On This Date in 1980: Darby Crash (born Jan Paul Beahm), lead singer of The Germs, died of an intentional heroin overdose at the age of 22. For anyone curious about Darby, The Germs, and the LA Punk Rock scene of the late 70s/early 80s, I highly recommend the bio pic, What We Do is Secret. Despite a lot of criticism from people who were there; to be honest, I was there also, and I think the film got a lot of things right. Favorite Germs Song: “Richie Dagger’s Crime.” RIP Darby.
Back in 1995, The Posies – being for all intents and purposes the ridiculously talented core duo of Jon Auer and Ken Stringfellow – contributed a cover of “Richie Dagger’s Crime” to the CD A Small Circle of Friends; a Germs tribute collection put out by the now-defunct Grass Records. The Posies chose to interpret one of The Germs’ most – by extremely loose-definition – “Pop” tunes by reworking it as a sort of hybrid of The Beatles’ “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” meets “You Won’t See Me” – right down to the “Ooh, la la la” harmonies. It was a genius move, and something only The Posies could have pulled off. You know Auer and Stringfellow were high-five-ing and slapping each other on the back for at least a couple of weeks over that idea.
Continue reading Rad CD of The Week: The Posies’ Blood/Candy