Music: Punk's not dead

1977 is a long time ago and the granddads now are too arthritic to pogo.

Those nights at the Station Hotel or Birksgate Kirkcaldy have never been bettered and while the latter still admirably host live bands these days as the Windsor Hotel the Station and its legendary bars have become someone’s living room these days.

Well, The Skids are still active and The Damned remain relevant and this week release their eleventh studio album a brief ten years since the last record.

Evil Spirits still has the core of Dave Vanian on vocals and Captain Sensible on guitar, just don’t mention Happy Talk.

So could these pioneering scaremongers who leapt at us on Stiff Records with Neat Neat Neat and Smash It Up all those years ago release some music for 2018? Well for starters they had a batch of 20 new songs to choose from and recruited Tony Visconti to produce just like he did back in the day for David Bowie.

The music is current too with The Daily Liar trucking along at 100 mph and the current single Standing On The Edge Of Tomorrow is fair summary of pre-armageddon.

The Devil In Disguise too is the damned we love with heavy bass and Farfisa organ backing in a way the Stranglers adopted so well.

A short Damned tour brings them to Glasgow SSE Hydro on June 19.