POX: the DaMnEd

I meant the end of the documentary.

I should add that the Vanian-Sensible/Scabies-James split was kind of interesting.

i have waited years to get into The Damned. don't know why. i've had "Damned Damned Damned", "Machine Gun Etiquette" and "Phantasmagoria" on repeat this year.

they were really special! some incredible guitar work. some really weird and unique blends of punk and psych and goth. i quite like "Feel the Pain" at the moment in this regard.

and they can do fast really well! i remember hearing my first punk record, the Ramones debut, and thinking it was actually kind of slow compared to what i thought punk would be. but "Neat Neat Neat" is as fast as a heart attack.

That bassline when "Love Song" kicks in still makes me want to try and break through a wall. I don't know if you can play that song loud enough.

They're playing two shows at Chelsea Music Hall (tiny venue, capacity is only 250 - for comparison's sake Brooklyn Made has a capacity of 500 and that always felt small to me). It's the current lineup though - the original lineup (of which Vanian and Captain Sensible are still with the current line-up) will have a reunion tour this fall, but it's only in the UK.

How are the Damned these days? I only know their debut and Machine Gun Etiquette, but I'm thinking of going.

FWIW, these are the shows: https://dice.fm/artist/the-damned-b98g?lng=en-US

I still dig them, they put out an EP a couple of years ago with an anthem about saving the bees: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LR2W8ZoU8EU

Opening for Blondie in DC Sunday. It must have been on another thread and in a Jack Rabid FB post that the Damned on this US tour will not contain all the same members who have done recent UK gigs

They've not done them yet

I think they might be talking about Captain Sensible not being allowed in the US because he's antivax and they had a vaccination requirement to enter the country. not sure if that's still the case but he had to skip US dates earlier in the year

Yeah, apparently Troy Van Leeuwen of Queens of the Stone Age filled in.

Life Goes On from Strawberries

Looks like it wasn't a single, but this has a huge number of plays on Spotify. Is is just another case of the algorithm identifying a sleeper hit, or was it in a soundtrack recently, perhaps?

Sounds to me like a Flying Nun/Chills song.

"Strawberries" is their most underrated album. Arguably their most consistently strong release, not a duff track on it unlike their other work.

May have something to do with the fact that the riff is basically Come As You Are, predating Killing Joke’s “Eighties” (the usual culprit for Come As You Are’s origin story) by a few years. Anyway, rabbit holes, etc likely explains the big Spotify numbers.

like i was a damned fan like a year after strawberries dropped and i seem to remember seeing it in cutout bins everywhere and i was always like "why is this always here?" at least i think that's how i rememeber it. fuck maybe i'm creating this memory out of some other album in cutout bins