The Damned

This event is General Admission Standing Room Only on the Floor, and Reserved Seated in the Balcony.

The greatest surviving British punk band are back, still firing on all cylinders, and breaking all the rules. Where their peers either burnt out, or faded away into mediocrity, this most spiritually chaotic of all punk groups have never been away, never surrendered their ideals, always forged onwards. From 1977’s high-energy ‘Damned Damned Damned’, via the riotous ‘Machine Gun Etiquette’ (1979), to the macabre ‘Phantasmagoria’ (1985) and beyond, The Damned never stayed in one place for long. Colourful, anarchic, yet propelled by an indefatigable creative motor, they’ve expanded their remit with every phase, to become one of the top-flight UK groups of ANY pop era.

Since 2008, they’ve toured constantly, to raise awareness of that amazing body of work. They capitalize on all that with ‘Evil Spirits’, an eleventh studio album, which is not only fit to rank high amongst its illustrious predecessors, but also within the great rock pantheon.

Alongside The Sex Pistols and The Clash on the legendary ill-fated Anarchy tour in December ’76, they felt frustration rather than elation at being banned everywhere. Through ’77, they were courted by pre-punk giants who’d sniffed out their superior musicality, including Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page and Robert Plant, who checked them out at the Roxy, and Marc Bolan, whom they supported on his final tour with T-Rex.

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Considering that the first Dictators album came out in 1975, scads of credit is due these hearty pre-punk New Yorkers for blazing a long trail, melding the essentials of junk culture -- wrestling, fast food, TV, beer, dope, cars, scandal sheets -- with loud/hard/fast rock'n'roll and thus creating an archetype that has been adopted and adapted by countless other bands. Although wavering wildly in terms of style and track-to-track consistency, all of the band's albums are great. As protégés of genius music journalist Richard Meltzer, the Dictators helped translate a lot of intellectual fandom's crazed hypothetical theorizing about rock'n'roll's possibilities into wretchedly wonderful reality. Originally formed as an homage/response to the MC5, Flamin Groovies, New York Dolls and the Stooges, the Dictators wound up playing a similarly crucial and inspirational role to the generations that followed them. Even more amazingly, the group has endured to compete (artistically/conceptually if not commercially) with those acolytes -- and their progeny.

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Host or Publisher Wall Street Theater presented by Premier Concerts