The Germs
The Los Angeles punk band of Darby Crash and Pat Smear, whose 1979 album (GI) is often called the first full-length hardcore punk record.
Hollywood, 1976
The Germs were founded in 1976 by Jan Paul Beahm, who sang as Bobby Pyn and then Darby Crash, and Georg Ruthenberg, who took the name Pat Smear. Early names included Sophistifuck and the Revlon Spam Queens, and for a time they booked shows as GI, short for Germs Incognito. Lorna Doom (Teresa Ryan) joined on bass in April 1976, and the first show was at the Orpheum Theater on the Sunset Strip, a 99-seat room. Drummers before Don Bolles included Dottie Danger, later Belinda Carlisle, Donna Rhia, Cliff Hanger and D. J. Bonebrake; Nicky Beat played on the Lexicon Devil EP. Their influences included Iggy Pop, Bowie, the Ramones, the Runaways, the Sex Pistols and the New York Dolls.
Their shows were chaotic, and they were banned from most Los Angeles clubs; after a food fight at the Roxy they were the only band not invited back for the battle-of-the-bands scene in Cheech and Chong's Up in Smoke. The debut single "Forming", recorded on a two-track reel-to-reel in Smear's family garage, came out on What? Records in July 1977, and Lexicon Devil was the first release on Slash Records in 1978. Penelope Spheeris filmed the band for The Decline of Western Civilization (1981), and in 1980 they cut six songs with Jack Nitzsche for the film Cruising, of which only "Lion's Share" was used.
(GI) and the end
(GI) came out in October 1979 on Slash (SR 103), produced by Joan Jett with Pat Burnette engineering, at Quad Teck in Los Angeles over about three weeks for around $6,000, according to Slash's Bob Biggs; Crash had first wanted Mark Lindsay, whom Slash could not afford. Geza X mastered it. It runs 38:14, ending with a live "Shut Down (Annihilation Man)" at 9:40, and is widely held to be the first full-length hardcore album. AllMusic gave it 4.5 of 5, Pitchfork's 2019 review 9.0, and Rolling Stone ranked it 28th among the 100 greatest punk albums.
The band broke up in May 1980 after a show at the Fleetwood in Redondo Beach and reunited for a sold-out last show at the Starwood on December 3, 1980, later released as Live at the Starwood. Darby Crash died on December 7, 1980, aged 22. Germicide (1981), the (MIA) anthology (1993) and the tribute A Small Circle of Friends (1996) followed. The surviving members reunited from 2005 to 2009 with the actor Shane West on vocals, after West was cast as Crash in the film What We Do Is Secret (premiered June 23, 2007), and played again in 2013. Lorna Doom died on January 16, 2019. Smear went on to Nirvana and the Foo Fighters, and the book Lexicon Devil, by Brendan Mullen with Don Bolles and Adam Parfrey (Feral House, 2002), draws on more than 100 interviews.
Albums
Songs
- Lexicon Devil Lexicon Devil · 1978
The title track of the Germs' first Slash single, later re-recorded faster for (GI).
Sources
- Germs (band), Wikipedia
- (GI), Wikipedia
- Darby Crash, Wikipedia
- What We Do Is Secret (film), Wikipedia