Pleasure and the Pain: Iconoclassic Expands The Damned’s “Strawberries” for 40th Anniversary
The cover of The Damned’s 1982 studio album Strawberries featured a pig with a strawberry on its head. Lead singer Dave Vanian once revealed that the title was inspired by fans’ reaction to the band’s new music: “We were playing a lot of new material and we had an audience that didn’t want to hear about anything…they just wanted to hear [older singles] ‘Neat Neat Neat’ and ‘New Rose,’ nothing else. And they wanted to just smash everything. And they weren’t interested in hearing music at all. So at one point, I turned around and said, ‘It’s like giving strawberries to a fucking pig, this gig, you know? And that stuck in our minds, and we used it.” Forty years on, Strawberries has become one of the band’s most beloved albums, and this Friday, October 7, the Iconoclassic label will celebrate its anniversary with a new 2-CD deluxe edition.
Strawberries, The Damned’s fifth album, found the band at a crossroads. Produced by the band and Hugh Jones, it bridged their early punk outings with their post-punk, gothic sound while also revealing a host of ’60s influences from psychedelia to pop. It reached stores just months after guitarist Raymond Ian Burns, a.k.a. Captain Sensible, hit the top of the U.K. Singles Chart with his cover of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s South Pacific showstopper “Happy Talk,” raising The Damned’s profile further. Vanian and Sensible were joined by bandmates Paul Gray (bass), Rat Scabies (drums/synth), and Roman Jugg (keyboards). The LP’s artistic success in spite of the fact that internal tensions were simmering. Paul Gray would depart the line-up in 1983 (to be replaced by Bryn Merrick), and Roman Jugg would become an official member. Jugg would move from keyboards to guitar when Captain Sensible left the group after the Strawberries tour.
Iconoclassic’s 40th anniversary edition of this Damned landmark (a top 20 entry on the U.K. Albums Chart) offers an even more generous selection than the 2005 Castle Music reissue of the album. It adds a whopping 15 bonus tracks including the non-LP singles “Lovely Money,” boasting a cameo from Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band’s Viv Stanshall, and “Fun Factory,” with guest Robert Fripp. While the release of “Lovely Money” would precede the full album, “Fun Factory” sat on the shelf for nine years before being issued in 1991. The reissue collects the associated B-sides and non-LP tracks from the era as well as the single edit of “Dozen Girls” and five live tracks recorded the month of Strawberries’ release. These bonus tracks paint a fuller portrait of The Damned’s many sonic excursions of the period.
The 40th Anniversary Edition has been remastered by Grammy Award-winning engineer Mark Wilder at Battery Studios, and includes a 20-page booklet designed by Edward ODowd with liner notes penned by Jack Rabid (editor/publisher of The Big Takeover). Look for Strawberries on Friday from Iconoclassic Records. You’ll find the track listing and pre-order links below!
The Damned, Strawberries: 40th Anniversary Deluxe Edition (Bronze BRON 542, 1982 – reissued Iconoclassic ICON 1058, 2022) (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada)
CD 1
- Ignite
- Generals
- Stranger On The Town
- Dozen Girls
- The Dog
- Gun Fury (Of Riot Forces)
- Pleasure And The Pain
- The Missing Link
- Life Goes On
- Bad Time For Bonzo
- Under The Floor Again
- Don’t Bother Me
CD 2
- Fun Factory (Deltic single DELT 7, 1991)
- Lovely Money (Bronze single BRO 149, 1982)
- I Think I’m Wonderful (Bronze single BRO 149, 1982)
- Lovely Money – Disco Mix (Bronze single BRO 149, 1982)
- Dozen Girls (7″) (Bronze single BRO 156, 1982)
- Take That (Bronze single BRO 156, 1982)
- Mine’s A Large One, Landlord (Bronze single BRO 156, 1982)
- Torture Me (Bronze single BRO 156, 1982)
- Disguise (Bronze single BRO 159, 1982)
- Citadel Zombies (7″) (Bronze single BRO 159, 1982)
- Ignite (Live in Newcastle) (from Live in Newcastle, Damned DAMU 2, 1983)
- Disco Man (Live in Newcastle) (from Live in Newcastle, Damned DAMU 2, 1983)
- Generals (Live in Newcastle) (from Live in Newcastle, Damned DAMU 2, 1983)
- Bad Time For Bonzo (Live in Newcastle) (from Live in Newcastle, Damned DAMU 2, 1983)
- Dozen Girls (Live in Newcastle) (from Live in Newcastle, Damned DAMU 2, 1983)
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A few more tracks beyond Castle’s 2005 deluxe edition, but does not include the bonus tracks “Bimbo Jingle” or “Rat vs The Omni”. But those are really not important.