Germs
Led by Darby Crash, born Jan Paul Beahm, the Germs were Hollywood's most intense and self-destructive punk band. Crash and guitarist Pat Smear (born Georg Ruthenberg) were expelled from University High for alleged psychological manipulation of classmates. Onstage, Crash was magnetic and often incoherent, smearing himself with peanut butter, cutting himself, taunting crowds. Their only album, (GI), produced by Joan Jett, remains a chaotic masterpiece of early LA hardcore. 'Forming,' their first single, was recorded on a Sony two-track reel-to-reel in Pat Smear's family garage—shambolic, barely controlled. Crash talked constantly about suicide. At their final show, December 3, 1980, at the Starwood, he told the audience: 'We did this show so you new people could see what it was like when we were around. You're not going to see it again.' Four days later, he and Casey 'Cola' Hopkins injected heroin in a suicide pact. Hopkins survived. Crash was twenty-two. John Lennon was shot hours later, and the world mourned a Beatle while a punk poet vanished into footnotes.
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(GI)
The Germs' only studio album, produced by Joan Jett, is a chaotic masterpiece of early LA hardcore, released in 1979, a year before Darby Crash's death. Recorded quickly, barely controlled, it captures the Germs at their most focused and unhinged. Crash's vocals are slurred, poetic, desperate. Pat Smear's guitar is raw and melodic. Songs like 'Lexicon Devil' and 'We Must Bleed' are punk poetry, nihilistic and strangely beautiful. (GI) is the sound of a band on the edge of collapse, knowing it and not caring.