The Damned Phantasmagoria

In 1985 The Damned released the Phantasmagoria album. A much more palatable crossover sounding collection of tunes than anything they had ever produced previously in their punk years. It spawned the singles Grimly Fiendish and The Shadow of love and was a sort of gothic/pop offering that suddenly gave them a mass appeal along with a few top 40 hits.

When this album was sold in to our record shop  by MCA records we were given the opportunity to do some promotional advertising paid for by the label. I say ‘paid for’, we never actually received any cash, the payment was just free Albums. The idea being that we got 10 free Vinyl  LPS (no CDs in those days) and the freebies would allow us to reduce the price and advertise it in our local paper.

£4.49 would be our cut price so all we needed to do now was think of a snappy ad to go in our local Rag.

Now I know that in the cold light of day this doesn’t sound like comedy gold but at the time I thought that it would be amusing to have the tag line (in bold black lettering) “I’ll be Damned if I’ll pay more that £4.49 for the new Damned Album, blah blah…out now….etc etc”. LOL, hilarious, Jimmy Tarbuck eat your heart out.

So we got the artwork approved, sorted the price/size of ad/what page it would be on etc. and arranged for it to go in the paper just before the weekend for maximum sales.

But on the day advertisement was due to go to press a lady from the paper rang to say there was a slight problem. The editor wouldn’t let us use our comedy wording “he thinks that the line ‘I’ll be Damned’ sounds a bit too much like swearing” she said. “Wot? that’s the name of the band, The Damned!, how the hell can you take that bit out ?”.

“I know” she said “ but he’s made us reword it I’m afraid, I hope you don’t mind?”

So what magical Gem did they come up with for our fantastic Damned Promotion?

“We won’t condemn you to pay more that £ 4.49 for the new Phantasmagoria album- out now”

Shite!
We never bothered with the Sex Pistols Never mind the bollocks re promotion...

Arctic Monkeys Display & Promote

All those years working In a record shop collection Vinyl, CDs, Cassettes, Special Editions & Promos. You name it and if it made a sound I collected it.
But the one thing I didn’t bother to keep was the display material !. All those posters that were stapled to the walls. The Counter box that held a stack of CD singles. The Dangler mobile for the Eurythmics single. The pre-release Ad for the forthcoming U2 Single, the leaflets for a forthcoming release, the special bag to sell it in….
And the huge window display for the Beatles album.

If you look on eBay you can find practically any record you want, but most of this promotional display material just got dumped in the bin.
I’m sure I wasn’t the only person to do this. If you worked in a record shop you will know how much of it you got.
But it sends shivers down my spine when I think of some of the things I’ve tore up and stuffed in a black bin bag.
All I have left to show for it are a few leftovers.

It's still worth looking at though so lets start with the Arctic Monkeys.