hatesjohn's Full Review: Brendan Mullen, Adam Parfrey, Don Bolles - Lexicon...
Approximately 10:50 Pm. on a December day, a flashy white limousine discontinued it’s drive and parked onto an Abbey Road. Out stepped a rather short built woman with black woven hair that would catch the gleam of a shining sun had it not been night, and strolling behind her a lanky embodiment of a decade. A sudden thrust of bad feeling must of hit the woven haired beauty-- like a sharp bolt through the spine right to the head, blood rushing immediately. An unbeknownst passer-by struck out in rampaging violent rage. A diluted “fan” devastated shrilling and screaming at the voices in his head for appeasement. Mark David Chapman took crouched aim, shot, and fired on John Lennon, killing him dead, instantly. Same day, 2 hours later, and not a lot of people cared but, Jan Paul Beahm died of a pure white heroin overdose in an little house, with a woman slumping up against his shoulder.
KIM FOWLEY:So Darby died the same day as John Lennon. He died dramatically enough as a martyr but he picked the wrong day to die. That just makes him jack off f*ckboy doesn’t it? Now we can all jack off to the futility of his life as the art form.
L.A. Punk Rock had the neutron bomb. And all throughout the mushroom cloud smog, overfilled garbage bins came frothy young punks complete with rubbery glue sticks further planted underneath their noses, stringy poser David Bowie red wigs and fraud diamond bracelets, and virtually no clue as to what Punk actually was, is, and who cared, f*ck it-- it was new & rebellious. A 1977’s fueled youth crowd heard some propaganda coming o’er the shores from the likes of stuff that was called, Sex Pistols, the Damned, and by word of mouth a already sprawled New York City Scene was generating tha buzzzzz with an exclusive scene. It seemed as if something was spreading, as if people were becoming infected with germs. . .
At this time a manipulative cranium crusher, acid trip dropper by the name of “Boby Pyn” was formulating a get together of anybody that wanted to play in his new band, who had never performed or actually been in the same room together, and were put on a radio gig show slating a talent bill of nothing but garage bands. This Boby Pyn was a feisty up-and comer to the zany c*nt of Punk, marching alongside him a daffy queer by the name of Pat Smear. Pat Smear was a guitarist, and could play riffs from Queen to Yes, but preferred to play like he couldn’t play at all, seeing as how that was the cool thing to do (fake being terrible). So both Bobby & Pat searched for two females, who happened to be Queen groupies, to join custody of an act they would call Sophistif*ck & the Revlon Spam Queens. Lorna Doom & Belinda Carlisle, Carlisle would soon leave. Sophisftif*ck’s band name would be short lived, and from it the Germs were born and so was Darby Crash.
Darby’s poetic punk lyric dabbled in the dark side of a frenzied mind under such influences of: Adolf Hitler, Charles Manson, Friedrich Nietzsche, Benito Mussolini, and David Bowie. His poetry fused manipulation, and the formation of an more archaic free world (of course under his Circle One govern-ship). The media, and critics would often use him in comparison to The Lizard King, or at least the dark “tortured drunk poet” style. But for assurance, Darby indeed could write notable lyrics.
The Germs would play clashing chaos, from tooth to nail. Whether it was the bang kit of Don Bolles, the mundane p*ssing of Lorna Doom’s bass duties, or the Electric shriek of Pat Smear. They would achieve no huger than widespread new wave status with “The Decline of the Western Civilization” documentary & “GI” recordings. The Germs status wouldn’t bank mainstream success, but would sit with a cult following instead. Amongst Circle One allies and L.A. crowd, the Germs were billed with a more professional X, the Screamers, and later more Hardcore threats; Circle Jerks, Black Flag.
Respected spasm Rock & Roll critic Lester Bangs simply shrugged the Germs off in a review of “Forming” as a “standard-issue Ramonesclone headbangism“. Bangs threw them off as untalented noise but that is precisely the point, the Germs could shake down the foundations of Punk Rock with reckless abandonment for any “standard issue” and as an act of defiance- throw down a realm of broken homes from suburbia into brutal Punk punishment, setting up a faction of the brain-dead to abide & follow. With the recording process of “G.I.” the Germs enlisted Joan Jett whom spent most of her elected duties as producer drunk on a couch:
RODNEY BINGENHEIMER:Did Joan Jett really produce the G.I. Album? DARBY CRASH:No, she slept on the couch! Listen to “Shut Down” and you can hear where she’s asleep on the couch…”
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PENELOPE SPHEERIS:I was there and that b*tch was asleep on the set, all right?
The author Brendan Mullen (w/ Don Bolles & Adam Parfrey) weave a bevy of collective eyewitness accounts to bring life to the Darby Crash & the Germs story, like a literary VH-1 Behind the Music, or E! True Hollywood Story, but all of that is just censor tagged, right here in Lexicon Devil: The Fast Times And Short Life of Darby Crash & the Germs is the real deal. Let the quotations and quarrels fly!
In fact Lexicon Devil is very much like the social Quaalude/ Heroin vein-spiked “he said, she said” party of Please Kill Me & Mullen’s other L.A. more scene book We Got the Neutron Bomb. Combusting Oral History as gritty and stripped to actuality as it gets-- and there is absolutely no holding back. And has been correctly handled without the use of kid gloves. There is commentary from the likes of a gay pimp Tony the Hustler to even Simpsons’ creator Matt Groening, and right from the mouth of Darby Crash.
Aside from the rack-up of big-heads expectedly comes conflicting views about past situations, events, and you can expect the back-biting sh*t-talking podium parade. A great example of this is the slandering of The Slave Darby Girl Casey Cola. Inside sources commentate on her negativity to Darby’s downward spiral into certain suicide, her cling to Darby‘s coattails and her desperation to do nothing but satisfy him, as they were “equals“. And for those whom are Germ-die-hards and follow through with all the rumors concerning Darby’s death (possible martyr Jesus styled “crucifixion”) will all come to a rest, and the real answers are here (note: I will not tell you the ending-- you must over-salivate your glands and go read it for yourself!)
B&W pictures also fill every so page. But instead of being a nuisance they are pictorial highlights, and linking events: Donnie Rose laying completely naked on a bed with his 6 foot slong bent, which upon viewing could be construed as child pornography. Photo shoots of Darby’s “Adam Ant” total Mohawk/ leather phase, and Germs set shots. Rare childhood photos of Jan Paul’s mother, his sister Faith Jr., and High School shots. The pictures add not only a more visual sight, but act as an enhancer to the reading reality of it all.
The story of Darby Crash & the Germs is often thought as to be tragic with the ever-so-secretive gay lifestyle of Jan Paul Beahm as a possible conclusion to his suicide, and a homophobic L.A. scene of ignoramus Punks, or perhaps there are other reasons for his own decline. Lexicon Devil takes the reader as close to an actual sit down with a Circle One member over a cup of tea. The Oral History takes us from Jan Paul’s birth to untimely end-- through a socialite party of accounts and testimonies that are both horribly funny, at times stomach turning, and tear-jerking.
Jan Paul lost himself in the dark abyss of absence, sinking into a drug induced chemically imbalanced suicide. Some may think that a life go to waste with his self-annihilation, but what remains is the blueprint for a passion that Jan Paul Beahm & Darby Crash agreed with, and that being Punk Rock.
“If you want somethin’ then I got somethin’ I’m your annihilation man.”
-Darby Crash/Jan Paul Beahm.
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