively stopped me touring. Its a constant ringing, around 5k. Its a bit like having a phone ringing in both ears constantly. I've had it 8 years and can point to a particular
loud gig with Captain in France in 1994 (due to abysmal monitoring)after which it kicked in big time and got progressively worse. That and playing with cymbal-mad drummers for 20 years. I know I played loudly but tinnitus is exacerbated by high frequencies. I think tho' the main cause was songwriting on headphones. I always used headphone monitoring, partly cos'I preferred it and partly cos' I used to write thru' the night. After a few beers your top end of hearing goes, so you whack it up a bit. Your ears start to get used to teh volume so you whack it up bit more. before you know it you've been working 6 hours and don't realise how loud its got. I have to wear special earplugs every gig I go to now, and its even hard to enjoy going to a pub if its noisy, even traffic noise is sometimes hard to handle. Its a bummer! i've been with this Professor who was Pete Townsends consultant - apparantly my tinnitus level is one of the loudest ever recorded, which I could well have done without knowing! Advice- try not to let it stress you out but its easier said than done. I find a few gins always helps too! Theres gonna be a whole lot more younger people with it soon - walkmans are deadly - and the level in dance clubs is way up on most gigs. I generally find newsgroups and website useless.
Q: Anything else you'd like to say...advice for aspiring bassists or other snappy comments? :)
Paul: Don't worry about getting it note perfect. i've probably never played the same song in the same way twice, ever. If its been recorded then history, someones already done it, theres no point trying to work it out note for note. Its all down to inventiveness and feel. Take the basics and make it your own. I think my best playing is on "Hubble Bubble", the Mischief album which will be available at the beginning of 2002. It was great fun to record. Theres some pretty mad basstuff on there that, makes me laugh every time I hear it! I defy anyone to work out "Hyperventilating"!!
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
The lizard sheds it's skin...
Welcome to the underworld....
In 2001 I started a little, rather half-assed, fansite called The Limit Club. At that time there was no official site, nor an American fansite. There were a handful of UK based fansites and I wanted to fill that American void....posting info, news, faqs, etc. Once their official site was launched I slowly stopped updating since all the info one could want or need was being provided officially direct from the band.
I just got word that Geocities is going to be axed from Yahoo and all the sites hosted there will in turn be gone too. This saddened me a great deal. Eventhough I hadn't updated The Limit Club in a while I still hold it very close to my heart...it was my little half-arsed Damned fansite and I didn't want to loose it. So....I've decided to resurrect it here in blog form. I'll slowly be archiving material from the original site here in posts starting with my interviews with Paul and Roman. Eventually I'll be adding links for a Flickr site full of my many years of gig pictures as well as an online Damned scrapbook that I've been putting together. Mostly it'll just be a way to share thoughts and info about the band with other fans. ~S
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