The Damned “Music for Pleasure” 1977, Stiff Records. Today, April 24th, is Damned bassist (on this record) Captain Sensible’s 65th birthday (b. Raymond Burns, 1954). Music for Pleasure is the band’s second studio LP, released the same year as their amazing debut Damned Damned Damned. Unfortunately it suffered the typical sophomore slump and was generally critically and commercially panned, failing to break the the top 100 on the UK album charts and resulted in them being dropped by Stiff and briefly breaking up. The Damned also never performed tracks from Music for Pleasure in concert after the album’s initial promotion. It’s really not that bad but it’s also not particularly noteworthy. It is pretty low-key punk, basically mildly energetic pub rock with notes of the darker goth to come (like “Your Eyes”) but overall it does lack the punk urgency of their debut (with some exceptions like the excellent “Creep (You Can’t Fool Me)”) – which of course leads to the inevitable negative comparisons. Part of the problem was likely the response by original Damned fans, punks who liked the stripped-down, fuck-you sound which is missing because of, quite frankly, more sophisticated production (via producer Nick Mason of Pink Floyd). While saxophone certainly wasn’t absent in the early punk UK scene (ie Lora Logic of X-Ray Spex), the appearance of it here, on the track “You Know” (performed by free jazz/bebop saxophonist Lol Coxhill) may have been a bit bizarre at the time.

I only have one Captain Sensible story which I’ve written about before but in case you missed it, here it is: We went to The Damned show at The Rave in Milwaukee in either ‘98 or ‘99. Captain Sensible was walking around the venue pre-performance so we decided to talk to him, but Joe didn’t want to have a typical fan-musician encounter so instead opted to ask how tall he was (both men are on the tall side). A bit taken aback, Captain Sensible said “Blimey!” and having no idea who was taller, they stood back-to-back. It was Captain Sensible, by a bit. BLIMEY!