Germs
(Rhino Handmade)
There are two ways to look at the Germs, 30 years after their original lifespan. They epitomized the original punk rock aesthetic, where anyone could get up onstage and perform, no matter how tuneless or whacked out on goofballs they were. In Penelope Spheeris' 1980 film, The Decline of Western Civilization, vocalist Darby Crash stumbles around the stage, oblivious to people drawing on his shirtless body, mumbling lyrics with little regard for the music being played. While other bands in the film talk seriously about their aesthetics, the Germs come off like half-witted spoiled brats, laughing as they recall finding a dead house painter in their yard. They didn't feel bad for him "because I hate painters," Crash's friend Michelle admits. Why waste energy hating the government when easier targets exist in the backyard?
But the Germs also proved that they could be cohesive and a lot more articulate than most punk bands. Their token studio album, (GI) presents a taut, fierce band that paved the way for hardcore without resorting to the one-dimensional attack that sunk that style. Guitarist Pat Smear combined Johnny Thunders-esque string bends with power chords. He could also write riffs that varied in tempo and attack from song to song. And Crash's lyrics - when they weren't sending listeners to the dictionary to look up words like "inculcated" - were articulate and thoughtful, especially for a kid in his early 20s, realizing there was something beyond anarchy and destruction than mere buzzwords.
Four days before his fatal overdose of heroin (allegedly intentional), the Germs played their final show at Los Angeles' Starwood. Two of the songs appeared on the 1981 EP What We Do Is Secret, along with some between-song banter, but this marks the first complete release of the 25-song set. The band plays with the same ferocity of the studio album. Drummer Don Bolles plays like a pile driver, even at the rapid tempos. Smear (who went on to work with Nirvana and the Foo Fighters) tears things up and Lorna Doom, who could barely play bass two years earlier, is simple but solid.
The only problem is... Darby. The performance brings back memories of the scene in The Decline where the band talks about the problem of getting him to sing into the microphone. Half the time, his voice is inaudible. The rest of the time, he enters in the wrong place, forgets those brilliant lyrics or sounds like any screamo kid yelling for the sake of yelling. This takes any sense of discovery in the rarely heard "Lion's Share" (recorded for use in the Al Pacino film Cruising) since the tinny sound and lack of vocals don't leave much to hold onto. In a cover of "Public Image," he sounds even more uninterested than John Lydon on a bad night, although his pun of "Public scrimmage," is amusing.
Rhino Handmade has done a good job of making the disc more appealing through its elaborate packaging. It evokes the Germs' DIY aesthetic, with liner notes printed and folded like a punk zine, with a copy of the band's original setlist and a flyer for the show. In his liner notes, Jonathan Gold describes it as one of best shows the band ever played. That may be, but you need a DVD to fully appreciate it.
Still Live at the Starwood might not be the best primer for someone new to the Germs mystique, but fans who remember the good and the bad of this band will probably devour this set. It makes an appropriate bookend with the semi-legitimate releases of the band's 1977 performance debut, where Crash's taunts with the audience were nearly more listenable than the actual set. The singer, who sounds more like Welcome Back Kotter character Arnold Horshack than your typical punk rocker, tells the audience, "You're not going to see this again," which could mean he was already planning his demise. That offers more proof that the man once known as Jan Paul Beahm had more going on upstairs than most people would ever realize.
DOWNLOAD: "Strange Notes," "Let's Pretend." MIKE SHANLEY
