THE GERMS
Germs are a California punk rock band from Los Angeles, California, originally active from 1977 to 1980. The band’s early lineup consisted of singer Darby Crash, guitarist Pat Smear, bassist Lorna Doom, and their most consistent drummer Don Bolles. They released only one album, 1979’s (GI) (produced by Joan Jett) and were featured the following year in Penelope Spheeris’ documentary film The Decline of Western Civilization, which chronicled the Los Angeles punk movement. (More from Wikipedia)
The Eyes date from the earliest days of punk rock in Los Angeles. I ran across their first recordings on a 1998 compilation album of releases on What Records? called What? Stuff, on Bomp! Records, that I just picked up. The first two bands listed on the cover, the Germs and the Dils are fairly well known as these things go; I had some of their songs already elsewhere
What Records? is a good example of the Do-It-Yourself spirit that brought punk to life in the first place: By the mid-1970’s, the technology was good enough and vinyl was cheap enough that bands could put their own records together without going through the corporate record labels; and there were enough independent record stores around that getting shelf space was also doable. In this case, Chris Ashford was a friend of members of the Germs; in the great 1970’s tradition, they had just made a crude two-track recording of a song called “Forming” in the guitarist’s garage, so Ashford released it as a 45 and distributed it all by himself. The release date of July 1977 – 7/77 – would resonate with those of us in a casino area like Biloxi. The B-side, “Sex Boy” was a live performance made during the filming of the first Cheech and Chong movie Up in Smoke (which had a great cast by the way – Edie Adams, Strother Martin, Stacy Keach, and Tom Skerritt). Somewhat surprisingly, this disk is regarded as the very first punk rock single to come out of LA, even though it was released nearly 18 months after the landmark first album by Ramones came out on the other coast.
(July 2010)
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Items: The Germs
