Posting 45 Grave earlier this week got me a little nostalgic for the L.A. punk/new wave scene. I’ll do something more elaborate later on, but here’s a taste.
L.A. has never got the props of some other American punk scenes. Maybe that’s valid. But I’ve got hometown pride and nostalgia, so you roll with what you’ve got.
The Germs were probably the most infamous of all the L.A. punk bands, even though they were hardly the most successful. I wasn’t into them at the time, but I had friends who were. The Germs couldn’t play when they started in the late Seventies. They teetered between chaos and creation, they crashed and burned — mostly their leader Darby Crash. But they also made some great rock on the way.
I always liked The Circle Jerks — them and Black Flag. There was a pop sensibility hidden at the core of their music that appealed to me. If you’ve ever seen Repo Man (1984), there’s a scene where Otto is in a club and a band is doing a lounge version of “When The Shit Hits The Fan.” It’s the Circle Jerks massacring their own song, punctuated by Otto’s line “I can’t believe I used to like these guys.”
I was not a punk back in those days. I was a very nerdy suburban kid. But part of what attracted me to the form was its brevity. Get in, get out. Who needs three whole minutes for a record?
“Lexicon Devil” is from the single by the Germs, not the version on the album GI. “Paid Vacation” from the Circle Jerks certainly has a timely chorus: “This is not Vietnam / Just another oil company scam…”
The Germs – Lexicon Devil — BUY
The Circle Jerks – Paid Vacation — BUY
Tags: The Germs, The Circle Jerks, L. A. punk, Repo Man, MP3s
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