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My friends think I’m reading too much into this. We’ll see.
First, if someone comes up to you and says, You know there’s this new fake-documentary about the Germs that we should see, tell them you read on Attackerman that it’s not worth seeing, and that comes from someone who’ll see nearly anything punk-nostalgia-related. The Germs are made out to be a world-historical experience. Beyond that central absurdity is the poor execution. Why the actor playing L.A. baby Pat Smear sounds like he stepped out of the discount-sneaker store on Ditmars Boulevard ("…it’s got dat noo-gitaaah smell!"), I have no idea. Jane, I’d be interested in your thoughts on the movie. But What We Do Is Secret is what happens when a bunch of friends acquire a modicum of notoriety, do some good work, and then they spend the next 30 years trapped in that moment before someone gives them a camera and instructs them to tell their own story. (All of which is to say that you should reserve your tickets for the Summer 2038 premiere of Miramax’s epic Flophouse.)
But there’s a bigger problem with What We Do Is Secret: its attacks on Black Flag.
I’m extrapolating from two specific scenes and a broader tone of the movie. The tone is that the Germs are a singular, unrepeatable burst of Nietzschean ire, an inside joke that becomes a fascist movement in miniature before self-destructing. Fine. But the implicit critique there — as Darby sort of sings — is that outsiders can’t understand, and more’s-the-pity for them. That’s why the movie’s most intimate moment comes when, instead of kissing Lorna, Darby burns her with a cigarette. "A Germs-burn," he explains. "Years from now, when you’re 40, you’ll see someone at the supermarket with one of them, and you’ll know: they were part of this." In other words, there’s us — the supermen — and then there’s them.
OK, got that? Now for scene one: the Germs recording GI. Darby’s hanger-on/lover Robbie tells drummer Don that he’s drumming too slowly. "The new bands," Robbie says, play "faster and harder." That’s a reference to Black Flag and the Circle Jerks, the birth of L.A. (and American) hardcore. Don dismisses those bands as playing "Oompa-loompa polka beats." End scene, at least for my purposes.
Scene two: the Germs are playing with Black Flag. It’s either late 1979 or early 1980, meaning Black Flag’s singer is either Keith or Chavo. And yet the singer for Black Flag is portrayed as a fat, frattish lunkhead. Shots of the audience display kids in the throes of directionless anger. The contrast is rather stark: the Germs have a charismatic leader helming the movement, while Black Flag — the fashionless afterbirth of punk rock — plunge everything into the abyss. It’s really hard to get past the statement of making Black Flag’s singer look soft and overfed while the ugly, pimply Darby Crash is portrayed by… movie-star-pretty Shane West.
As Uncle Junior would say, what effrontery! You can run this play on anyone except Black Flag. Black Flag are the greatest American hardcore band that ever was and ever will be. The Germs had a bunch of friends act like a movement. Black Flag was a movement: members of the band, including its most prominent singer, started out as fans. The Germs got banned from L.A. venues. Not only did Black Flag get banned, their shows would be harassed by police before and during performances, and in response, they blazed a trail whereby unsigned bands could tour around the country, playing in dives, VFW halls and people’s basements. "Forming" and "Manimal" have a lot of power and intensity, but nothing can capture, induce, ridicule and stoke as much social anxiety as "White Minority." (Quick: what do you think that song’s about?) The Germs were built around the model of a charismatic leader. Black Flag completely subverted that model, replacing their singer four times, and thereby sending the message that a leaderless movement is vastly more dangerous. al-Qaeda could learn a lot from Black Flag.
I don’t actually mean to dismiss the Germs. But the moviemakers invited a comparison with Black Flag and they should understand it, they’re fighting a war they can’t win.
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The idea that there was enough self-awareness to tailor the music, member personae, and effect on audience behavior to embody a more perfect Art Terrorism is overreaching.
The Masque scene that spawned The Germs was older and different from the Okie / Joad bedroom communities that gave us the Flag. The Masque was Hollywood street kids, art students, a mix of Freaks, Faggots, Drunks and Junkies (pace GG). They were so old that they grew up Bowie fans because he was the weirdest thing in captivity. The Masque crowd had eye makeup, for chrissakes. None of those things were true for the crowd that wanted to see the Flag. It was working class and suburban.
You need the Germs (and the Screamers, Weirdos, Eyes, Bags, Zeroes, Black Randy, etc.) to create the space for Black Flag et al the same way you need the Pistols, Clash, Adverts and the rest of the crowd at the 100 Club to create the space for Sham 69, GBH and Oi.
You can’t have one without the other. The Art Movement becomes the Youth Cult.
Not that anyone knew what they were doing in a larger sense. There was no book on how to do or be a Punk Rock Band yet. They were both creating as much energy as possible and seeing what happened, not that there was a “goal” other than to have a good time and to set up a better one next week.
Please give up on the purity trolling. Same team!
Someone like you who has invested so much effort in being punk would like to think that everyone is equally committed to a particular vision rather than, say, just playing fun, fast, good music. There was a particular period from, say, 1976 to 1979, when some good music was produced, and that was influential. That’s about it.
To the extent that anyone today really gives a shit about the Germs, they are Germs vastly overrated.
So did Darby die from an Oki Dog like the famous punk song once attributed his death to?
This is right on. Of course I’m going to agree with you because I’m not a huge Germs fan, but anyways – the Germs/Flag dichotomy is an LA dichotomy based on which side of I-10 you’re on. The Germs were distinctly Hollywood and relied on gullible orphans that still wander between Melrose Ave. and Hollywood Blvd., and Flag were South Bay and could have existed nowhere else.
The South Bay (the area of Los Angeles south of LAX) is a one-of-a-kind geographic and cultural divide. Imagine if there was a DC suburb where not a single resident worked in politics or government. There isn’t one, but there is a huge portion of LA where every resident does not work in show business, and that’s the South Bay. It might as well be 200 miles from Hollywood. Kids who live there will go to shows, etc. in Hollywood every now and again but not one of their parents has the slightest relationship to it, and the culture doesn’t either.
The Germs were a product of a man with charisma and vision with poor execution in the right place for people to follow a leader like that (think Manson family). Flag were young folks struggling to resolve working class or middle class identities with the glitz 15 miles north that bore no relevance to them. I think you can tell which thing I think is cooler, obviously.
But… but it’s gawt dat new gittah smell!
NAAAAHHHH!!!!
But really, I think you’re reading too much into about 10 seconds of a really mediocre movie. It was a quite shitty movie, yes, but I did find it quite entertaining even if it was basically Germs: the Cartoon. And I’m not even really much of a Germs fan… at all.
Okay okay, I like “Manimal.”