The Damned: New Rose

Track of the Week - 24 January 2016

Not selected because anything has been especially new or rosey in my life but it has come into my consciousness a couple of times. I'll tell you why.

I have been listening to a punk rock compilation in my car this week and this song is a very welcome addition to that selection. It would have been rude to leave it out. The Damned were one of the first punk bands (they went goth later in their career)  and New Rose was the first punk song released as a single (in October 1976).

The new rose in question might be a person or equally it might be the punk movement. It heralds the excitement and surprise, "I never thought this could happen to me", of a new relationship or that barely competent bands must have felt when they were suddenly propelled into the vanguard of a whole new pop culture. Like some relationships and pop cultures there's also an understanding that this feeling might not last long' "I'd better go, or it'll be too late".

Later in the week I was working on some questions for a quiz I'm co-hosting next month and pondering a 'song introduction' round. I can't use this as next to no one will get the answer but it has a fantastic intro.

Singer Dave Vanian sets it off with a deadpan "Is she really going out with him?" mimicking the Shangri-las 1964 classic 'Leader of the Pack'. Then drummer Rat Scabies hammers out a stomping, attention-grabbing, almost military march-like rhythm before guitars and Vanian again, with a yelped 'Ah!' set up the bass and cymbal drive into the vocal.

It's possibly the greatest introduction to any single. But then it's very possibly the greatest single ever released.