“The GERMS Return” BB King Blues Club July 29, 2006 Written by Photographed by Steven Day Opposite Photo - Shane West

I missed the legendary LA Punk band The Germs (1977-1980) by less than one year. I know most people who love The Germs weren't even born in 1979 and I was personally unaware and fourteen when Darby Crash overdosed in 1980. Perhaps only a couple of hundred people knew about The Germs back in the late 70’s and even they may not have known about Darby’s death because the airwaves were so saturated with news about the murder of John Lennon the following day.

Shane West and Pat Smear Performing

Don Bowles and Pat Smear Backstage at BB King's

Around 1980-81 (the beginning of the second West Coast punk wave) some local LA bands: The Adolescents; Circle Jerks; TSOL; Black Flag; X (the band); the Dead Kennedys; Fear; Red Kross; Social Distortion; and The Cramps were playing “gigs” at the Cuckoo’s Nest, a venue close to my Orange County high school. Cuckoo’s Nest (a cramped smoky boxed shaped space in Costa Mesa, Ca.) featured four or five bands a night with only a $5 cover. The age limit was eighteen but fortunately they didn’t check ID’s. The place smelled like clove cigarettes and black beauties (amphetamines) were the drug of choice (I didn’t need any, at fifteen I was wired enough).

Lorna Doom

Several of these bands and clubs (including The Germs) were featured in the film Decline of Western Civilization, a 1980 documentary about West Coast punk. Decline footage shows Darby Crash growling and slurring lyrics everywhere but into the microphone. Descriptions of their first gigs describe the singer Darby as “collapsing, incoherency” and the rest of the band as being overcome by “drunken vomiting onstage”.

Shane West	Pat Smear

The New Fans

So when I heard that three original members (Pat Smear on guitar {Nirvana, and after Kurt died, Foo Fighters}, Don Bowles on drums {Nervous Gender and 45 Grave}, and Lorna Doom on bass) had recently regrouped for the filming of a biopic about Darby, it was something that I had to check out. The original band joined with Shane West, (star of ER and a singer in his own LA post-punk band), who plays Darby in the film What We Do Is Secret (named after one of the Germ's 1981 albums). The idea of this band touring after a twenty-five year hiatus and replacing Darby with a TV star from ER seemed kind of suspect – sort of what it would be like to have actor Victor Rasuk (who played Tony Alva in Lords of Dogtown) hit the skateboard circuit with Bucky Lasek and Tony Hawk.

Aynsley Harwell at BB King's
Wearing One of Steven Day's TShirts
www.niceclothing.com

But Shane West knows his Darby Crash; he spent the last two years channeling Darby’s stage antics and has heard and seen every audio and film recording and has even read some of the same books that Darby read. While making the film, he even had his teeth capped to make them look chipped and crooked like Darby. There was a learning curve though. The actor/singer told me that in his first performances with The Germs, he was channeling too much anger, coming across more like Black Flag’s Henry Rollins than like Darby. “I was throwing beer bottles at the crowd” The band told him that Darby wasn’t like that. They told him that Darby was more tragic, more the type of guy who would have accidentally cut himself on a beer bottle.

When the newly constituted Germs played BB King’s Blues Club on July 29th, the sound wasn’t loud enough and Shane’s performance wasn’t reckless enough. But that probably had more to do with the venue than the band. The Germs, like their late 70’s contemporaries, were meant to play small clubs at ear deafening levels. Back in the late seventies a LA Weekly critic said their music left “exit wounds” so headlining later at night at CBGB’s would have been a much better fit. But The Germs fast packed songs did sound really tight. Don Bowles started with an “old school” 1 2 3 4 count. Pat Smear was fluid and attentive to the crowd. He ripped on the guitar, and messed with the small audience of about one hundred people (most of them kids), playing a short Led Zeppelin lead between songs and shaking his head and shouting “No Way!.” Ms. Doom played counter on bass with substance, sounding solid and compact.

Then Shane West brought out a huge platter of cold cuts (back in their day The Germs were notorious for getting banned from venues because of food fights and riots) and starting throwing ham and lettuce at the audience. A food fight broke out and West had cheese sticking to his side and tomatoes in his face and hair as he sang the lyrics to “Forming”. A few songs earlier, someone had actually taken a bottle of Ketchup from the Grill and poured it all over Shane.

Don Bowles was dressed exactly like I saw him when he headlined years ago in 1982 with 45 Grave. I had joked with him back then, asking if he and the singer Dinah Cancer were devil worshippers. He replied “No more than anyone else is.” (At that time, there were 45 Grave flyers stapled on telephone pools all around my high school with Bowles’s face painted like a skull with crossed drumsticks for bones and titled, “Don Bowles for President.”) I asked him about Dinah Cancer. He cut to the point, “She was really hot back then when she was seventeen”.

When I talked to singer/actor Shane West after their BB King’s gig, he said that the new film isn’t finished yet. And that it will most likely open at Sundance or “at a film festival near you”. He also said, “I will keep playing as long as it’s fun,” adding, “This performance in New York was the most fun we’ve had so far”.

“But what about those girls in Chicago?”

“Oh ya, no… this was better.”