The Damned bring their Final Damnation farewell to Revolution Live in April

The punk pioneers' 50th-anniversary run reaches Fort Lauderdale on Friday, April 23, 2027, with Glen Matlock opening.

There aren't many bands left from punk's first wave that can still pull a crowd on a Friday night. Fewer still are calling time on it. The Damned are doing both, and their farewell is coming to Himmarshee Street: the band has announced Revolution Live on Friday, April 23, 2027, as part of the tour it is calling Final Damnation 50.

The show starts at 7 p.m., tickets are $55.10 through Ticketmaster (linked from our show page), and Glen Matlock opens. The date was announced on Oct. 20. Revolution Live holds about 1,300, which for a band with this history is a club-sized goodbye.

The 50 in the tour name is the point. The Damned have been framing this as a 50th-anniversary farewell, and they've been taking it around the world through 2026: Australia and New Zealand in September, including a Sydney Opera House show that one reviewer said "stirred the souls of old punk rockers," and a fall US run with The Flamin' Groovies announced this spring. A UK leg runs from Nov. 25 in Brighton to Dec. 5 in Birmingham. Fort Lauderdale lands in the next chapter, in spring 2027.

The band has not been subtle about what this means. In announcing the run, they said that given the participants' advanced years it is fairly unlikely they will undertake anything quite like this again. That's about as clear a "see it now" as a band gets.

Given the participants' advanced years, it's fairly unlikely they'll undertake anything quite like this again.

For the anniversary dates, the lineup AEG lists for the UK leg reads like a history lesson: Dave Vanian on vocals, Captain Sensible on guitar, Rat Scabies on drums, with Paul Gray on bass and Monty Oxymoron on keys. Vanian, Sensible and Scabies were there at the start, and getting the three of them on one stage has been a rare thing over the decades. The Damned's catalogue runs from the raw first-wave punk that made them one of the first British punk bands to release a single through the darker, gothic records of the '80s, so a 50-year set has a lot of ground to cover.

The opener is a story in himself. Glen Matlock was the original bassist in the Sex Pistols, and he has a Damned connection too: he played bass on the band's album Not of This Earth. Putting him on this bill is a nice bit of symmetry for a farewell tour, two survivors of the same 1976 London scene sharing a night.

South Florida has a long-running punk audience, and Revolution Live has been one of the rooms that keeps it fed. A Friday night with a first-wave band on its last lap should draw people who saw them decades ago, people who've only heard the records, and a few who'll bring their kids to say they were there.

Practical notes: April is still prime season downtown, so leave extra time for parking around Himmarshee and the Riverwalk. A 7 p.m. start with Matlock opening means you'll want to be inside early. And at $55.10 for a band that's saying this is the last of its kind, this is not the ticket to wait on.

Fifty years is a long time to be a punk band. Here's a chance to say thanks in person.

Sources: The Damned are bringing their 50th anniversary farewell tour to Australia and New Zealand – Mixdown (mixdownmag.com.au); The Damned stir the souls of old punk rockers on their Final Damnation Tour – Sydney Opera House review – The AU Review (theaureview.com); The Damned announce 50th anniversary Final Damnation US tour with the Flamin' Groovies – BrooklynVegan (brooklynvegan.com); The Damned announce Final Damnation UK tour – Gold Radio (goldradio.com); The Damned – AEG Presents UK (aegpresents.co.uk); 50 Years of Chaos: The Damned bring Final Damnation home – Fireworks (fireworks-magazine.com); Glen Matlock – Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org); List of the Damned members – Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org); The Damned at Revolution Live – JamBase (jambase.com)