Germs

...were one of the first American punk bands outside New York and one of only two significant L.A. punk bands in the fleeting days before Black Flag and the hardcore scene took over. The other was X, a skillful rock band in the artier NY vein of Television and Blondie. In contrast, Germs mastermind Darby Crash promoted his band before they could play their instruments, booked gigs before they knew any songs and became locally famous almost by force of will. His models were the snarling sensationalism of the Sex Pistols and the pie-throwing riot of The Damned, boasting of a Bowie-inspired "five-year plan" for attaining stardom. The Germs did learn to play, recorded some of the best ever snot-dripping two-chord blasts of '77 attitude and ended when, on the night before John Lennon was shot, Darby Crash died of an intentional heroin overdose.

There exists a low-budget Germs biopic titled What We Do Is Secret (2007) that I have had the misfortune to see. It would be cruel of me to criticize such an earnest first-time effort if not for the fact that the filmmakers seem utterly convinced that the charmless treacle they have excreted is actually an inspired definitive statement. Every production choice is wrong. The sets, costumes and photography are clean and tidy where they should be grimy and chaotic. The performances should be raw and spontaneous, but instead we get the amateur staginess of the Disney Channel. The band's there-and-gone career should hurdle with immediacy, not float along in a wistful faux-documentary retrospective. The wigs are alarmingly bad.

I eagerly await the re-release of The Decline of Western Civilization, an actual 1981 documentary of the L.A. punk and hardcore scenes that showcases performance footage of the Germs, X, Black Flag and the Circle Jerks.