Lexicon Devil

July 15, 2002
Since his heroin overdose in 1980, Darby Crash has become a symbol of punk irreverence, but his posthumous fame has tended to overshadow the seminal work of the punk band he fronted, the Germs. Mullen (who coauthored We Got the Neutron Bomb: The Untold Story of L.A. Punk), along with ex-Germs drummer Bolles and writer Parfrey, quickly deconstructs the myth of Crash (n Jan Paul Beahm) to reveal an embattled and confused soul who struggled with drug use and his homosexuality. Featuring raw quotations from Crash's peers in the burgeoning 1970s West Coast punk scene, the book offers both positive and negative views of the singer and the scene that raised him. Crash's fans were known for their cultish reverence, and Crash himself is shown to be a self-conscious misfit who used psychological ploys to enlist followers. It is unlikely that this book will reach a wide audience and thus imbue Crash's legacy with more humanity and, in turn, the Germs with more respectability, but it does strengthen the growing literature on American punk music. Recommended for popular music collections, especially as a complement to We Got the Neutron Bomb, which covers similar ground and whose oral history format this book replicates. Robert Morast, "Argus Leader," Sioux Falls, SD

Copyright 2002 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 1, 2002
This intense oral history traces the life of a rock icon so enigmatic that few knew he was gay. The Germs had released only one album, " G.I.," before their leader, Darby Crash (ne Paul Beahm), 22, OD'd in a suicide pact (the other participant survived). His death, covered in detail here, just enhanced the Germs' cachet as protopunks. The book's compilers--Germs drummer Don Bolles is one of them--also serve up a lot about early West Coast punk, reported by a virtual punk who's who, sans, perhaps refreshingly, Henry Rollins, but including Jello Biafra, Exene Cervenka, Phranc ("America's Favorite Jewish Lesbian Folksinger"), and two who figured massively in the love triangle that, among many other factors, precipitated Darby's last exit, Gerber ("Queen of L.A. Punk") and Rob Henley. Evocative as hell of the punk ethos ("Part of the $400 [for the overdose drugs] was my rent money," mourns Ella Black), not least because of scads of photos of baby-faced adolescents (some nude) trying to look ugly.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2002, American Library Association.)