Damned Damned Damned

At some point I went from being approximately the same age of the majority of people in my neighborhood to now I am clearly older than most. It seems like this has happened in just the last couple of years. Capitol Hill went from being a neighborhood that though weighted towards young adults nonetheless had healthy representation in all age brackets except children now appears to be populated overwhelming by young people in their 20s and 30s.

I'm not complaining. I like young people, particularly if they're not intoxicated. Young people have yet to be defeated existentially; they still harbor hope. It's young people who are taking to the street in Turkey and Brazil. As Richard Hell has said, "The truth is in the youth."

The rich maintain power by pumping the youth full of religious dogma and then setting them to fight each other. Things might be starting to shift though.

This morning at work I decided to make a study of The Damned's first album, Damned Damned Damned (1977). I didn't listen to it in college. The first wave of English Punk bands that I listened to were The Clash, Sex Pistols and Buzzcocks. Nineteen-Seventy-Seven is huge for Punk, and Damned Damned Damned, released in February of that year, is a good album.

It's much better than live performances I saw on The Old Grey Whistle Test DVD I checked out from the library the winter of 2012 and that got me thinking about Hippies vs. Punks.

But The Damned were huge back in the day. No denying it.