The Germs With Pleasant Gehman

discussion about suicide. If you or someone you know are struggling, please know there's

help out there. You can call or tax the suicide prevention hotline at 988.

“What's with this band anyway? I don't get it. Can you please explain? Wait, like band flame?”

Ever heard this band in my life? Oh, you haven't. Let's look out. Really wide. Yeah, I love this song. Oh, I don't know that one. Band flame, band flame, band flame. I really like this band. Whatever. I'm their biggest fan. Band flame, band flame, band flame, band flame. Hello and welcome to Band's Plane. I am your host, Yossie Saltig. This is a show where I invite

an expert guest on to help me explain a cult band or iconic artist. Today's episode is about the

germs. My guest today, you guys. What a fucking treat I have for you guys. My guest today's author musician, artist, coolest woman in all of Los Angeles and potentially the country and world, pleasant gaming. Pleasant, welcome to the podcast. Thank you. Now I'm blessing. I'm so excited to have you. I mean, before we like dive in to unpacking the story of the germs and, you know, sadly a short one, but I just need people to understand that like there might only be five people on earth that are like

“as qualified as you to be here to help me tell this story and do you want to tell us why?”

Oh my goodness. Well, I knew the germs before they were the germs and I was

pat smeared before he was pat smeared his girlfriend for a really long time and I'm still in touch with him and he's wonderful and we're friends. But LA was very, very different there than would you would you like me to tell you how I met them? Yes, I already know this story, but I want everyone to know how my favorite story is. I know it's good. It's it's like it's pretty much my last Angeles origins story. How it all happened was I was living on the East Coast. I was going to

a boarding school that I got a scholarship to and I wanted to be there and then my mother told me we were moving and I got I was so sad. I was just crushed because I was going to have to leave school and she wouldn't tell me where we were moving to and I thought I was going to be somewhere stupid and you know like some Midwestern like town that eyes and whole lady would love to shortly now but you know it wasn't happening and then she called me back a week later and said

okay I know where we're moving we're moving to Los Angeles and I was like when are we going

“and she said well we're going in two weeks but up to finish out the term and I was like why?”

Look I want to come now. So as soon as I got there I had seen that Queen was playing at the Santa Monica Civic and I took the bus there and I was wearing my old school in nobody's like genre of fineery which was like I would wear these like nineteen forties through like the Victorian times like gowns I'd find at thrift stores when down when or not even thrift stores it was there wasn't even thrift stores yet it was like it was some

junk shops yeah junk shops or just yard sales yeah so I was wearing that with like combat boots and this was very I guess fashion forward at the time but no one looked like that in the seven days it was coolest woman I've gone. I sat down the the aisle wearing that looking for my ticket and I sat down and almost as soon as I sat down there's some person that I immediately identified as a hot old man. I handed a joint to me and said would you like some of this

mess and I said yes thank you and then all of a sudden four days in a way I realized that was getting high with Tony Curtis Spartacus babe if you're familiar. That was Spartacus when he was a singer of songs but also some like at hot he was like my favorite actor and my brain was bleeding I was like how is this happening so cool and he was so nice and then I was in trance with him and we were talking but then I got distracted by these two guys that were striding down the aisle right

and billowing black sat in bell bottoms and his hair was kind of like in this like zwinks kind of

I don't know if it was on purpose it's not on purpose like it was a sort of a pyramid shaped crazy as zwinks scenario going on and the other guy behind him was a little bit shorter dressed all in white and had the most perfect red like bowie shag and a bowie light and bold on his face inside borrowed a pen from Tony Curtis and wrote on this matchbook that that I had it and it said Aladdin's scene you cosmic orgasms call me and I put my phone number and then I set up and threw it

to where I hoped they were and the next morning these two guys called me and one was Paul Beam and the other was George Ruth and Bert and they turned down to Darby Crash and Pat Smyr there's not a child there's such a cool story also I'm just for anyone listening his like young and is like I don't know how to meet friends take a cue here babe like you used to just go up to people you couldn't throw a matchbook at someone be brave like look what happened

this was 1975 is that right yeah okay and you guys were like 14 15 years old yeah so cool so anyways you guys the point is the pleasant was there since day zero let alone day one

“and she played a huge part in the original punk scene in Los Angeles and honestly and a lot of the”

other important musical things that happened in LA after which we'll also talk about because they're rare interesting so don't ever say I didn't bring you a perfect and exquisite guest and now I'm like hey hey that's you know what I'm gonna start a little bit from the beginning of Paul's life but then when we get back to 1975 I have some more questions about just sort of like the prepunk music scene in LA but I want to get these like biographical details out of the way so

Paul being was born yon Paul being weren't Jan Paul being yeah I think it was yon September 26 1950 a Libra Los Angeles um his mother was named Faith Reynolds later Faith Reynolds Baker she had moved to LA from New Jersey with her first husband she had two children with him Bobby and Christine she said that Paul was named after their neighbors baby that died of a congenital heart defect before Paul was born and asked her to name their baby

the baby after him and not know that this was a thing it's a very strange I didn't realize that either that's wild it feels like a very like cursive do you know name me like it's such a I understand the honoring of the child but it's also like what like a kind of a dark

namesake to have it's like a baby that never even got to live I mean it's just it's a tragic and

“dark thing so I think I'm not trying to like editorialize but I'm like we're beginning with a bit of”

tragedy okay so when Paul was born this family lived above a barn Venice they moved around a few times near the beach before they ended up in a house a big one for a hundred and twenty five dollars a month babe that was a different time in Los Angeles and they moved to West LA so Paul being grew up thinking that his biological father was a man named Harold Beam who had apparently left the family early in his life but it turned out actually that his father was a sweeter sailor named

William Bjorkland which kind of explains the name yon yeah and he found this out I guess later in life like his one of his sisters like let it slip and then this I thought was really interesting I a lot of this is all coming from the lexicon double book so it's an oral history and it's peoples reportage of it but his mother said that he had another sister named faith junior that was closer to him an age and apparently faith junior's friend had thrown a rocket her when they were

“like playing in the street but missed and hit Darby and chipped his tubes and that's why his”

tooth was chipped like that um so that's the origin behind his teeth um he was basically raised by

faith's third husband bob baker who was the Korean War veteran um when Paul was 11 his older brother bobby was murdered in Venice at 27 um I guess he was this is what Brendan Mullins said that he was found dead in a station wagon repeatedly from a hot shot hero when OD passed to him by a burned dope man so this was like the drug dealer was mad that he didn't get paid and basically yeah even in OD yeah that's so crazy I know stuff like that happened in those days yeah there was a lot of

the studio I know we can't see her and I were just talking about this off-mank that like as much as like whenever I read about this time I'm so mad that I didn't get to live through it like the LA of the 70s was so cool I mean even the LA of the 90s was much cooler than the LA of now but then there was also stuff like this because I guess it comes with it. Yeah there was there was all sorts of crazy there was I was talking about like all the criminal stuff that used to

happen all the time that was like just wide out and that opened yeah of you know like stuff that I was even privy to as like a 15 through 18 year old person just knowing yeah and knowing gangsters are hearing stuff so at clubs I'd be like La La La like yeah because like famously the the mafia had ties with the whiskey is that not or monsters I feel like I read that a couple

of time I mean my favorite person that that worked there was Jim La Pena and he uh he always

took care of the kids in a really great way he'd like he'd let us all in and but we'd have to show him a report cards to make sure that we had at least the B average otherwise he wouldn't let us in there

“so sweet I know he was he was the one that was like do shows there when I was a teenager that's how”

I started doing shows he's like you guys can party here but only if you're good at school that's exactly true that should be a role going forward that would that's a way better inspiration for kids to do all in school than whatever college you know I didn't know if they even like like underage people into clubs anymore I don't know if I went out with the whiskey I'd been working there for ages right and at the with I went up and I said to the bartender it's my birthday

um you know in the same Patrick's there it's my birthday gonna give me a free drink and he said Joe how old are you turning and I said 21 and he said bullshit you've been drinking here for ages my my I think I knew it was for fun he was like you're not even turning on me and I've been serving me for years and you could have gone through chances like whoopsie so Bob Baker has sort of surrogate father died very suddenly in 1972 a heart attack when Darby was 14 and it's kind of

around this time I'm gonna be a little bit earlier that he meets George Risenberg aka Pattsmaner in junior high alio which makes total sunset feel like given what I know about Patrick's mayor um August 5, 1979 so pleasant I want to ask you this because it's kind of hard to find too much about his background before when I understand that his father was like an older German man and his mother was like a mix of African-American Native American and she was an opera singer yeah I don't know

“about his father I think I think so but yes his mom was like that yeah that makes everything that you”

said that makes it's total perfect sense yeah and also Risenberg I guess that could be German. Yes so it's totally true yeah so he went he went to fourth grade with Willa Mato to junior Risenberg yeah um who was later right for slash he's heavily quoted at likes con double and Will said in that book there were maybe only like two other black kids in the school which must have been an interesting way to grow yeah because they were going to to uni high yeah and then uni high they

had a thing called the IPS I have so many questions about oh my god yes for you I used to cut school of my school to go to their school and sometimes they would cut their school to go to my school

we did shut like that all the time too I'm gonna never do so George collected exotic birds apparently

and he said that he was 12 when he first met Paul Beam and then he had a dollar a day for lunch money and there's a 300 pound girl who sold whites for a dollar what are whites whites I mean

“they're like little speeds okay that's what I thought but it's also just telling the”

seven you have a day about loads and they had no idea what loads were what are loads were like there was like it was like a little drug and cox and that was made on the street and it was with it too and all and some other kind of you could either do it going up or down depending on what you did it with but it was you purchased it as what was all the load it was a combo yeah some of these drugs were wild as you know people are obsessed with the death of kueil is

and like oh my god yes hunt them hunt them down and look how to do is say

they you poor people that never had glalies that's all I'm gonna say I hear time and again

that people like on earth really old ones I could believe it and try to take and see if

this is very funny so George sorry I'm gonna go back and forth with names a little bit until they fully changed them but just know George is Pat smear and Paul is strawberry gosh I just

“caught them Georgie I caught a lot and forget that I'm talking to people well that's how you know”

though yeah he's a George I do remember laughing about how the speed dealer could weigh so much because speed makes you not eat and she's actually the one that put them together according to George that she knew them both and was like you guys would be really good friends and he also said that he felt like he had a lot of sisters and so he knew how to be friends with women

and he was raised more like a girl and then he also said that Darby was always friends with girls too

especially girls that were like his mom did you know Paul's mom yeah yeah well was she like well um I'm just from the perspective of someone who's an adult that used to do crazy thing right around now you're like oh interesting I mean she she did put up with a lot I got to give away that because like one time I was getting held up upside down with paint on the bottom of my sneakers I could make footprints walking across the ceiling of their house and she

like came home and saw that yeah mom someone's been walking on the ceiling oh my gosh I mean shit like that was going on constantly yeah yeah I mean like I'm very intrigued by her because you read a lot of mixed things about her she's in the book as well but what George said I thought was

really interesting was that Paul Darby was always friends with and around women and girls that were

very similar to his mom big outspoken girls these are yeah like Michelle Bear and Dinky these are friends that they were in high school yeah so George was super into the dolls and Al's Cooper and the Stooja's and obviously Ziggie Stardust Bowie Ziggie Stardust and he hated in his own words anything to do with 50's based rock he didn't like those chord changes yeah we were I mean we were all into that stuff and I think it's worth mentioning to anyone that's listening is that those

people that that Yassie just mentioned were not famous in those days right this was like I'll underground you step they had albums out but you had to really either search for them if you heard of them or find them by accident the way that I did because I saw the cover and was like what is it like for Ziggie Stardust you just you were in like a record story and you saw the cover yeah I said yeah that insane and rock power and all of those things I had no idea I just thought

if something was in a record story there's people were famous rock stars I didn't know what a cut-out then was because no one was buying it in the country you know and that's what the cut-out bin was basically the discount bin right yeah it was the discount bin and then it was also those those records that really inspired punk were kind of marginalized in the same way that punk rock was later yeah because in this country no one gave a fuck about punk rock yeah England they did

“that's how we knew it existed I remember looking at pictures of Johnny Rotten that was like the”

size of a postage stamp going what is this looks like the best thing ever yeah I feel like people think in today like in today's time they think of David Bowie and they're like oh that is that

man has always been famous that was a pop star and it wasn't like that and especially in the

70s and again I'm speaking like I was there but you can correct me it's not like there was MTV right there it's not like you had only a few channels for music pop culture which was the radio and maybe Rolling Stone but they weren't covering too much the midnight special the midnight special was a music show yeah sometimes they would have they would have obscure English groups yeah a lot on there so it culturally those things were quite underground and I thought it was really

interesting so that's what George was into but Paul wasn't Paul hated it he liked low writer music oh yeah because his sister was dating a trollo a writing music was great I loved all of this music you know what there used to be there was a show on on the radio that you know that that

“movie on that song border radio yeah that's what this is about it was it was the the Mexican”

radio station that was just blast stuff and all during punk rock we would listen to that because there wasn't anything else decent on the radio except for Rodney Binginheimer's show because he would play punk and like I could sing you like so many do-op classic do-op songs yeah I mean they're so great start to finish because they were incredible and then also in between that there'd be like there'd be like three or five or ten punk that someone's house like just listening to it

he was in like I still love you baby it's blah blah blah you know like all the dedication

“it was incredible yeah it was full on low writer culture that was going on there and that really”

influenced so many people in the punk scene maybe not by the way the music sounds right but um I mean I'm sure with like the bands like the brat and stuff when East LA started having a punk scene yeah you know like that the rest of us already knew a lot about that it wasn't segregated I just I love that detail so much just because the drums are such an LA band and this is such a thing it's so specific to LA right well that LA but you know California in places around here so the idea that

you know young Darby crash was like listening to like stuff like Angel Baby by Rosie and the original yeah because his sister and he was hanging around with this group of you know told us told us and told us I love I mean I grew up when a school was a told us and doing my makeup like

“them and like you know that was the coolest thing in the world I mean I do think I think that the”

germspirants and stuff came from that told a culture because I mean not exactly but I think that's where the idea came from because like see like see like see as like everyone all the trollers had see us for a consofos yeah and then that was like it was located in the same place your germs burn

would be so interesting I never thought about that like as soon as they started doing it and everyone's

like people come up to me and go yeah so do you have a germs burn if you're such a punk and I was like no I didn't need one like you're like trust me I was and I was gonna ask you okay so you don't have one you were like I'm you're like that's that's nice Darby but I don't want that that looks painful this is also another detail that I was obsessed with George was so into Alice Cooper oh yeah

“they all were yeah that he made an actual necklace of flies like dead and a fly flies for the song”

Halo fly and wore them to school the dedication the archestry okay I favorites were like in no particular order it was like Bowie Alice Cooper I'm trying to think pretty much like just those two at the top which and I read this and I wanted to ask you that in LA or in America it was they called it glitter rock yes called the glitter yeah yeah and when people and now I just call it glam rock because people call it that but we call it glitter yeah and and we just glitter the word

just like in it you just called it glitter that's glitter like like just like for example Joan Jet was really into glitter yeah we we all were and then one time when when Joan and I started getting into punk we went to this bar the Odyssey that we all went to it was only gay bar that played good music that that like punk people were going to before the mask so there was this place called the Odyssey on Vasiana and one of those one of those streets a side street on it

and Joan and I um they wouldn't let us in because they said really like trashy because we both had on leather jackets so yes yeah okay I read about the Odyssey because that was like after Rodney's English disco closed yeah the places that people would go were kind of like gay bars

that played disco but also the glitter yeah that was where I had my that was where I took my first

clay lids and it that's where um for anyone that's listening that knows LA she knows why is that um the wrestling the wrestling um place that's right above with three of clubs is on Santa Monica and Ryan yeah and yeah so that was genos and that genos they played the best best music and um took my first clay lids there was wearing sky high silver glitter platforms it would two weeks worth of waiters pay and tips and then as soon as I got on the dance flick

I fell in my ass because I was so high and I'm going loot and these people picked me up and carried me drag carried me over and I was laying across about five people just making out with them that is what the 70's clubs were like it's not fair that I didn't get to be there but we'll I'm sorry we'll so it's you're like I'm sorry but that's also what punk rock came out of I was doing shit like that at places like there or at the whiskey nut not as much but pretty much

yeah just before a uni Georgian Paul thickest he was really into shoplifting really into stealing stuff stole some pot plants from a Mexican gang member and according to George they would not mess with

in Chase with knives and so he in his words ran away to a Jesus freak commune or the girlfriend

“yeah yeah that his sister Greta was at this was so interesting and he went there it was first”

in Mendistina that in Yurika and he lived there for a year from 13 to 14 came back home yeah and then went back and stayed till he was 15 yeah you met him right after that yeah yeah yeah at that point because he said he was like when he came back he was like kind of really into Christianity did he like talk about it? No he didn't really tell I mean I don't remember it really coming up but he told he told me about being up there and um you're not the other thing is really fun

to the George and I used to write each other letters which now would be like texting each other like from your house and yeah because you were in Beverly Hills and they were in Wastellet yeah yeah and you were just right like in the post like put it in the post yeah and it would come like what the next day probably yeah that's so you guys I know that idea how so romantic actually I can't I mean I'll just say it now because I was obsessed with this detail so in Lexicon double

“I think her name was Jenna Cardwell was that the George and girlfriend after you and she's like I”

went to his house for the first time and he had his wall was covered with photos of pleasant

it was like a shrine to pleasant and I was like I don't know that's right I know my bitch left an impression can you imagine going to your new boyfriend's house and there's just like a wall to that was just been wow I mean sorry Jenna first love is first love okay so they start going to you need now this is what I'm dying to talk about so for those of you don't know you need it's university high it's still there it's in mid city actually my a lot of my family members went

there like in the I was like dying it was like trying like it was like please let my uncle and aunt have been there at the same time and they were there in the 60s so I was like because Kim Fowley also went there in the 50s and I was like yeah I was like please God let my uncle and aunt have been

“in school at the same time as the germs were Kim Fowley and I was like no they were like a decade”

all for me because I was like dying laughing thinking about them like knowing the germs but they didn't because they were later all right the administrators of that high school knowing how much rock and roll lineage was good yeah and also apparently a lot of famous kids or famous people's kids would go yes yeah because it was Westela yeah so everyone's doing acid now when you talk about IPS we were doing acid a lie you guys IPS is one of the craziest things I've ever heard

of you won't talk about something that could only exist in the 70s it's this IP 70s in Los Angeles innovative program school so it was basically like we still have continuations school I had continuations school in torrents I might even go there respectfully I was good student but but they had continuations school for like you know fuck ups or people who was not good at school people got pregnant but this was almost like not exactly that because it was still within uni and it was like

based on est yeah was based on est which is urban seminars training and scientific and so it was like full woo woo full insane there was no grades they like only happen only happen in the 70s it was

they never telling me about their school I thought they were making it up and then I started cutting

my school to go there all the time because you got a check it out right they would come over to my school but I much preferred going over to uni to Beverly already have the pool under the gym back them yeah it was there for ages but we never got used you know the weirdest shit about Beverly West when I when I we would just in the in the district of Beverly Hills high yeah I was flabbergasted when I went there coming from the east coast because no one even though I was you know

like cutting class already you know and the east coast or like you know doing pretending I was taking notes but like writing stories or notes or letters to George yeah yeah but um at Beverly high people blatantly just didn't pay attention to the teacher and I was shocked like like they were just the changing like putting makeup on each other in the middle of class and also the teacher didn't do anything and the teacher um the teacher parking that was full of like fucked up old dots and

the student parking lot was full of like fences and just like all the rich kids horses and yeah it was wild totally so I know that really went like off the tangent but that was a lot of those kind of people maybe not exactly the same we're also the people that were going to IPS because of other rich people that lived in the in the palisades oh yeah totally yeah and that was a really like that rich like french t-shirt wearing and you know shaman the fair jeans no one's

the time and everyone was so normal that when punk rock started or even started having it's

“little tendrils come out it was like shaman it was people were horrified I'm obsessed with this so”

IPS is like okay there's no grades there's like self hypnosis you can make your own classes everyone's doing acid there's a math teacher that's doing acid with Paul Darby yeah yeah because he thought he was

a genius and they would like make their own classes like there's actually an amazing story in

the book where like Paul and George are like we made our own class it's a sewing class and the rhetoric teacher Fred hold me was like yeah so what are you gonna what are you gonna sew and they were like so and he's like well how are you gonna approach this class and they were like so and he was like I'm not understanding what you're saying like what what's the plan here and they were like so because it was a sewing class yes and they guess what they gave themselves as and everything was

fine that a fruit eating class when they would just leave school go to the grocery store eat fruit and come back but it sounds so it's absurd that no I mean I know this I know all this yeah you were

going on but like as I'm hearing it God knows how many years later like 40 years later and whatever

“the hell later is like but I do think besides being just absolutely insane it's really important”

because Scientology and also civically this rhetoric teacher so yeah I'm sorry so um so Fred hold me was a Scientologist and he was the rhetoric teacher and this really shapes kind of what will later be Darby crashes like philosophy and creative output exactly yeah and also the way that so many people like cluster to round him because he knew all of that he knew how to he he was he had a mastery of rhetoric he was obsessed with rhetoric and and how it could

control people right because that was the whole thing of rhetoric it was like this if you can control the word you can control anything yeah it was kind of the the message that the teacher was trying to get across and and Paul became very obsessed with that Paul Rossler who um well what band was Paul Rosswell and he was in a bunch of bands yeah yeah um but he was their friend from this time and Kira and Kira Rossler famously my mum both on the beach who also the judge and thought

one's offered to teach me bass and I said no because I was too scared to learn bass from Kira Rossler isn't black black but we all have our regards so Paul Rossler said the teachers he thought Paul was the coolest and somewhere even in awe of him or they hated him and we're scared of him didn't want anything to do with him Fred called him a rhetoricician which meant he controlled reality with his words that's was a major compliment um apparently once he changed the script from morning announcements to

include a little news item that the members of Led's Upwood had been killed in a horrible playing crash and according to George like yeah it was just like into this idea of of the rhetoric

“he also was really and I think this is a thing that always strikes me as the everyone read”

books then but like we out did really yeah it's not as common anymore but I know it sounds man I keep thinking of being an old lady about it why guess like I guess it's they have phones you know like you know it's not the same totally not the same but like we read books because we wanted an escape right and it's like I couldn't escape into if I didn't have a phone you couldn't really watch TV at hours a day like I mean you're I'm my parents wouldn't have let me

you know so like you but what you could do is sit in your room and read a book or listen to me he's like Paul Darby was himself very into reading particularly um Nietzsche Oswald Spangler who was a German nationalist but not a Nazi Bertrand Russell um yeah he read all the yeah all the brass wars yeah Herman has Machiavelli but he all he incorporated all of that yeah into his into his later lyrics and stuff he was also really into this book I just thought that's really

interesting if anyone's like a cinephile called Twins which was a bestseller at the time by Barry Wood and Jack geeseland it's about Twin kind of colleges who go crazy and end up killing each other I don't know wild but yeah yeah and David Cronenberg made it into a movie called Dead Ringers so if you like that movie and his mother said that she he was also obsessed with the gossip papers the star and the inquiry all the you're my god yeah and then like when I started doing

my fancy in the bottom he there was always like cutouts from there I bet it was so those are the

apparently the lads uh Darby Paul Rossler and Pat went down to the Scientology Center on Hollywood

Boulevard and Paul Rossler said Pat scored zero on the personality test and they told him that he was an utterly horrible person I scored like a regular person they said yeah we can help you for $500 of course Darby scored perfectly on everything and they asked him to come teach there such an insane the idea of going into the Scientology Center and taking the test in the being like wow that's like right that's right in my neighborhood yeah I mean it's still there it's like the same one

it's still there okay so this is around the time you met them we just talked about it I actually have a diary entry by you from November 18th 1875 I went to IPS today mixed emotions very mixed I got feelings like how I should be going here why am I submitting myself to Beverly Hills hi and then God this place is pretty fucked one thing that bothered me was the self-righteousness

and the self-consciousness very self-conscious of being unself-conscious uninhibited and free people always

spoken IPS Lingo which goes something like I get that you acknowledge me as an asshole but that doesn't mean you don't have the space to play with me I want you to get that by the way it's okay to be fucked

“to me that seemed uncomfortable this whole well that's how people talk there I mean it's okay for you”

to be fucked to me yeah because a lot of things were like okay then like so you were there and just be like this is so crazy I was I found it absolutely nuts I mean I wasn't like wild about my school or anything like this was just like in a different level of craziness it's it's really wild that they let that go on so I bet and you I want to ask you since now you know them I rather that they had like a little group of followers at this school that they had like

yeah I was starting to you could you know in hindsight I realized that you could see the trajectory that and that Paul Darby was going on you know because he had he had so many people that were I mean starting with like getting germs burns yeah devotion and stuff and then there was other people that would just like cater to like anything he wanted really much do you feel like it was like that he had like a special charisma like what do you think it was about him

that drew people to want to like kind of follow him around he did he had it he had a very special charisma I mean he enjoyed both dead but they were they were very different you know and um his was he he really wanted to do it and he really like studied up on how to do it like like what yeah I didn't just mention by reading all those those things you know and like that was a goal

“of his and I think he really like hit his goals you know yeah in some ways yes and I think in”

some ways know which were in some ways know but I mean that like but for that to get that kind of thing like you know like psychologically influencing people totally and you know just getting them to do things for you and to feel like they were you know appreciating that they were being noticed yeah yeah I mean that's a classic thing of like someone who's a charismatic leader is like

they always say like oh that person made me feel special yes there was something about the way

they got that and then he he understood like all of those the nuances of how to be a leader in that way I really think you know it's but also at the same time watching all this happen for for me my self that was bizarre I would just be like you know seeing someone else that just wanted to like cater to anything he was doing and I was like I'm not gonna interfere in this but this is just like right another one vibes it does just wild to watch it happening I am very fascinated by

and we're gonna talk about there there's a lot of people particularly a women but not just women

“that become part of this orbit and play an important role I think and like what happens with the”

germs but it's kind of starts here in high school so the music thing comes into play a little bit or like later a part of high school because Pat said that while he was off at the juices coming in Darby then gets super into rock because again he was alone as a little writer music and he gets really into David Bowie as when you met him yeah the the full haircut and the makeup he had a bowie shrine in his room he called himself Astrid a child from the stars

would write like poetry and lyrics from that will him auto said that Paul felt Paul Darby felt that Bowie was on to something that wasn't explicit Bowie could give you surface suggestion

that mojo he said Bowie was using language to physically affect people and they didn't know it

language was a cause and all these Bowie kids were the effect if he could learn to use language like that

“he could harness the power of language to that degree then he too could be the cause I think that's”

exactly true yeah in hindsight I wasn't thinking it as it was happening in exactly those words but yeah it's it's interesting right it's a kind of like all the parts are coming together so he's learning about rhetoric and like using language to like sort of have power and like control and then he's getting really into Bowie and seeing that in Bowie's art and then they had befriended a guy who I'm sure you knew to called Chris Ashford oh yes of course yeah who worked at a record store

on Walsher that was called Music Odyssey yeah it was not exactly more he was into Iggy to they'll have that in common um they the George and Paul had gotten into Iggy when they found raw power and the cutout bins like he said and they loved the cover and they read stories about him the peanut butter cutting himself up putting cigarettes out on himself a lot of DNA of the

“germs here it came him and definitely came from Iggy actually one of the first times I went out”

with George and Paul yeah this is crazy because it started me on a whole other trajectory to me was want to see where Iggy lives and so we went to the building that he was living on on sunset and I'd been here for such a short time that I thought because I had a record of his and he was a rock star that the whole building was his house and it was this crappy little you know they were like squatting the small it was it was like a one room apartment right next to

the parking garage and we walked into it and he said does anyone have any drugs and I was having a surreal moment because I love this teachers yeah and I just couldn't even believe we were like at his house and then also I was trying to figure out why he was in this horrible little hobble you know and then we wound up becoming friends and I was seeing him for a while like

“this is my life it's crazy but how that that whole thing you're like sorry George I have a new boy”

friend and he's an amazing Paul and we're trying of me but I've moved on with him and Malibu

for a whole summer it was crazy oh my god it was lots of craziness going to live it's funny that you said you went over there so this humble apartment was next door to the riot height right those yeah yeah and the reason they knew him and were able to go there is I guess Chris Ashford who wasn't friends with them just knew where he lived right and they were like take us over there and they just knocked on the door and were like we're you know Paul and George we want to be friends

and Iggy Pop was like okay and I guess when it was he was living with James Williamson who is the guitar player of the studios and they said that when they would go there and Iggy wasn't home and it was just James James would not let them in he was like absolutely not get the fuck out of here but when Iggy was home they would come in and just hang out and then George also said something to echo what you said which I thought was very interesting is that they would sit on the couch at the record

or reading you know import British rock magazines yeah yeah yeah yeah because none of us could

believe the amazing stuff that was happening yeah okay learning learning about like you said

the sex pistols just by reading about them right not even hearing the music or seeing them that it was just like this which you would love this yeah it's so interesting and then he said the same thing you did there was Rodney on the rock so we would listen to Rodney originally which is which I just love so much because I also grew up listening Rodney on the rock really just like I would sit and tape his show yeah yeah because he would still even through the 90s he

still played the best music and play the music he was so ahead but in the 70s I'm actually I mean he's been credited for like breaking the remains and blondies and so totally yeah he was he was the only one that would play them like in this market I'm saying that with the air quotes you know because you know no one else was people went like all the bands that are like so revered now like we're just not getting played anyway yeah Rodney being an hammer

an absolute legend and I call him I got this anyway if you guys I mean if you guys are interested there's a documentary about him called mayor of the sunset strip that's quite good um and also I'm pretty sure you could still find him at the canters no one again yeah I'm sure he's probably there he has a plaque so it's 1976 Rodney's English disco closed in late 75 and that's where like he would bring all the British bands to play yeah play that kind of music and kind of the runaways

started to come up through that now you guys were going to Odyssey and Gino's on the sugar shack

every Wednesday we go to the sugar shack all of us okay I wanted to ask you about Gerber is this

“around the time where Gerber I think is her own in Michelle yeah resheld Bill Michelle belt”

comes into the scene do you remember meeting her yes I met her on the beat with Paul Rossler and you know George and Paul and she sort of becomes part of the crew around the germs yes which were not the germs yet because they're just two guys but the runaways are the runaways they had formed in 1975 I read the pat and Darby were like pretty obsessed with them like as an ideal like oh if they can do it we can do it and they like love their band and it would

hang out with them yeah they loved their runaways and I mean I used to I used to cut cut school to watch them like rehearsing SIR so cool I can totally see this they're like because they were very they're teenagers that's the thing about the runaways yeah so anyway what this is the crazy thing now that people don't realize we really were all teenagers and and teenagers

“that were sort of around so like seeing teenagers that you were friends with sort of have this”

success of like being in a real band and playing real shows and like kind of doing this thing okay now you're like well maybe I could do that too yeah now by the fall of 76 this is a little lesser known Kim Valley project because he because the runaways that's advertised with them for many reasons that we won't go into on this here podcast but he formed a boy punk band in that same bag called Venus and Razorically yeah and they were kind of lame right yeah

Vicky Arnold was in them for a while okay this singer she was beautiful I didn't hear a lot that that was who she was the bartender at the sugar shack and that's who she's still who look from sugary yeah what he for our purposes importantly Nicky beat played drums in this band and he will come to play into this drum story yeah so the boys still named Paul and George at this time form a band in 76 again inspired by the runaways they love music sex festivals the whole

thing we're friends with Iggy mate do you know how they got the name the germ well first their name

was the fist of fuck and then the rebel on span queens yes which is a crazy name but do you know why there it got changed and they're telling me because in those days you could get band to shirts and saying this in big air quotes but there was only a there was a place in westward and

“I think there might have been one other place who did it and it was like these these sort of”

soft letters they you look I don't know yeah yeah I don't know press on letters so but they charged by the letters so so pissed the fuck in the revelants band Queens was not working but the germs worked they were broke and that is not gonna work yeah that makes sense I also saw I mean number one for sure because they knew them I ended up like a short name and I saw that Darby had some idea like the germ of an idea it's like the start of everything they had no instruments

at this point just shirts yeah but then also they would say people would say why are you called the

germs and Darby would always say or Paul as he was called then at that time I mean say because we

make people sick they recruited their friends Michelle Bear and Dinky real name Diana Grant to play with them they played no shows they didn't know practicing they wrote no music Pat said George Pat with the germs we went out of our way to sand you things most people would never say or do it was a reaction to our disappointment other rock stars specifically finding out that Alice Cooper played golf that really upset us it really freaked us out how does Cooper does what

it was like we're gonna find start a band and we're gonna change our names and we're gonna be fucking doing this thing we're really gonna be like that 24/7 we're not gonna be playing golf yeah he said whatever it is we're gonna be we're gonna be the most if we're gonna be punk then we're gonna outpunk the sex pistols if we're gonna be the worst band ever then we're gonna be the fucking worst band ever so they this is around the time they do change their names but

Darby is first Bobby pin yes and Pat has had some air yeah Darby said later that the name

Bobby pin was more of a joke I just changed it because it was the easiest way to make people aware that we had changed that we were doing some different now here's a story that you're a part of at some point in early '77 Pat and Darby Bobby pin John Paul and pleasant go to try to meet Queen in the lobby of the hotel yeah at the Beverly Hills yes okay now you guys did or did not meet Queen during the time we didn't meet them doing that time yeah but you did meet

known as Lorna Jim do what do you remember about meeting them oh I mean I just I just

“blend in I locked eyes immediately and just we just loved each other I mean we we're still friends obviously”

yeah but like she she looked like a 1940s movie star because she was so beautiful and those days yes and because she was dressing like that too like right and they had they called them the poodle haircuts what was that about what did their haircuts look like she didn't have a poodle haircuts she had it it looked like it looked like if you'd see like a 40s pin-out girl it was kind of bangs but it was more styled up there's there's it looked like like you'd see it on a you know

for a visit to heady poster right right it was very sort of 1940s yeah like influence makes sense that maybe a guy like George would not know how to now he would turn that yeah call it poodle haircuts but nothing like a poodle but they were both blonde and yeah yeah and they were from 1000 oh yes from T.O. T.O. and it was just far away it's far yeah I know it's really crazy the idea that you would just I mean for us all that it was more that you drive to Hollywood there was much

less traffic than you could do that there was half the population but yeah they would just go all the way to Hollywood to try to meet Queen um so they went to new berry park high that's the high school they went to and that's like an hour and a half away so people they don't know yeah it's

a great or a lot of sandalace area but Queen that was a very powerful idea of meeting Queen

they just mean them here a bull in the said in the oral history we met Bobby she's going my bobby time and pat in the lobby of the Beverly Hills and they were like the weirdest guys we'd ever met they were great Bobby had figured out where room Freddy was and so he went up to his room and knocked on his door we were pretty annoying Bobby and pat thought we were bizarre these two little girls these two girls with little hairdo's from 1000 Oaks their 40s hardyos so after this

pat and darby started posting flyers around town looking for two untalented girls to play in their bands yeah and Belinda and Terry saw those and I think it was also in the recycler and they called and they were like hey were you those guys from the Beverly Hills didn't this is how small L.A. it wasn't makes me crazy to think about this how that could just happen like you

“need some guys like that's what the rack scene was right the wrong way was still as big as it was yeah”

you know what the population in L.A. was half the size it is now so they're even even the rock scene was small but all of L.A. was less people they get rid of Michelle and Dinky I guess

were only imaginary in the band because they never played anything and Terry goes by Lorna Doom plays

base. Belinda went by Doddy and she did yeah and she was meant to play drums but never did she said is because she got mono maybe yeah I don't know Lorna said she never told me why she decided not to play drums it seemed she always had something else to do when we had to meet I read somewhere that she was L. who knows but I have my suspicions that Paul and George were just too much for her but I thought it was really interesting as Pat said that actually when they first started

the band Darby was gonna play guitar and Pat was gonna write the lyrics and sing and Pat said Paul's mom bought him a little rickenbacher and we was sitting his backyard he'd laugh at me and make fun of my words and tell me they were shit and the opposite happened I could play guitar and he couldn't so we decided he'd write lyrics and I'd write music he could sort of play like two chord ideas and he'd tell me play like this and I'd make up progressions around them or sometimes

I'd write a whole song tape it and give it to him for the lyrics I thought that was really interesting that it was meant to be the other way around yeah it was also very interesting which Pat doesn't say because he's like as humble as that he was just like such a gifted like a

naturally gifted guitar player he would never say that yeah but I'm like because he talks about

he's like oh I could like really play like any yes or queen song and it's like those are very complicated so into yes and queen yeah they get another drummer to replace Danaria yeah Danaria also known as Becky Barton a real name that is best punk stage Danaria I'd be so bummed about like everyone else now I know punk names I've learned in a gym and I'm like they're like yeah Danaria and Danaria

“Danaria tough beat for her honestly because according to her boyfriend her main purpose was”

using her credit card to read equipment for them and drive it around and she sucked at drums and could barely keep a beat but you know I got them that gig at the OVN yeah okay we're about so this is literally right here so they have this like little group of people around them which again pleasant just to be clear is not really a part of like you were like an OG friend but like you weren't part of the circle one now yeah now I thought out as like that it was kind of stupid

what was a little Colty right it was a little yeah it was too they were too they were too like

okay so we talked about Gerber who is also maybe sort of a different thing but what she was also

“around Helen Killer who's your friend as well and Trudy who had met Darby and Pat at the capital”

record swap mate which can't talk about that a little bit oh yeah god because I'm I was telling someone about it the other day it was in the middle of the night and we're saying yeah so you go to three in the morning to buy records who's there selling records what was happening so the capital record swap me every time I walk up or down from Hollywood Boulevard I say the capital like I see the capital records parking lot and I shed a little tear the capital records swap

mate was so wild it would happen once a month and it would open maybe around like midnight or one or something everyone would go their straight from the clubs because there was no such thing as a after hours club and you could just you could pick a booze on the way there who's just like a big hangout it was a big hangout but originally it was just like a swap mate for serious

“record collectors and what was he making at that time no it the real time was seven in the”

morning we started all the punk people started going there at night because they they'd be setting stuff up and we could find good weird records early and they like they didn't care if you were rifling through you know okay I mean so it was like it was like the way like a like the Rose Bull starts setting up at four but like you can go or yeah yeah but but so it just wound up because it was so near like any of the clubs or people's houses that were on an off Hollywood Boulevard

or anywhere in Hollywood you don't cause a lot of us didn't have cars a lot of people were living at the counter bury or you know the other punk houses around actual Hollywood on Hollywood Boulevard and so it was just right there and it was like we turned it into an open air after hours club but wasn't meant to be like that but none of the vendors cared I mean why would they care seeing like drunk cute girls in mini skirts like something or I'm going what year is this record

from yeah maybe even buying some like so yeah I'm coming true that was really a scene it was so

much fun it was it was crazy cops never came to it because it was a record swap mate

I'll be like setting their drinking or who to wandering around was born to like um okay April 1977 okay so the damned came to town yes they were supposed to open for television but television came off the shows so they were taken in by the screamers is what I read yeah I don't know about that that seems about right though because the damned was so high energy and incredible like seeing them and in those days it was like I wouldn't want them to be

“opening for me I didn't read this a couple places so I think it did happen and they were”

like very actually bought them because they had used all their money to fly all the way from England

yeah and they stayed at the screamers this screamers house the Wilton Health Day wasn't always

that my god they had everybody all the coolest people from different places that they knew my because tomato had been in New York you knew a ton of people from New York you knew all the blondie people you know everyone you know that turned into the remoines and so did Fayette Houser who lived there KK and Randy McNally you know who ran danger house records and KK the drummer of the screamers as well they came from Oklahoma LA punk was like a beacon

for everybody you know it's easier than New York too sure because you didn't have to like worry about you know paying for heat all winter and it wasn't as expensive as New York was so there was just an influx of people coming to LA at that time in the 70s and there were all geniuses

like almost all of them like amazing and also amazing those of us who are still alive we're still

all friends with each other yeah yeah so so you mentioned tomato and KK and the screamers the screamers kind of predate the germs the weirdos predate the germs a little bit like it's not anything around for five years or whatever although the screamers also had a different name and they had orange Seattle before and Seattle yeah they were called the Whiz kids and they were doing like shows that weren't necessarily band stuff and more like the cockheads yeah

they really did drag shows in the cockheads she was one of the forming members and she lived with the screamers it's very cool well so there's this insert at bomb you were there the damn does it doing an insert the screamers are there there's a show it was the same night yeah so the orfium you guys was not like it was not a venue it was a black box theater that actually is

up shows yeah for the weird it's just puncture so you'd set up this show with the screamers and the weirdos and there was another band now the screamers weren't playing that oh just the weirdos yeah when the weirdos walked into bomb yeah my jaw just dropped because they were weighing like women's 1960s rain codes with like five weird belts and like just crazy like toys and key tunes and stuff hanging off of them and I just immediately went up to them and I was like hi my name's

Clayson what's yours what band are you in and they said it and I was like where are you playing and they said tonight at the orfium and then I just said do you want a do you need another band that's hard to choose random you're like I have one I'm with them right now yeah and so we we wound up they they said yes I can't remember if Peter case was there I'm sure he was because everyone was at that theater story yeah all of us were yeah like everybody went to that that was

like a pilgrimage you know I'm sure I mean the dam had come to town like it's such a big deal I

would go yeah and he even Angeline was oh yeah I read that he said that was the first time you saw

Angeline and she was wearing a baby blue corset you guys Angeline this is my Los Angeles this

“is my Los Angeles okay I mean you can still see Angeline around honestly if you're like yeah I”

was finding it to be like a beautiful like it's like some a good omen when I see it's not as much as I used to but like when you see her little pink car yeah on the on the highway you know it's gonna be a good day fun story about me that I was telling Alex off my actually maybe like a year ago I was at Bob's big boy which I love near my house and I was wearing my germs t-shirt and I walk up to like meet a friend and there was like an older gentleman sitting outside and he goes hey

amazing shirt and I was like oh my god thank you and he was like I booked their first show and I was

and it was John Denny from the weirdos and I was like oh my god this is a really cool moment I was like so excited I didn't know what to say I was like I love the weirdos but the weirdos were an art school band so to your point about their outfits like they were an actual like in art school oh yeah yeah yeah yeah but we didn't know that it's the time I'm just telling you what it looks like amazing yeah I'm sure you were just like wow like like obviously you guys were getting a little

weird but that was like even further than what you had seen yeah incredible you know and like I didn't care if it was art school or not art school I didn't care if they were in a brown or not I was just like I need to know these for you yeah okay so what was the show like because obviously I've read a lot about it but I'd love to hear about it from you and then I can say a couple of the details that I just read about okay so the show at the earth film we left bomb records immediately

and went up to my mom's house and we had to stop to get licorice whips for Derby and it was we were all drinking all afternoon they were they were completely drunk Chris was driving so we were getting ready and I had to tie all these liquorice whips all over Bobby Derby's body you know and that was Derley and it was sticky and it was oh my god and as I said we were just like we were like kind of all shit face so that was pretty wild and then going up to that driving up there to the

step trying to figure you know like like don't like don't wave that bottle of booze around

“and so that I mean it was it was when I think of memories like this I wonder how we're still alive”

all of us because it was it was just like that yeah well so in all the 70s some of you guys are in the early 90s I know about it I mean there was I was making me really sad going through like how many people died to have it made it yeah well some people didn't make it I mean just out of natural causes no totally and there's various but okay so the red liquorice whips

the pleasant helpfully custom designed for Derby crash aka at that time Bobby pin basically melted

into a red goo everywhere they were as you said wasted don't really I didn't know how to play any dinner it doesn't have to play they don't really have songs they had one song and they're forming already yeah they just start playing according to John Denny they were snickering massively intoxicated kids who were just literally just playing random feedback and banging around and smearing mayonnaise and peanut but are all over themselves in the PA this is pretty much true okay so

yes the the germ show is a bit of a disaster they are a scored it off stage

“within I think about five minutes yeah within minutes yeah um they did get a write up and”

raw power back it's in the next I think it was that month or the next month and this is what it said the germs came on first and were the biggest joke of the year none of the germs could play

the lead singer smeared peanut butter all over his face and everybody in the group they were all spitting on each other until they were kicked off

“honestly it sounds kind of amazing according to Pat Jack Lee of the nerves who had put on the”

show called him after and said that they love the band I wanted to put out a single and he said so we got my mom's little cassette and a bottle of booze and did an awful version of forming just

me and Darby out of our minds we mailed a tape for those guys we never heard from them again after that show

they did get rid of Nauria because she sucked respectfully and they got a guy called Cliff Hanger on drugs my mom named him man really yeah was it real I can't remember but my mom was when that named him Cliff Hanger she also named Helen Killer you're almost good with these names why don't want to besmirch Cliff Hanger's name I'm simply glad that he was a low-level director of his old quailas at the Westgate but you know maybe he was trying to have a

one-digit like yeah those days I mean to put it into into into perspective that was like everyone's side hustle if you had right so it wasn't like that was his like occupation it was just no and it wasn't like down on either because it was a very different time then we were all just getting fucked 70 you know and if you needed money you know you could and you could get like quailudes or whatever you know quailudes or loads like I was talking about before just some

you know it's not like you were selling like heroin or everybody like you know Chris Ashford said as soon as they got Cliff Hanger then everything changed Pat would teach Lorna her baselines they'd work on it together then they'd go to practice at Pat's Mom's House they became serious so they needed a good job right okay were you at the cheetron chong up and so yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah can you tell me about this because this comes fairly soon after this I don't have the exact

“dates but it was around this yeah right and it's at the rock sea so this was a film I think”

the first chong chong film and they wanted to have like a punk scene so they got the dills the Berlin brats and the germs to play who are actually ultimately we're caught from the movie but tell me about that experience of being at the whiskey or the rock sea so every one that everyone that we knew pretty much was there and one thing that I do remember was we were getting a lot of us by

that time we're getting jobs as punk rock extras in scenes incredible you know like like because

of Tali wooden because if people wanted punk they would pick real punk's not China yeah because this is 1977 so 76 is the year where it's like the big sex stools year and now like punk is starting to make its way into media because there's so much magazine press and stuff about all these crazy punks so they that makes so much sense so you guys who are like the real punk kids and dress like that they're like oh it's easy we'll just go pay them x amount of money I think Xine Serena from

X was also at the shirt and she said that they paid you guys $50 yeah yeah all of us went there but they also since we'd been doing other movies I was disgusted because their fog was the kind of fog that we leave you with blacks not coming out that was probably not healthy it wasn't the good kind of fog which is probably equally as unhealthy but um that everyone from the LA punk scene was there that day for up and smoke it was really really fun and there's some pictures I think I posted

what and this sounds so nowadays I think I posted one of my Instagram like a couple of months ago that we were all sort of posing in front of the rocks the after after up and smoke and in those days no one had cameras in their phones no one had phones so it's rare to see those kind of pictures like someone that was around all the time as a photographer yeah I have a had a camera to take it you know I mean I thought it was people couldn't even afford like polaroids you know yeah something was like

get them by drugs or get them go to the show or what you know my film or by drugs yeah hard it's hard one and a lot of people were like I would prefer the drugs thank you yeah you can see the scene in up and smoke but you can't see the germs because um they were upset that they were being told what to do and they went crazy in brokotana shit and then yeah they did the direction in the

“80 we're like you need to get the fuck out of here so that's summer of 1977 this is when the whiskey”

starts doing punk shows presented by Kim Fowley right yeah or by me or my god the lobotomy magazine

shows there in 77 oh yeah amazing yeah that was the ticket taker there so cool oh you were

was that really working there Kim Fowley said that actually Elmer Valentine the owner of the

like well punk rock who knows if that's true a lot of I mean a lot of these stories are very

“people trying to take credit for stuff especially Kim Fowley you know who was really the unsigned”

hero of the whiskey was Michelle Myers she booked a lot of shows she booked them there but she also booked the other places she was Miss Pamela of the GTO's best friend she knew everybody in town everybody she was the one that when she found out I had a crush on Billy Eidle she got his actual number for me from from like England in stuff did you call him well I was going to but then he came on Rodney's and I had sent him a package because I made a generation extra

because no one had merged then not that we called it merge yeah I was painting like I painted germ shirts like hand painted and so I made a generation X one and I went to Rodney's because you said come here Billy Eidle's going to be on you can you know you you can talk to him when our interviews down and I'm playing music so he said pleasure ones that someone wants to talk to you and I got it and it was like hi this is pleasant Billy was like I got your package last week

and I mean she'll like that was happening in those days all the time which was just crazy yeah something special well I want to ask you about this one show so in June of 1977 the germs played with the screeners and the zippers at the whiskey and this show A was actually recorded they set up a live soundtrack with a portrait studio in the alley and recorded it so this is the germs live with the whiskey but can you tell me about the food fight because I read that

yeah I read that Darby asked everyone to bring food from the grocery store to the show and the whole thing turned into some insane balancers the balancers that well that was that that was why he wanted everyone to bring stuff but the balancers and Jim La Penna who was you know the one truck driver he was nice like that worked everyone's last nerve because there was there was just like jars of mayonnaise being flung around you know what I mean there was there was like pieces

of hamburgers that someone didn't finish from five days ago on the stage and it was just going around and the germ was he was like he was walking around with the dust pan in a broom and like scrub my grab someone behind the scrub of the neck you get your ass up on stage and stat clean

“enough you get your ass up on stage and get rid of the shit right now you must have smelled”

so disgusting it was well it didn't maybe at that point it just smelled like a weird salad but if it would have lasted any longer without like almost all the patrons of the club right get up it would have been horrifying yeah that was a lot it really were pushing pushing out with these shows I know but nothing like that will ever happen again and that shows I mean what the shows like the wild west back then for real the true spirit of punk great yeah like we don't

we're not here to fucking social climb or climb the ladder of ambition like we don't care if they kick us out we don't care if they don't book us against you yeah you know they cared I mean that was the coolest part of it no one no one cared and everyone just did everything and anyone that was in it like we were out in it like full on out it was really great so Chris Ashford or friend that we

talked about before I worked at the record store put out the germ's first seven and it was forming

with the b-side being sex boy live a song of the screamers would cover live a bunch this is still credited to Bobby Petton because he was still using that name I liked the story apparently that they would call Rodney all night every night and be like you need a place like our single welcome you to play our single please play our single play I'm finally he was like okay fine just stop

“calling me and he played it and I'm like this is this is a way to get things done I believe in”

this dogged tenacity it was reviewed by Claude Bessie who at that time went by kick boy face kick boy face by the way if you guys have a little time and I am pleading to please go on Claude Bessie's

Wikipedia page because the first paragraph I'm like this is the most interesting French man

that's ever lived but I don't have time to talk about him right now but just get into it so he wrote about this single beyond music mind boggling inexplicably brilliant in bringing monotony to new heights I don't think you liked it but so he could turn it phrase but he could he was such a great writer and such an interesting person okay and august of seventy seven and you alluded to this earlier but

the mask was just there was a me where was it it was in the alley behind the pussy cat theater

“okay which is on like Hollywood and Cherokee but so it was in the it was in the basement there”

we went back there not that long ago it was about a year ago a Joe Pompeo from the Anity Fair

and it was just incredible because it's owned by RuPaul's World of Wonder oh and they

preserved so much of the mask stuff they didn't paint over any of the of the um the graffiti really yeah I just got goosebumps again thinking of it because I guess because they're doing drag and drag has its own crazy long term underground life they didn't want to do anything to mess up a sub-pulter and then it was wild being down there like walking around saying I wrote that I wrote this or like this was written by blah blah blah who's not alive anymore and just bringing back

these memories um but the and then the queens were we're posing with us and that was so fun and they were just they were just great it was that was a wild thing so cool yeah this so is this iconic kind of anything goes art space nightclub hang out completely illegal completely illegal not one single a shred of paperwork minted or stamped by the city no permits

“and it lasted for a long time the graffiti was incredible I think there was like all these walls”

about like what it like posed their stuff my favorite was that you would call things trendy which I'm obsessed with now as like it I was like a disc no one would think to do that anymore it was like oh that's trendy yeah and it's like now it's like people want to be trying okay so the mask is iconic I'm surprised I'm still shocked that nobody ever tunneled down the cement stairs and maybe they did that we don't know they did it and now they did not

the angels were protecting many times the angels were protecting the mask okay so the germs

play show there um they have the alicats had lined up and I've never heard of they were they were

they were really great it was Diane Chai the basis was this beautiful like Asian basis goddess they had some really good songs now they're unsung oh so cool they said never had anything major

“right they said they they had them play because they had played gizaris which was like”

in their words a real club it lies a real club yeah I mean not like the mask yeah like yeah we had permits from the city um so the germs opened the show with um a trash out cover rock and roll night by kiss Brendan Mullins said then pat trash did yes song sacrilege they were trying to get through these songs it didn't matter if they finished them it didn't matter if they were in gear in time nobody carried what they sounded like neither did they

but everybody was going nuts anyways people thought that they were into this like avant-garde shit and they were really into his David Bowie Queen and yes you know yeah um that show is also when Darby officially starts going by Darby crash which by the way was reported by one pleasant game in he wrote it in your column for the New York Rocker that he showed up on stage at a punk rock fashion show at the Play-Diamt

got it and he lost draft where did you get these it was in the books and it said that you you wrote it up you announced it so very cool you were there reporting the news kick boy club yeah he said the first day I was down in the mask when the germs were playing I knew I was facing genius I was amazed this man Bobby Pented and give a shit now Darby crash okay so in October of that year this is it this is not a long story so that's

I'm kind of trying to paint all the beats because you know the story is short unfortunately the germs play their first San Francisco shows they opened for the weirdos at Mabuhay Gardens and you go out there yeah it's I I read it everyone just how we all went out there yeah Darby said we all stayed at San Wong's hotel which was like the worst fucking flap house you get everything oh my gosh what what this is when Broadway up in San Francisco was not in

any way glamour yeah it was it was it was not it was a nice part it was like dangerous yeah yeah Jeff McDonald you said who you said you met on the beach who was famously in Red Cross with his brother a teenage band great band um he said the germs had all these Dracula's daughters about 10 or so girls who were devotees they were kind of like under the spell and they would do anything their leaders ask yeah that's true again not pleasant um and they paid for everything right because

Darby never had a job ever and his life yeah okay I want to I want to read these three quotes

to ask you about it okay first was Helen Keller she said people really like to be around Darby

“even though people who hated him sort of gravitated him everyone just wanted to be around him I have”

no idea why I really hated him and then I turned around became his quote unquote girlfriend slash surrogate mom we were really comfortable together it was cool there was absolutely no weirdness between us I really really loved him and Brendan Mullinside whereas Bobby Penn seemed to be much more innocent goofy and carefree Darby crash became much more demonic complex intense and toxicated as he gradually began to exude a much darker persona once he became Darby crash his

compulsive manipulation and panhandling seemed to increase the dreaded give me two dollars give me a

beer give me a ride home was the dreaded sound around the scene which witnessed a series of

socially ostracized overweight women many of them easy pickings mine suggestables with absent or disapproving father complexes of more or less the same psychological type prayed upon by people like Charlie Manson this sounds pretty too such women openly competed for the attention of this emotionally unavailable alcohol besotted LSD guru while picking up his tab for booze drugs gas food and clothing and the last quote is from Alice bag who is also your friend

he is still who is also it used to really bother me that Darby enjoyed trying to control people I felt it was demeaning not only to his followers but to himself it used to bother Darby that I

treated my fans as equals he would lecture me on what people expected on later we had very very

different views on the subject I want to ask you since you were seeing it too but it sounds like the people within that circle like Helen Keller were like oh people just loved him we were around him like you know we just wanted to be around him and if people outside it like bread and mullin or even maybe Alice bag were like this is weird you know it kind of depends what what exact time period it was like I didn't like it when it was going on with like all those

all the girls and just all that like his he wise changing he was he was getting to be very different than he had been yeah that was what bothered me the most I didn't care if he had like legions of people so I don't care for anything but it all you think that is part of what changes

“personality though like that people were catering to him I think that helped a lot I think drugs”

were helping a lot short yeah it was it was just it was very different it was even though you could sort of see the steps leading up to it when it became full blown it just seemed unexpected yeah totally well you talked a little bit about the germs burns um Darby said about them it has to do with circles you've seen our arm bands and stuff everything works in circles sometimes you're doing something and then like a year later it seems like you're doing something else but you're back at

that same point it's really hard to explain this is really obsessed with cycles yeah and also about creating this sort of like gang this circle one like the burns the arms like having a visual identity having like I thought it was very interesting that the music was important but almost like equally as important if not more important was what was around the music and when he was kind of sort of trying to create around the music pat mentioned it to that he was intrigued by the concept

“of fascism and Darby said people associate us too much with the Nazi thing obviously I think they”

were using some Nazi well I mean a lot of people were kind of interested in the whole Nazi thing because when you think about it it was not that it was between the Nazis and porncrack yeah time of no way less than it was very short yeah it was very short and it was hard to comprehend how all that even happened in Europe how people like during the then Nazis and I mean it was it was really dark but it was really fascinating too we talked especially for people like us that

weren't into any kind of mainstream stuff right and we talked about this event in the joy division episode where like it's hard to like wrap your mind around now but it's like a it was like the time that had passed was so short yeah yeah that had just happened pretty much and we're talking about teenagers yeah of all you know and we're and you know they were the idea of shock and like subversion was so strong that it's almost like that was what the thing was and this is what Darby is saying

he's like yeah we're fascists but we're not Nazis there's a difference this is very interesting this was so interesting because I was just having a conversation with a friend about what's happening now in our like political yeah arena especially online especially with young men

I'm gonna sound so insane now some of you are not as heavily online as me and when I say the word "clav killer" you're not gonna know what I'm saying but it's okay "clavicular" looks max or we don't need to worry about it but the point is that I was like oh my god I was like I just kept thinking I was like if this guy who is now like being quoted in the New York Times about like his philosophy of like wanting to like look the best but it's a very fascist sort of like narrow

ideology if he had been around the 70s would he have been a punk you know like I really was just like I couldn't stop thinking about it okay I'm kidding I was back to what Darby was saying he said yeah we're fascists but we're not Nazis there's a difference we don't believe in killing off races I can respect Hitler for being a genius in doing what he did but not for killing off innocent people his genius lies in his speech what he could do with words there's films of him

giving speeches in Germany a lot of it is just an emotion that enters you can get up fascism it's just that we've tried other forms of government and none of them are going to work the only one that

“will work is complete fascism a complete fascist state but you have to have the right person to lead it”

if you get everyone to believe in one person then it'll work communism can never work

there's a few problematic things in there obviously I don't think we have to hand it to Hitler but he regardless of if there's morality and what he's saying or not he was intrigued by how powerful it all Hitler was with just the power of his words and then I noticed something that just the year before David Bowie had been quoted in in playboy saying I believe very strongly in fascism one way we can speed up the sort of liberals on the tangy foul in the air at

the moment is to speed up the progress of a right wing totally dictatorial tyranny and get over it as fast as possible and then I was like okay now things are kind of making sense to me you know Darby crash being so obsessed with Bowie there's no way he didn't read that you know as soon as you said that I was like yeah he made that and then putting it together with like all his reading so I just I found that and again that he loved the idea of controlling a crowd you know

“I don't know I just thought it was I just I think when we talk about the germs a lot of people”

might say something to the effect of like well the germs weren't that important or the germs music

you know I mean they made basically one album but you got to take in the big picture here like

how important they were in terms of punk culture in terms of what they were able to accomplish in such a short time and we're gonna get into it in a little bit later but like you cannot discredit how big of an impact they had on hardcore there would be no hardcore without the germs a lot of what you're saying is exactly true and when people when people look at like subcultures and you're in scenes unless there are sociologists or someone that's doing a dissertation or

something they usually don't get all parts of it right they can't understand what the evolution was from like liking or being interested in something to then letting it influence you to then you using it to influence others yeah that type of trajectory like people just don't see it totally like they're very very cut and dry about stuff especially about punk like I told you I have people like trying to correct me on stuff that I live through and they weren't even born yet you know they

“weren't and I think it's like punk in particular it's like people have become so obsessed with it”

obviously changed it changed the course of music we wouldn't all of the alternative music we have now is all rooted in punk and I think like it's impossible to understand unless you were there like you were how big of a deal it was like how people would throw shit at you guys on the streets like other times it was not like it was an easy doing what we did exactly it wasn't easy doing what you did into it I'll tell you so I can't remember if I told this to you earlier because I'm talking

so much but I told my mom at one point I said mom you don't understand this is like Paris in the 20s and she rolled her eyes and I said no really it is and then now this many years later and realized it really was I was true I nailed it right on and changed everything in some way that Paris in the 20s did without that art movement that was going on I think you're dead on and I think it's again we just said about it's worth underlying like this was not to be in the scene

and to be like this in the world was difficult you know like you really were going against the grain does not not really possible to understand now where like alternative culture has been

co-opped in a resoul to everyone and there's no such like it's basically impossible to shock people

pops up but people are interested in it not not like feeling aggressive about it because it's the other yeah you know people were just wanting to know where it came from it it was so different in those days okay so it's 1970 now we're we're coming on the home stretch ish we're halfway through I guess not through the podcast right through the story okay so 1978 in January you mentioned this little earlier but I want to ask you a bit about it the canterbury apartments because this is

around the time that people start moving in there and lornal lived there with one to Carlisle black randy lived there and we'd land black randy in the metro squad well so it was just like a cheap apartment building and so many other people lived there too that like the listeners probably wouldn't know who they were yeah I was actually last night I was walking there this is my boyfriend around the canterbury and stuff we were just walking around Hollywood and um like I didn't know

he lived right where the canterbury was and I was like it was so wild yeah because it was right

“by the mask and it was cheap so that's why everyone lived there what was the scene like there”

the canterbury was great it had this big courtyard that's no longer open but it used to be an open courtyard that had it had um windows around each side and they were like sort of like there's dormant windows where you can open them up and I remember walking into the canterbury but for it was gated back in the day and everyone would be like just sort of hanging around drinking a bear with their legs like hanging over the side and you know even the lobby was a party

the um there was always graffiti on that on the elevators and that the guy that that was the

manager I think he was like some kind of a drug it was just mayhem and the canterbury it was just wild such a such a cool thing to have like the space where everyone lived you can just pop by and like see all your friends and go to a party although Darby said that so when Darby crushed that was I couldn't live there too much everything Lorna lives there but Pat lives down in my neighborhood the canterbury is in a really horrible neighborhood one of my friends got hit in the head of the

champagne bottle thrown by somebody going buy on a motorcycle and someone threw an effett bullenda yeah oh there was knives going on but I don't think it was probably at bullenda right no but no because the rebels the bad the gang of Hollywood they had westside story knife fights in the middle of Hollywood Boulevard Hollywood Boulevard those days was so deserted that you could literally and I did this do cartwheels down the middle of Hollywood Boulevard after just what would be normal

rush hour on any street it was just like dead deserted there was nothing there until the code at theater it was because there was no business is what you're saying it was not a little tiny like a pet store on the north side and then there was a store called the Orient on the south side

that's like kind of right near the magic store and I think only just got closed finally but there

was nothing on there there wasn't restaurants or anything not until the code at theater came

“and it was a dead zone that's that's why it was even more insane because even a little bit”

later into the 80s when I had my punk house disgrace land it was still like that you could do whatever the fuck you wanted there was no surveillance cops knew if you lived in the neighborhood it was it was crazy so it's fine it's fine everything's fine now we love it the world is perfect right now I love so happy to be here let's put it this way I saw my I was leaving the apple store on sunset see no snow good story starts with I was leaving now this is good but it is a good

story but I didn't even realize I was on my old block where my punk house was disgrace land was because there was a 15 foot high privacy was something the bad story no it's just like it was gentrified sad story yeah but I didn't recognize that it was my street even and that street was within walking place of all the clubs I worked at a club called Cathay to Grant yeah

very famous you booked the first red hot chili peppers show yeah yeah yeah it's no big deal

it's not big thank god I've done a lot of graysies closing him and just one of the most and literally the dosic dosic he's woman the most interesting woman in the world okay so the cannabis popping off cliff hanger is out of the band we don't know why they get Nicky B to come play he was drumming for the weirdness and he was kind of a punk rock session guy

“I think a back to San Francisco so cool so this is the night after the sex pistols played their”

famous last show at wind trolling yeah and Nicky Bids had he remembered said vicious walking from the watching from the wings yeah and then he just gets on stage oh he's like

breaks the glass over his head the carves a gigantic bloody circle in his chest with the broken

glass then comes in right on cue with I'm Darby crash the social blast shot the chills I'm not gonna we're not gonna go into it later because I had to turn it off after 15 minutes because I forgot how fucking bad it is but there is like a version of that in the what we do

“a secret movie the wigs in that movie okay we talk about it out and they're crying and that movie”

they should go to the hate the people let me those wigs all the all the fucking people that we're being extras at that movie like because I wasn't in it people that I didn't even know from like every sight and stuff we're calling me up when you're not in this movie why not why not I don't even know how they found my phone numbers you were like because horrible movie I was glad I wasn't in it after that you know what we all it's there's something for a real um and that one

is not for me okay so now in February dawn bowls but I'm dawn bowls has moved to LA real name Jimmy

Michael Gersetti I was the first person he met Nellie really to everybody yeah tell okay so he's

a Leo from Phoenix Arizona now tell me how did you meet I was I was walking down um down to Hallywood Boulevard and he was he was parked in a car just south of Franklin and he looked he looked cool or he had a cool bumper sticker or something and we just started talking and he gave me these wild sunglasses like 50 sunglasses and he said he had just moved to town it's so cool he still tells everyone I'm the first person he met Nellie yeah so he had actually moved

“to LA with his friend um Rob Graves I think it's possible right now um he took his name from”

Arizona journalist named on balls who's killed by car bomb in 1976 um investigating some mafia stuff he had heard the drums forming single and he said I was transfixed this was either the best or worst thing I'd ever heard now this I thought to myself is punk I had heard that these guys needed a drummer and even though I had only been drum playing drums for about two weeks and didn't even own a pair of sticks let a lot of drum kit I was there man so they like him and Rob Graves

just drove from Arizona went to a dill show at the whiskey meant you tried to find the germs everyone called him cactus head is this true yeah I forgot it back so good we got them cactus head so he gets Darby and Pat's phone numbers maybe from you and when he gets Pat on the phone so this is what I was saying earlier Don tells Pat oh like here all my favorite like cool avant guard and punk band and Pat's like oh yeah I don't know any of those bands I like Queen and David Bowie

and Donald was like I thought he was fucking with me so Darby's like look the germs were playing a benefit for the mask because the mask is not probably having some troubles at the elk's lodge and Nikki beat was going to be playing drums so Don goes and with Rob Graves in the Afro as they get rooms at the canterbury he's like getting into the whole scene and Nikki beat said he gave Don Bull's drum lessons he's like I taught him how to play all the songs and then I stopped

the lessons when he said punk rock is supposed to be sloppy and it's supposed to have sticks he's like okay and they so the germs auditioned on at the mask in the bathroom um Don said I set up my drums in three inches of beer in urine and the overflowing mass toilet and banded out some noise Lorna Darby and Pat watched horrified but amused a Pat put politely interrupted can you play like a song I played life of crime the weirdos song Nikki beat it beat it taught me and they

went into the other room out of your shot I don't know what do you think well he did come all the way from Phoenix a long tense moment later imagine being turned down to drum for the biggest joke band in LA Darby came back in the bathroom and said with a characteristic nod to some vague perceived audience somewhere just above his head well you're a germ it's a really cinematic moment

“someone in the book and I can't remember who pointed out that like it felt like almost overnight”

the germs went from like really being like this joke band to all of a sudden having like really good songs yeah and they were like what Pat said the germs music change just because we eventually got better we couldn't help it we started out with nothing so we had no choice but to change they just that's that's exactly how I saw it I mean they weren't a lot of the other bands that came out here yeah or maybe lived here but not right in LA and had been playing and like you know down near

the South Bay or something they they had a better start off you know the germs has started off was

in public yeah the first show everyone they didn't know how to play anything like I'm gonna put some

peanut butter on my mouth but it's a thing of legend you know they they dive in the

just like and they knew they were really these musicians playing music you know as a bit of different that they knew what they were doing yeah so slash who loves you know loves the germs

offers to put out their first CP I wanted to say this also that Darby said because I thought it was

“interesting I never really did want to shock people but you have to do something when there's”

all these bands when we first started we couldn't really play it neither could anybody else so you have to do something to draw more attention to your band and that was an easy way but when people said oh let's go see the germs look probably bleed a little this time we stopped doing that that's when we started to learn how to play better it wasn't enough to just bleed yourself Bob Biggs who is the publisher of slash he's also passed away sadly um he said I heard some germs recordings at Steve

Samyoff who was the founder of the magazine had it might have been forming and I wasn't sure whether

I liked it at all then it stuck in my mind then Samyoff said look I'll do an EP it asked if I'd

finance it so I said sure I'll put up because $600 didn't sound like such a big risk this was the lexicon double EP they pressed 1000 copies May 1978 produced by I don't know how to pronounce this as a geza ex geza geza ex did you know geza ex of course so he he did sound at the mask right yeah okay Nicky beat play drums on this um geza ex said pat didn't even have an amp so I just rigged

“this chain of pedals and that's why it has this tubular guitar sound. Jeff and Donald have”

read across that I think the lexicon double record has one of the most unique guitar sounds I've ever heard kind of sounds like a bandjo being played through a wall wall pedal. Darby later said I think the lexicon double sessions could have been better things got screwed up and stuff like on circle one there's a half of the vocals missing and we just had to make it like a lead and turn up the guitar and so because we didn't know what had happened and it just disappeared and pat couldn't

show up and he's the one that knows the most about the music and Lorna had to tell geza what to do and you can hardly hear the drums so it was not into Darby standards I liked what John does that about it he said you didn't know the words because when you'd see them live it was all like "war,war,war,war" yeah would sing so everyone was just astounded when they got the first slash record and actually read the lyrics and said great the lyrics yeah now people were

absolutely astounded they were just like what they because they didn't I don't think they knew that the lyrics were gonna sound so good so like scholarly and the key cases so I mean you're in

impressive his lyrics were off the tune really incredible and you couldn't hear any of that because

of the shit ass equipment obviously played quite intoxicated I should ask not loving to hold the microphone close to his mouth when he performed but yeah I mean lexicon double which god tears song no but it was so hard change the lot when when that when that record came out and people could I'm a lexicon double with a battered brain switching for a future the world's my aim is so good and also again lexicon from going back to high school going back to the

rhetoric teacher like it's all really there you know it's not that the lyrics are incredible and then give me this give me that very much his give me a beer Nikki beats I stole the opening drum lick for circle one from the almond brother song in memory of it with three which I was like that's again really funny like you would not associate the almond brothers

“with the germ so that's what I'm laughing about is because I only just heard this myself like”

shit like that was happening a lot in punk rock that people that weren't there don't know yeah like they wouldn't like they would just take from wherever you could like if if it didn't bug them fix them like look on that that's that works yeah no no one will be any the wiser so I mean it's great it's perfect there's a review here in lobotomy number six your fans in by yourself I'll read it for you for anyone who dismiss the germs is crap wake up this is one hot record they not only play at

the speed of light they do it well pat smears look at the split guitar work will have you going in two seconds and darby crash practically vomit out the vocals lexicon doubles great but my favorite circle one musical poison it'll have you shaking violently from the intro ready aim fire down to the last court be careful when you play this record it may burn right through your turn table wow that's a good job buzzer thank you

you know journalistic integrity you were dating um the guitar player but it's fine I think you were still allowed to give it a good review well it was a great record yeah I mean that's unnyable

church kind of got started up just after the mask closed down um bands would practice there black flag practice there Ron Reyes and Chuck DeCowski of black flag famously lived there you can see that in the decline of western civilization till they were going to talk about later red cross

would rehearse there there'd be parties there now here's what xine said about it when the south

base scene first started happening I really liked the new bands like black flag then there was this divide between Hollywood and the beach scene Greg again said they wouldn't let those bands play in Hollywood so they had to create their own scene and it kind of became anti Hollywood I would reject this because everybody wanted to see those bands play fuck Hollywood is what we were saying too somehow the south bay punk scene opposed the old Hollywood scene and the audience started becoming

anti rock star anti whatever and if you were signed to slash then you were a rock star trader the south bay girls didn't like me very much so I stopped going to the hardcore shows because I was threatened did shove me and push me and tell me they hated me they started calling these people the

“HB's I think was because of hunting to be yeah because the epicenter I guess according to the”

book that I read was a high school called Edison High and hunting to be each hunting to be too as a wild scene yeah but I think hunting to be just different than the it is a south bay scene it's very different so can't just lump it in to get not you but like totally but I think the south school was happening was like the south bay scene was like black flag and red cross and it was like this like had this punk scene hopped again but then there was also back door man from there with

fast Freddy oh sure of course done done whileer and all of those older people runaways for show isn't fast Freddy's house yeah yeah and they were all they were huge they were a little bit

older than us but they were they were like always at the you know at the record swap meetings that

I mean they yeah they would have been called punk if they had just appeared there but they were already there doing punk stuff right yeah a little bit it wasn't getting cloud punk it sounds like from what I was piecing together and I'm I'm sure I'm missing anything but this is from everything I read the black flag kind of corded these new hardcore punk kids from hunting from orange count you right because they need it to up their numbers this is I'm this is not from my own hard

“and mind I this is something I read I believe Brendan Mullins at it and a couple of other”

people said it and so they Jeff McDonald they needed to sort of like increase their audience kind of the way Darby was increasing his audience through his own methodologies black flag was like oh we can get these kids and these kids were a different kind of punk these were kind of like as I think Mike Watt put it Testo Driven Jock it's like totally yeah let's say exactly they were this is a whole new thing I could say that but for Mike Watt to say it

right yeah and it's like this was not this was not with the punk scene at Hollywood was the punk scene at Hollywood was kind of what we associate with all the early things of punk it was queer friendly right or to a certain extent it was very it was woman friendly you know like it was about being weird and it was being subversive but it was about which was coming together was this new crop of suburban surface that very anti-wim and anti-wim it was like horrifying anti-somatic

odd parts of it extremely violent like they they from what I was reading they were like intrigued to come to these shows because they heard they were violent and they were like oh we can

“we can be violent we can fucking beat people up that's what we want to do so this”

influx kind of starts to change things right what was so interesting about the germs is that I feel like they straddled but both worlds and they could they could straddled both because while they were from that punk world of like weirdos coming together and anything goes they also did just crazy shit they also did direct diabetes stuff was just like you if you saw someone doing like

this stuff that he did on stage your first thing would be what's he gonna do off stage this is a

loose cannon does he have a gun totally fuck out of us yeah and then on top of it actually musically that dawn bowls is drumming and and Pat Smith's guitar riffs set the stage for what became hardcore music you know like that was something really different and I think they were in this kind of in between place but the crowds got really violent at these shows in orange county and sometimes in this outfit Jane we'd learn from the govows what was her punk name

Jane oh I know Jane Jane Jane yeah she said the whole scene started to change it started a lot

been taken over by all those really angry young white boys black flag we were like what's this all

about it's really gross we got lumped in with those bands but we never knew those guys and then Keith

Morris said in the book the gogos were playing pop music they weren't a punk band it was a female vocal harmony group with rock guitars and drums of course they're gonna be taking a back playing a show where it's 95% sweaty guys jump it around at a little blood flowing here and there they absolutely were a punk band though they started as a punk band they couldn't fucking play anything I think that's where the gogos first gig at the mask had three songs in it and two of them with

“the same song I mean it that's I think that's what's so interesting right this that's sort of the”

difference between punk as like a counter cultural sort of like movement right or like punk is

philosophy right or community yeah which is under those terms of course the gogos were punk they came from the world this community of punk whereas what Keith Morris seems to be describing as his whole other thing punk as anarchy as violence as like this like whole new crazy version which kind of becomes hardcore and it's like fascinating to me how like around 1979 it's sort of splits you know and you have these two branches of what's going on and I read I don't remember who said it but

they were like once this sort of oh it was kickboy he said once the hardcore scene kind of expanded the germs kind of disappeared like slowly eroded what they had and everyone did kind of like going different directions right I mean the screamers and the weirdos sort of receded X did really well but they kind of went in a bit of a rockability direction like with the blasters and stuff it it it it does feel like this kind of splintered everything and it kind of yeah kind of splintered

stuff but I mean it did splinter but I don't I don't know if I having been in it we were talking

“that it came exactly from that point I think when people like like X were better at playing then”

a lot of like teenagers that started up here because they you know they had like John Doe had barband experience and played a lot in Billy's Zoom and played with with fucking Gene Vincent

totally you know I mean that's just an example and that they were incredible so they moved at a

different pace than someone that just decided to pick up like a guitar that I'm jar of peanut butter like calling myself something you know yeah but also in those days anything that people were doing was okay it wasn't as it wasn't as formally regimented as as a lot of people look at it nowadays because things are all genre based now on the music is and it wasn't like that you could be in the suburban lines and just like what a great thing yeah that was just

this punk I was like I don't know like the germs or you know or some some other band you know just like even that even that Orphium gig was if you look at it people nowadays would say that wasn't a punk band because you know the plim souls or the red whatever that you know they were they were called then I'm blanking it out yeah but I mean it was a it was a musical scene so many people knew each other so many people had very diverse kind of influences

and or mentors or started off one way and morphed into another scene but it still is everything that made up the Hollywood punk scene yeah you know and that was that was a it was a huge scene but it was also you know it had many different factors in it but no one was counting that kind of stuff right until people started counting it historically yeah and there was a lot of also misconception coming from a lot of areas I remember like reading meeting things that people had

written in books and be like that that wasn't right yeah and then I'd have to go back and check was this just my perception of it wasn't right and then I would start calling people at a new and say I just read blah blah blah blah and they were like what right right with you they're like

“no that's crazy I think a lot of them came from assumptions right and and the need to”

do attacks on me after the fact and to look back and start to categorize things I think you're sorry and even you couldn't even see it and like that quote I read from a scene like she's not

but it but it does feel like the lived experience at the very least was that like some people in the Hollywood scene were put off by the vibe brought by these new suburban punk oh yeah I was one of them because this was like anti everything that punk rock was standing for right and then like I

“remember just thinking like with those with those people you know like they're they're all probably”

fucking like privileged orange county boys you know like they didn't like just like save all their money to move across the country they lived in Orange County another thinking like there's such a great totally Rodney on the rock interviewed Darby on the radio in 1980 and he said you were there before black flag you started it and Darby said someone's got to finish it that was really great yeah I was gonna finish it he also said in a different interview with Rodney records are only a

medium to get something else done I want to die when I'm done and now it's time to make the first and only full-length record um slashed shifted into a label basically Steve Sammy off left to do the magazine stuff and Bob Biggs was like okay well the magazine doesn't really make money anyway is let's really do this label and they start with the drums album can I hope he's furious

“that in the lexicon double book that the the way Bob Biggs raised money for this was by”

dealing coke although he denies that he says there was never any wholesale dealing going on I love

that he used the whole sale so many things like just a little doubted out of my house hobby dealing no wholesale dealing retail dealing everybody did shit like yeah that's basically it was like I wasn't more deeply involved with cocaine than anyone else it was the seventies now that's exactly true I gotta say I was just talking about this with someone last night everyone did a little retail dealing of cocaine yeah before we're just dead it off the time you know that that really

was a seventies thing so at this point they had a manager named Nicole of Nicole so what was the vibe on Nicole not the word interesting you got that a lot from what i've gathered just a little off you can see her if you want she's in the decline documentary she didn't know a lot about business and i don't feel like i'm doing any slandering here because i don't think she had a business background the germs contract was slashed according to one journalist was quite draconian but

sounded like she didn't really know she was doing so they signed that but she did set up a publishing company for Darby and Pat called crash course music so and i do think his mother Darby's mother still

makes money from that it's good yeah so now so they make this first full-length called g_i_

just for germs and cognita oh because they're not getting booked at this time and it was produced by john john did you ever go by the studio when they were recording the album i didn't i don't think i'm mixing i may be mixing it up with so many sessions i was in and out of some of the sessions that if i did go in there i didn't seem like it was like so great and giant and full-blut

“you know what i mean what do you remember about this time in general like so i guess we're”

about a year out from the first show like what was the like general like in the scene like what did people think of the germs were they getting kind of like bigger and bigger did they have like a big following it was starting to get a following for sure you know but a lot of a lot

of the bands that started right around that time where we're getting you know where at first it was

sort of limited to a couple of clubs and then people started getting interested and then people started touring even if it was you know not like a giant like corporate sponsored tour even if it was just driving to different you know places like outside of the valley or the salmon Cisco or you know there wasn't like my band tour it a little bit later and it was still very DIY like you had to send stuff yourself to clubs in different hands that you found out about

there wasn't anywhere near the touring network there was you know no one had agents you know yeah you'd have to send like everything like here's a poster here's a tape you know so that just made a different but people were starting to grow then you know it was going slowly right but by you know by around that time everyone knew at least sort of a working knowledge of what punk rock was sure yeah because now we're like you know three years in yeah so early at first nobody the

fuck knew well yeah or where things were happening you know like so much has happened like the remains of come out yeah um the talking had a lot of time I went from New York started coming

and we were starting to get English inputs yeah you know so it was really it was exploding and all

“of this was like and you know in not that long of a time for it to be going on like in New York”

like a lay in in the UK and staff and there was enough people that were into it either as consumers or as like band members in booking agents and wroteies and stuff to sustain a scene that was obviously going to be there for a little while you know clubs like CBG these only had like if we can get to New York we could probably play there yeah I wonder so much if they hadn't been able to stick around a little longer like what would have happened to the germs but they make this album

they wanted a big name producer randomly Darby wanted Mark Lindsey from Paul Revere and the

Raiders who had to look up because they had never heard of them they were like an idol.

I really didn't know that popular in the 60s I was kind of before my time but he was too expensive so Pat said they were like who's our most famous friend and they were like Joan Jack so they got Joan Jack by several accounts Joan Jack did a lot of sleeping on the couch and less producing although she said that she she said we were really on the ball most of the time not drinking and trying not to party while we're doing the record there was one day I got drunk and probably did pass out

that was the day that records shut down live in the studio and Darby made that joke about me being passed out or whatever there's a lyric and shut down that's like poor Joan poor Joan Jack passed out on the fucking set well Penelope Spirits did say in the book that she was there and actually Joan Jack was asleep and the whole panthers of the same thing but again I wasn't there I'm just reporting what people say Nicole Pamter tried to take a little credit here I don't know if it's

true and she said she was the one saying Darby do this Darby do that Pat smear who I'm just inclined to trust said if anyone was the producer it was Pat Burnett the engineer he was really really good super nice Pat was great yeah he was great and he says he just took over the role and didn't really ask for any credit afterwards they recorded a place called Quadtech on 6th and Western it took about three weeks cost about six grand there was a lot of rumors afterwards that Lorna Doom did

not play on the album that Joan or Pat played her parts which is incredibly sexist I never heard

that yeah I mean this was I just read about the book I obviously wasn't around but Don Bowles said that's absolute nonsense her base sound was huge like jaw wobble Lorna's trademark wall of want she was the perfect basis for this music yeah and Pat said I like the way Don Bowles played drums it was the best part of the drums albums the drums and the lyrics I love the lyrics I always thought they were great the cover art is obviously it's iconic you can see it behind

present the blue circle on the black background Bob Biggs of slash one of the coverage of beat germs spelled out in rotting meat and jelly beans was such a knot I guess just can't imagine that being the artwork and they were like no we're doing this good this is so much better

“I didn't know that no no it's not being beaten jelly beat I think everyone was like we have this”

like I mean it sounds like a tiger beat type toilet and this is like so stark in iconic do you have any memories around when this album came out well I remember my my own thing and this I didn't only do this with the germs album but when I when I get a record that a friend of mine made yeah I would just look at it and listen to it and just marvel at wow it really happened it really happened it was exciting yeah because we were also invested in rock and roll and especially weird

rock and roll and stuff like bully which was like like we've said many times and this episode that wasn't mainstream you know it was incredible that someone you were closely made a record what did you make of the actual music do you love it yeah I liked it I liked it a lot I loved it I was so proud of them yeah it's quite I was listening to it the other day it's funny I read this quote from Pat which I thought was super funny and it actually stopped me from wearing my

German stature on this episode but he was he said later he was like some people told me they

were inspired by the guitar on the GI album but I always thought of the germs the t-shirt band

people have the t-shirts and they say they love the germs they don't listen to the record maybe they even have the record but they don't play it and then kind of get what he's saying like

“I don't know if that's what I should I don't throw on the germs record all the time I'm an”

40 through years old and it's like kind of honestly a rough hang but when I hear Richie Dagger's crime or lexicon double I like so many like heart felt feelings I have so many memories like

and these are still like classic iconic punk songs that have also a pop sensibility

to them and are so catchy and so infectious and so visceral and like on one hand I get what he's saying like this is not diamond dogs you know like this is not the Beatles like people are not probably putting it on their house sometimes people it is yeah he doesn't get it because he created it doesn't he doesn't understand it because I mean I'm sure there's like parts of

“hunky door or whatever that bow he had that he's like oh yeah you know what you're so right I think”

I actually know several people that might put this album on all the time and I know friend of the pot Alex Nelson definitely knows people and pot puts it on herself from times time Pat Smith said that we must bleed was his favorite song he said it's the only one that if I were to listen to the record now I would listen to or if I was going to play someone as long

someone who had never heard of the germs I would put that on or forming depending on how I

wanted them to stay I love forming I don't remember forming when it only it just came out it was just blown away I mean if you couldn't hear it a lot the lyrics in their live show right the way you could hear it on the record no it was a holy fuck with the hell is this

“it's so important you know it's talking to a friend Jen he was like oh I don't like the germs he's”

young and I was like you could you can say that but you like you don't understand like you can't understand how important it was like how how so much of what you love now came from that came from that wouldn't exist you might not want to throw on GI but like you cannot discount how important they were a lot of people did discount this album though it did not really get much press or reviews Dom Bol said that Nicole should have gotten the booking agent and she didn't he also said something

really funny which was we just didn't have that brutal Calvinist work attitude anyway black flag had this paleolithic work ethic thing happening they worked their asses off night and day 24/7 no they've really did that is really true so the germs barely even liked getting up in the morning and I was like well that's like the fundamental difference there they got to write up in the LA weekly by fast-breddie who we mentioned before which is very positive and they were written

up in melody maker which was very cool they called them the cosmic soul mates of sham 69 but after the record comes out from from what I was reading and I'd love to hear your take ones you were there that the germs sort of went downhill after the album came out particularly

Darby so Rick all L Rick said the germs are never the most together band to begin with they had a couple

months during 79 where they were fairly tight after the GI album the germs practiced less and less it was chaos Darby was fucked up out of his mind every show he wasn't even trying to present himself as an artist he was just trying to present his pain and his pain had become this one long scream one long intoxicated primal scream of despair it was obvious that nobody was ever going to get a real record deal

“nobody was going to be rich in famous which is what I think everyone wanted really if they were honest”

and so he got into drugs more and more and the stage show just became like an evil medieval spectacle only Darby never made the canyon did you kind of experience thought like in the late late period yes it was it was sort of sad especially with him you know like I could see him struggling and how hard it was you know for for like whatever whether it was disillusionment or you know just like just drug the stuff it was it was very very difficult to watch well we haven't talked about it at all yet but it's I think that's worth bringing

up now Darby crash was gay but he wasn't totally out is that right or he was hey lesson but I don't think he was only totally men I don't like to speculate on people's sexuality because I don't think it's like you know important or interesting except that there's a lot of the story of Darby crash's life that people seem to refer back to that maybe he didn't feel comfortable to be like out and gay or that he was rejected a lot by men that he was interested in because they weren't gay

and if that played into like sort of his like increasing drug use and despair that I mean that definitely could have happened because he was not what you'd call like you know the model gay boy of the time that the whole male gay scene which I was part of like just through people I

were really like nothing that Darby was like yeah and like at the time so I don't I I can't

“speculate on what he went through but there was probably not like you know someone that looked like a”

muscle boy or something you know totally that was there was very cut and dried in those days yeah because I was very interested because obviously there were gay punk there were men I mean there was there was a black brandy and yeah and like Rick Oh Rick we're hoping you and Taylor very and if they even did know then you know yeah yeah I just thought it was I thought it was interesting there's a lot of stories in the book about various like love interests that he had like kind of like Donny Rose who I

think was a young boy that this is a whole other side thing about these and I'm sure you knew them too but these young young gutter punk tricks that they were called like these young boys from broken homes

who like sort of were male prostitutes basically so many um and Donny Rose was actually straight but that

“was like yeah this is that was his money that was his money and it was a lot of that going on yeah”

not even only in the punk scene right no I'm sure like everywhere and there was yeah so there's just like these stories about Darby sort of forwarded romantic attempts that played seem to coincide with his increasing dissolution as a person and his like going deeper into drugs and sort of like you know whack waning as a person and so I was just curious if if you had had any personal experience with that with him or had talked to him about it or anything I didn't really talk to him about it because

at that point in his life he was so sort of surrounded by the coterie of Darby devotees yeah it was it was that it was a really really odd thing to witness especially when it was someone that you'd been really good friends with or you know it was just such a drastic change and it made me feel a number of emotions everywhere anything from like annoyance to severe concern for his sanity or his life or for me to like feel rejected sometimes or you know it was just like it was like a

big melting pot of stuff and it was really hard to watch like him happening on the downhill spiral yeah you know it was it was very sad so this is this time that we're talking about tail end of

1979 Darby finally moves out of his mother's house into this guy Tony the hustler's house

Tony said that he thought Darby was attracted to him because he was a full-on walking talking in your face leatherclad horror and I had wealthy celebrity clients who paid me well Darby lived with me for about four or five months during 1979 at 1775 or kid Avenue behind Grahamman's Chinese dad yeah that was the first time he had ever lived away from his mom Darby seemed pretty happy after he got out but apparently according to Tony he just couldn't

stand all the clients coming over he like didn't want to live in that kind of environment Tony also had some descriptive words about Darby's body and then downman but I'm this is

“not that kind of podcast so I'm not gonna go into that but if you want to read about it it's a”

less condouble this is also around the time from what I could piece together there's no obviously date stamp in anyone's book but obviously Darby had I mean everyone's doing drugs like you said but this is when Darby starts doing heroin yeah which not everybody was doing no that was a that for me that was a huge line too far yeah and past me I know past me instead of the same thing so I think this starts to alienate pat from Darby Helen killer said once he started doing heroin he became

even more vulnerable than he already was it became easiest kitty play for more vampires and vultures to swoop in and circle him this is when a woman called Amber come on yeah okay so it's very interesting right because we we talked about the original kind of circle around him and it's like your friends with Helen killer you were friends with Melissa maybe and yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah and these women were like from all accounts and again I'm just piecing together from what I read but

you can tell me we're really loved Darby cry yeah yeah and then they all in the book are like fuck Amber so who was this Amber woman I don't know entirely where she came from but she was terrible she just like to just sort of materialized into the scene or maybe I just wasn't you know she was an on my radar yeah but you were the you were the queen of the scene so I feel like you would have known if she was already there I'm just saying yeah no she just she just turned up

glossy and I mean it's again she looked like a housewife to me she was a housewife so interest

“she was really fascinating what you're saying is really fascinating because I do feel like a lot of this”

and I totally get it it's like I did not know that she had a husband so it's very interesting because it makes total sense that Darby crush was this like kind of enigmatic charismatic like known figure in the punk scene and you know everyone loved him so if you wanted to kind of have some social cloud yeah you would go on mom to him now she's marrying she has a husband Darby moves in with her and her husband and then eventually the husband's like what the fuck

and moves out I knew I knew that he was living with her for a while but I didn't know there was a husband in him according to Helen Keller and Paul Rossler he would call them up and beg them to come over because he didn't want to be alone with her yeah Amber Gerber said I don't hold Amber responsible for his drug addiction but I hold her responsible for not caring whether he

“lived or died she had ulterior motives man she wanted to be the sugar mama she wanted”

fucking Nicole's seat Nicole pants or the man she trusted for his idle status and putting enough dope in him got it for her that sounds about right Brenda Mullins talks about this show December 22nd 1979 at the whiskey as germ show he said the final nail in the coffin of Ellie's punk naive period can be can be pinpointed to almost that day the battle lines were drawn the Hollywood and the new HB hard core scenes were no longer the same people could no longer be the

same people with the same outlook and perspective the louder faster bonehead thrashes that I could arrive and tonight was it's coming out ball this night it was a packed house of suburban beach

kids we had never seen before the vibe in the room was seething this was a crazy night apparently

packed hit a balancer with his guitar like pretty hard it had to like escape the cops there was like a whole like riotous thing that happened now we're in 1980 this is basically the

“last year of the germs this is really important for those of you I guess for all of us who are kind”

of tracking the trajectory of the germs and maybe what could have been the cruising films on track oh yeah so cruising is a 1980 crime thriller that was written and directed by William Friedkin starting Al Pacino and Paul Servino it's loosely based on a 1970 novel by a New York Times reporter about a serial killer targeting gay men and it's like kind of sat in the CD underbelly of this like gasing in New York it felt that was a really good movie when it came out I haven't seen it since it

did but I was actually just thinking about it not that long ago it had a lot of controversy I guess when it came out because of the way portrayed like I guess the CD gasing or whatever point I quote CD I kind of knew the city right you like that time and that seems pretty right the producer jack Nietzsche is the one who invited the germs to be on it and he was like this absolutely iconic musician songwriter producer he had started his career working with Sunny Bona and then with Phil

Spector and he liked that everything in jack Nietzsche yeah put together those wall of sound recordings the stones nearly young anyways did all these incredible soundtracks so they were like yeah of course we'll do this thing with jack Nietzsche Nicole Panters that before I very first met with jack even began he looked around the room and asked anyone got any perkinan the army said he knew

that it would be okay because this guy was a real drug addict that was always kind of funny

so they do six new songs with jack producing even William Friedkin comes by one day they only ended up using one song in the film it's called "Lion's Share" and according to Gerber Derby was pissed because that's not the one he wanted the other songs were my tunnel throw it away not all right now I hear the laughter and going down if you listen to these which you can on YouTube they're all there you can kind of imagine with the second

Germs album would have been and it's tighter and like you see the evolution of them as a band and like also how they benefited from like a fucking real deal world-class producer yeah yeah and it really gives you like a sliding doors moment of like what could have been you know yeah I just I just want to point out because it's really interesting again you said this earlier it's like they started with nothing you know they didn't know how to do anything you thrust them on

stage basically and of course they were going to keep getting better you know it had only been

two minutes it had been two years I just I just thought that was interesting and it's worth giving a listen to after that the fleet would open did you ever go there yeah and we're done to a bitch yeah yeah yeah yeah because it stayed open for a while yeah it was a great club this is where the Mike Watko came in so he said Darby had nothing else the south bear the OC the germs would play

individual he was too scary the fleet would crowds were young they had a lot of testo I could see how people would have a problem with them plus they drove all the chicks away this is another thing that came up women stopped going to the shows because of these like totally kind of meat head yeah jock punk so whatever yeah there was a time when punk shows were on there oh mainly yeah especially in these kind of hardcore yeah that's really a lot of us were just like

fuck yeah dog bulls call them like all football jocks drooling over each other yeah they were aware that the germs were thought to be cool but they didn't know why it was like being at some Nuremberg rally it was stupid chaos as opposed to the dementia of a higher order concept of chaos at the end of the end and I thought that was great okay so in April the germs shot their

“segment of the decline of Western civilization do you remember that being shot around town at”

all were you at any of the I didn't go to any of yeah you were like no thank you so this film this is April 1980 the film doesn't come out until July of 1981 but according to Casey Colah we're gonna talk about obviously later he did see the film and he came home devastated by how he was portrayed

as sloppy and stupid it is interesting I mean it's it's an incredible document but like again I

wasn't there so I don't know I have no idea how accurate it was I know I do happen to know that like these they don't even like the scene that is at Darby's house is not Darby's house I think it was Tony the Hustler's house and he got Michelle there to just be with him they didn't live together and they were kind of like doing this like playing house thing or he's like cooking but that was again kind of theater and then the tarantula that's in there was actually Tony the Hustlers

because Darby had bought it for him for his birthday so that's that is filmed then I didn't write around here Darby kicks Don Bulls out of the band do you remember this at all? I don't know if I

“remember that exactly at the moment so what happened was Don had started a side project called”

Vox Pop and according to Don Bulls Darby said he felt betrayed by me being in a joke band but I think from what I read in general he didn't get along that well with Don but even more importantly according to other people including Pat he tries to replace him with this guy Rob Henley who was from Huntington Beach who he had kind of a romantic entangle met with and who definitely could not play drums. Pat Smith said Don Bulls is the perfect drummer for us with everyone else even

Nikki was a great drummer it felt weird because of the songs but with Don it felt normal. Anyways Darby made Phil Bartell who was known as Pat Fear tell Don Bulls that he was out of the band and then right after that him and Amber went to London so he's in London and Darby

basically tells Pat like I really want Robbie in the band and while he's in England

Pat has to like have a practice with Lorna and this new drummer who cannot play and they were just like this is not working babe like we don't want to teach someone to play drums and Lorna quits she's like you know what that's enough and she's out of the band. Meanwhile Amber and Darby are in London they say with Jordan um legendary punk Pamela Rutk was her real name who worked with the sex shop owned by Vivian Westwood at Malcolm McCleurron um in Seaford which is outside of London they spent

all their time going to shows seeing their own friends from LA like X and the Govows in Joe Debt playing London. Amber said that Darby this was her experience of it was kind of depressing because no one knew who he was and he was so used to in LA like walking into a record store and everyone been like ooh Darby crash um but he got really into Adam Ant while he was there and he got a mohawk which he made sure everyone called a mohiken so it comes back with his mohiken and his kind

of bondage gear and the germs have dissolved because Lorna quit and the whole thing so he starts the Darby crash band do you remember the Darby crash band yeah so he recruits this basis named David

“Bosco Danford who I think was his boyfriend um although not many people knew this I think so yeah”

and this guy robbed Garstang on drums and he can't find a guitar player so he goes back to Pat

Pat's just like he could just never gonna shoot together with Darby crash band he was really

too into heroin two weeks before their first gig Darby calls me is like we have a show at the Starwood and I don't have any new songs and I don't have anyone to play guitar can you just do it and he's like okay and then it's sound chat of this show at the Starwood they kick out the drummer because he sucks and they get lucky Leror from the circle jerks to Phil and he just happened to know the germ songs because they don't have any new songs they're just playing germ songs Pat said

Jeff McDonnell also said he saw them and that it was basically also weird and pathetic and that

“he was Darby was making all these cryptic statements on stage that wouldn't make sense until later”

after he'd passed away so soon after the Darby crash band makes their debut at the Starwood to Little fanfare because everyone thinks it's weird and pathetic Amber gets a new boyfriend and kicks Darby out and this is around the time Casey Cole it comes in did you know Casey Cole yes yeah Casey said I was neither fat nor had money and I wasn't some desperate hangar on I'd been hanging out on the punk scene for more than two years already when I met Darby

I'd always gone to germ shows long before we ever got together Helen killer said

nobody really wanted to be around him that much when he got back from England kind of like what you were saying earlier because he was so completely fucked up on heroin and booze he was like this weird mohawk feather guy it wasn't him anymore he was trying to be somebody else and at the same time all these surf punk kids were coming in it was all just falling apart

“so he's living at Oxford House with Melissa and Maggie Erick Rob Hennley not Don Hennley Rob Hennley”

Ella Black and Casey and then on December 3rd 1980 the last ever germ show happens at the Fleetwood were you there I don't think so yeah because I was sad about them at that point yeah you were like kind of over over them yeah I can see that not over them but yeah yeah just like it was the whole thing had changed and also they had it I mean they hadn't really been a band for a while and this was this like big reunion show and it was like a weird death circus to me yeah

and when it really did end up happening Pat said that Darby they were they were rehearsed for this show right and he said Darby was very specific about why and how he was going to kill himself when we were rehearsing for the reunion show he said the only reason I'm doing this is to get money to get enough heroin to kill myself with he'd said that so many times that I just said all right and

I didn't hear that too yeah and it sounds like he was basically talking all the time about

how it was going to die young and you're going to miss me when I'm gone and I'll be gone this time next year and I guess he said it's how much and you tell me that people kind of did that started discounting it yeah but they were already talked about it a lot the boy who cried awful and not well kind of well because he did do it but it's like what were you guys meant to do I guess yeah it was and I mean I don't think anybody had any any way of dealing with that right

with that type of behavior with someone because in those days we didn't know we're having the the type of support tools that we do today no I don't like 22 years old hi guys are only 20 or 22 years old but also there was like I mean now you can see mental health right professional everywhere you know like like here are the symptoms of level of a lot or if someone could be suicidal if fill in the blank and that stuff was non-existent and it was hard to

figure out if your you know if your friend was being like just talking shit or really like being was going to do something and yeah and also especially someone like Darby Krash right it was like

such such like a defense like exactly all the time and like it was always kind of like playing with

“reality you know so it's like anyways I think besides the fact that he told Pat that he wanted”

to get the heroin the money do the show to get money to get heroin with I'm sure like this is just me doing fan fiction but like I have to imagine he also wanted to have one last germ show to like cement his legacy if he knew what he was going to do you know right like you don't want to go out on the embarrassing Darby Krash ban show um they got don't don't bulls back Pat said that while they were rehearsing it was scary we had never played so fast hard in type by the day of the show

nothing could touch us um also everyone that was there was like it was one of the best shows ever like even Pat's music that was our best show ever we played our best where the most comfortable the crowd totally loved us it was sold out John Doe said when the germs played the last time we didn't know anyone in the audience anymore the club was filled with these strange characters you'd see in the decline exactly to have wild who wanted it and it for the art they were these damaged

people who felt like this music was speaking to them but the show was by all accounts insane so good Pat said we thought maybe we should go back this is really good but it was one thing for me or Lorna or Dawn to go back none of us had failed for him it was like oh I have to go back and do the germs again because I failed with my solo band I don't think I would have been very happy either after the show Darby pouring to Pat was begging him to come to the Oki dog like this wanted to have

this big after party at the Oki dog just he wanted to go there yeah and Pat said he was saying please come it's really important to me and afterwards I thought oh shit I didn't go to his

went because it was pouring rain yeah and I guess he was so depressed and disappointed about that

“that Lorna got worried and she hit up John Doe to ask him like oh can you please talk to”

Darby like I'm worried about him and John Doe said later like by the time he got around to doing it it was too late because only four days later on December 7th of 1980 is when Darby crash died by heroin overdose that was on purpose he left a note the note was my life my leather my love goes to Bosco who was playing bass in the band and I don't want to go into like too much

sort of detail here but like basically he and Casey Cola together according to her

one and other people too because they were talking about it that night decided like okay tonight's the night before that though I just want to say that there was a couple of things that happened before it happened which was that he had gone out to see sex sick which was Gerber's band at Hong Kong cafe and Gerber said she begged him not to bring Robbie Huntly because again they had this sort of love triangle and he came with Rob anyways and Gerber was furious she threw a

drink and Rob's face but she missed and she hit Darby in the face and after the set she went to meet them the three of them gone to this like screaming match like a physical brawl and Casey said

that Darby was saying to Rob while are you staying over tonight or not and Rob was like just leave

me alone man and push them away and so him and Casey Cola left and on the way home they got booze and he's she said that they were he was just like should we just do it tonight because like as they had been talking about it a guy called Elliot Katz was there to know him yeah he apparently said that he knew what they were going to do but he didn't know what to do because he didn't know if they were actually going to do and he wanted to call the police but he didn't want them to be like

busted with drugs they weren't actually going to do it Darby went and bought four hundred dollars of China wait according to Casey they went to Casey Cola's mom's house which is on North Fuller they both wrote their separate notes and then according to her he shot her up and then himself and then she woke up in his arms and he did it yeah do you remember like how you found out like remember that night the night before I mean I remember them at the club that was really tense and crazy you were

“there the same yeah yeah yeah and then how I found out I don't I honestly don't remember the”

actual moment that I found out someone called me I'm not even remembering who it was right now and that's so that night before was like really tense and crazy and at this point is it fair to say like you were just like kind of not close with Darby anymore like maybe like yeah I had pulled away because of all the craziness surrounding him and that that part made made me really sad you know but I didn't want to be around those type of people or those type of like real social games and

energy and stuff like that it was were you so close with pop I was pretty close with him yeah I mean

we were always on pretty fine terms still are you know it was just it was just such a hard it was

such a hard weird thing to do it something that you don't imagine happening you know like a let alone like any kind of drugs who is hide or OD or anything but you know you don't imagine your friends and this really good band and the band breaks up and you know it's just it's like a whole hard thing to negotiate emotionally and figure out what am I doing or my side or my angry shape let them have their space did I it was just it was just weird and then I do remember

that I was I was laying on my bed when I heard that that he died that just that that was just fucked did you feel like it had like an impact like on the punk scene in general like did you feel like things changed in any way after Darby's death yeah I feel like they were starting to change anyway because it was it was it was just getting polarized right like polarized yeah getting pulled in different directions you know and it was like one of those times when you have this

little feeling like things are not gonna be the same and then you're like am I making a big deal about this and is this just weird or is this actually really happening but it was actually

“really happening and I think a lot of people felt like that especially after that show at the”

Starwood right that was just one thing and then like everything else was just it was just wild I mean

dwindling or like that's what it felt like you know like there was we were all very wild and

“very street savvy and stuff but we were still young you know and it was just it was a hard way”

of dealing with anything you know it was just difficult it was difficult any kind of a death it was hard suicide from a you know one of your best friends is really difficult and it's hard to there's no way you could be prepared for something like that even if you thought you were you know it was very sad there was some it was really nice couple people said that the night

he died there was like an incredibly loud clap of thunder that night that was just like really

unbelievable and Paul Rossler and particularly I was like what the fuck was that and then the next day when he found out a Darby had died he was like oh that was him and then the next week he found out that Helen Keller was pregnant with their son and she had that was like kind of sweet like the idea like maybe there was like I don't know that that was connecting somehow and a couple people said

“that they were visited by his ghost ironically I could see that happen yeah I mean I believe in”

all that stuff because I've seen all that sure yeah and that was that's kind of the end of the germs story I'm in Bosco returned in New York he was childhood friends with the Beastie Boys with Mike D and Adam MCA Yawkin he did some groups with them and you know the punk scene did continue to lay and obviously you were you know part of that X went on a lot of these bands went on other bands came up alternative started you know we all know but all of it wouldn't have

happened that alternative was the dumbest name ever I mean like why the fuck that's not a very

“call it rocket just call it rock and roll it's not a very good name but it none of it would have been existed”

without the germs and what we don't speak of here is the second round of the germs that came after the movie because we don't recognize that here on this podcast I know we different pleasant thank you so much for coming on this podcast and talking about the germs and all of your experiences and just like painting such a vivid picture of just such a different and cool

and vibrant LA that like I truly wish I had experienced it was very amazing it was an amazing time

to grow up to to be a young adult on the on the losing in this video it was incredible well things again and come back next week for a new episode of bands playing if you liked what you heard today subscribe for more episodes of bands playing our guests today was pleasant gaming you couldn't follow her on instagram at Princess of Hollywood this episode is produced by Rob Sonderman and edited by Adrian Bridges with help from Justin Sales video production was by

Jamie Yookick executive producers for bands playing our Gina Delvac and me Yasi Salic our gorgeous and catchy theme song was composed and performed by Bethany Constantino and Jennifer Clevin and graciously recorded by Carlos Delgarsa and Los Angeles California special things to our producer and Meredith producer Delan aka Dylan Tupper Rupert and also Sean Venisey Alex Nelson and the group kitchen come back every Thursday for a new episode of bands playing on Spotify or wherever

you listen to podcasts I found a quailid in my house about probably like four or five years ago would it go my boyfriend put it in the site because it was already cool yeah I mean so funny yeah