Song Of The Day 4/25/2014: The Damned - "Grimly Fiendish"

You Pick The Artist: Merwyn Haskett gave me the Damned, and... uh, I should've thought that one through a little more. I'm pretty sure my favorite song of theirs would rightly come from their initial punk, Stiff Records era, but reviewing it further I realized I had never really sat down and had a quality listening session with Damned Damned Damned. I'm not sure I even owned a copy of Machine Gun Etiquette. The Damned and I kept crossing each other in the night until they released Phantasmagoria, in which Dave Vanian finally gave in to his very obvious goth sensibilities and made the kind of album most people would blindly feel free to associate with a group called "The Damned." So I probably should have invoked the "I don't know enough about them" clause and picked someone else, but in my blithe arrogance I already committed to you, The Audience, and Merwyn, so let's fake it through. Nobody'll notice. Well, now that I've said something, I guess I blew that cover, didn't I?

As it turns out, "Grimly Fiendish" was the Damned's biggest chart hit in the UK, and Phantasmagoria their highest-charting album. I enjoy it. It's a cool song. It sounds like Glenn Danzig after having calmed himself down with retail therapy, singing along to a song by the Kinks (who, spoiler alert, are coming up tomorrow, and their write-up's even flimsier than this one).

I'll try and do better the next time, Merwyn.