Review: The Damned’s ‘Not Like Everybody Else’

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Jan 282026
 

Not Like Everybody ElseThat the Damned should still be around, still plugging the same level of 2-D technicolor bombast, should be no surprise. Cartoon characters don’t age, so why should the Archies of Punk? But these are grown men, all approaching 70 from one direction or another, and nobody lives forever. Which is sort of the point and the purpose of Not Like Everybody Else.

This is a true tribute album, a celebration both of the band’s influences and of their bandmate Brian James, who died last March. James was the catalyst who pulled this motley crew of reprobates together, back in the dim and distant 1970s, writing the vast bulk of songs on their first two albums, cementing their name and reputation as trailblazers in the emergent punk scene. With chaotic and rabid live performances their calling card, this first iteration of the band burned at both ends, lasting barely a couple of years.

In the fifty years since, there have been innumerable variations and versions of the band, stumbling from lineup to lineup, label to label, yet always guaranteed to kick up a skirmish live, with a slow and steady trickle of singles to keep them in the public eye. With, as always, Dave Vanian at the helm, on vocals and Dracula impersonations, there have been upward of 20 members, yet it is that earliest line up that is inked in most indelibly: Vanian, James, Rat Scabies on drums, and Captain Sensible on bass and then guitar. So much so that, in 2024, that lineup convened for a sellout tour. With James already ill, that was as much as anything a means to give him a financial leg up, but it was nonetheless triumphant.

Now, with his death, the band celebrate his life with this set of covers, the sort of songs that inspired them back in the day, and probably still do. Possibly a surprising selection, but then, they were never really hardwired for punk, with always a love of psychedelic garage rock coursing through their veins, and a good touch of goth for good measure. The omnipresent Vanian leads from the front, with Captain Sensible on guitar. Having patched up their differences on the re-union tour, Rat Scabies has stayed on behind the  drum kit. Paul Gray, on and off bassist since 1980, makes up the quartet, abetted by Monty Oxymoron, a permanent fixture since 1986, if curiously always absent from publicity shots, on keyboards.
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In Memoriam: Mark E. Smith of The Fall

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Jan 292018
 

In Memoriam pays tribute to those who have left this world, and the songs they left us to remember them by.

mark e smith covers

When it comes to musical taste, there’s a million shortcuts to figuring out which side of the tracks you stand on. Here’s one of the fastest: Do you like The Fall?

If the answer is “no,” you’re in good company. Of course, there’s no definitive way to tell how many people aren’t Fall fans, but statistically speaking, almost nobody likes the band’s clattering, repetitive, willfully out-of-tune, misanthropic, oblique and downright perplexing music.

But if the answer is “yes,” you’re in even better company. The Fall may represent the apex of the cult band, an aggressively obtuse art project spinning out over 40 years and a stunning number of ex-band members, mainly disgruntled ones at that. The only constant was the dark, twisted figure at its center: Mark E. Smith, who died January 24th, at the age of 60. Continue reading »

The Best Cover Songs of 1987

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Nov 102017
 
best covers 1987

Last year I did a roundup of the Best Cover Songs of 1996. It was a fun project to retroactively compile one of our year-end lists for a year before Cover Me was born. I wanted to do it again this year, but continuing the twentieth-anniversary theme with 1997 seemed a little boring. Turns out 1997 also featured a bunch of Afghan Whigs covers.

So to mix it up, I decided to go a decade further back and look at 1987. Needless to say, the landscape looked very different for covers. For one, far more of that year’s biggest hits were covers than we saw for 1996. The year had #1 cover hits in Heart’s “Alone,” the Bangles’ “Hazy Shade of Winter,” Los Lobos’ “La Bamba,” Tiffany’s “I Think We’re Alone Now,” Club Nouveau’s “Lean on Me,” and Kim Wilde’s “You Keep Me Hangin’ On.” Plus ubiquitous hits that didn’t quite top the charts, but remain staples of the songs-you-didn’t-know-were-covers lists, Buster Poindexter’s “Hot Hot Hot” and George Harrison’s “Got My Mind Set On You.” Continue reading »

Cover Classics: Pravda Records’ K-Tel Tributes

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Oct 252013
 

Cover Classics takes a closer look at all-cover albums of the past, their genesis, and their legacy.

You kids today, with your Now That’s What I Call Music compilations – you don’t know how different it was back in the day. When K-Tel was in their ’70s prime, their ubiquitous commercials made them the “As Seen On TV” company and served to get the words and music on the street. They fit twenty or so songs on one album, making for tinny sound and many songs edited for single length. Not all the songs on them were hits; you bought them for the big names and sat through the one-hit wonders, novelties, and other filler. But for only $5.99 (8-track or cassette only $7.99!), you could get a wide-ranging look at a year in music, complete with packaging ugly as a burnt-orange couch, and somehow the experience wouldn’t have been the same if the treasures hadn’t been mixed in with the trash.
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