How The Damned made history as the first British punk band to play CBGB
Every great music city in the world has an even greater music venue that has played host to moments that live long in the memories of music fans. But there are a few steeped in the same sort of iconography as New York’s CBGB.
Opening in what may be one of the most iconic years in music history, it had all the wind in its sails to craft the sort of legacy it did. Rock was booming into this vibrant new world of sub-genres that ranged from everything to prog rock, psych rock and punk rock, with bands from each respective discipline queuing around the corners of whatever venue they could find, in order to play their first gig.
Nestled in Lower Manhattan, CBGB & OMFUG actually stood for “Country, Bluegrass, Blues, and Other Music For Uplifting Gourmandisers,” but it wasn’t long until the future makers of the aforementioned genres of music did away with the initial plans and turned it into a mecca of musical innovation.
“It was like a rock ‘n’ roll high school,” Blondie drummer Clem Burke reflected. Burke and Blondie became a central name in the venue and a pivotal band in pushing it forward into experimentation. They pioneered the new wave movement in the venue’s poky stage and encouraged a generation of musicians to follow in their footsteps.
He continued, “When you see people from back in the day, there’s a shared history right away, there’s a connection that endures. If we were not at CBGB, Blondie would not have had the success that we had – that was the stepping stone. That whole nucleus of the first wave of bands created an energy that propelled us into international awareness. Without that whole contingent of bands, you wouldn’t have had the success of the few. All the bands propped one another up.”
Naturally, that history centred around a collection of bands who were native to New York. Patti Smith, Talking Heads and The Ramones all joined Blondie in the wings of CBGB, turning the otherwise socially dire ‘70s New York into a dark hotbed of creativity.
But who was the first British band to play CBGB?
Four years after the venues opened their doors, the no-thrills British punk band, The Damned, came barrelling through the American border, to capitalise on the momentum their music was garnering amongst a rebellious New York punk audience.
On the 8th of April 1977, just as The Clash’s triumphant debut album flew off the shelves in every UK record store, The Damned set their crosshairs on the States. Rolling into CBGB mere hours after arriving in the country, they outrageously introduced themselves, with lead singer Dave Venian reportedly dressed in a 19th-century get-up, one onlooker described as “a cross between a Victorian Dracula and an undertaker in the Wild Wild West.”
They opened with a cover of The Stooges’ ‘I Feel Alright’ before descending into a raucous set of their own hits, perfectly stitching the sensibilities of these two countries on either side of the pond, and emphatically beginning the British punk movement in the iconic CBGB.
