Germs' Final Concert to Be Immortalized on New Release

BY Stephen CarlickPublished May 19, 2010

As if seminal late '70s Los Angeles punk band the Germs weren't revered enough already, the band are set to grab a new batch of followers when their final concert gets a CD release this summer.

Rhino Records has announced that on June 22 the label will release Live at the Starwood: December 3, 1980, the last concert the band played before front-man Darby Crash's tragic death on December 7, 1980.

As Rhino explains it, the album comes uniquely packaged, and has "a genuine DIY feel including black and white liner notes folded and stapled to resemble a punk fanzine, a reproduction of the handwritten set list, and an 8 1/2" x 11" replica of the original poster for the show."

The album's liner notes include an tribute to the band by final show-attendee Jonathan Gold, who asserts that "The Germs are to the Los Angeles punk scene what Brian Jones was to the Stones or Syd Barrett to Pink Floyd - the primal creative force that was both too flatulent to live with and too vital to have come into being without."

Live at the Starwood: December 3, 1980 contains the entire, unreleased show, which features the band playing together for the first time in a year, and as though they were "possessed." Besides playing live favourites like "Circle One" from the 1978 EP Lexicon Devil, the band's set list consisted primarily of songs from their one and only studio album, 1979's (GI), including "What We Do Is Secret," "Our Way," and "Shut Down (Annihilation Man)."

The disc also features "'Lion's Share,' a track the band recorded in 1979 with producer Jack Nitzsche for Cruising, a film starring Al Pacino; 'No God' from the Lexicon Devil EP; a cover of Public Image Ltd's, 'Public Image'; and 'Forming,' the first song the quartet recorded together."

Live at the Starwood: December 3, 1980:

1. "Circle One"
2. "Manimal"
3. "Caught In My Eye"
4. "Lion's Share"
5. "No God"
6. "Our Way"
7. "Strange Notes"
8. "What We Do Is Secret"
9. "Richie Dagger's Crime"
10. "Land Of Treason"
11. "My Tunnel"
12. "Media Blitz"
13. "Communist Eyes"
14. "The Other Newest One"
15. "Let's Pretend"
16. "Forming"
17. "Lexicon Devil"
18. "Shut Down (Annihilation Man)"
19. "Public Image"
20."American Leather"
21. "We Must Bleed"
22. "Richie Dagger's Crime" (Reprise)

 

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