The half-a-time I saw The Damned
The half-a-time I saw The Damned Here’s how I remember it. The Damned were scheduled to play a drunk show at First Ave in 1986. The drinking age at that time was 19. I was 18. And pissed off that I couldn’t go to the show. A week or so before the gig the manager at Northern Lights, the cool record store downtown, said that The Damned were going to do an in-store record signing and asked me if I was available to be “security” for the event; basically just keeping an eye on the throngs of miscreant Damned fans to make sure they were not stealing records, drinking, smoking weed etc. Of course I accepted the unpaid offer, hell, I was going to be there anyway. The day rolled around and my then-girlfriend and I arrived half an hour before the band was scheduled to show up and the place was already pretty crowded. I got the low-down from the manager of the store and took to my post at the top of the stairs where I had a bird’s eye view of the entire layout. Soon there was a lin