Shane West Should Know Better Than To Smile At A Germs Show
Hello, class. Welcome to Punk Rock 101. Today's lesson is about the seminal LA punk band the Germs, who are finally getting thanks to a new biopic called What We Do Is Secret (playing for the rest of this week at the Nuart). For those of you who are not familiar with the band or why they're deserving of a movie, here's a quick cheat sheet. The Germs made history because they were A) completely insane and B) their singer, Darby Crash, committed the self-mythologizing move of killing himself back in 1980. Unfortunately, he happened to pick the day before John Lennon was murdered to intentionally overdose on heroin, so most people didn't even notice. Flash forward nearly 30 years. In order to support the film's release, three of the original members of the Germs (including former Nirvana/Foo Fighters guitarist Pat Smear) have been playing shows around town with Shane West, the ER hunk who portrays Crash in the flick. I saw one of the shows the new-and-improved Germs played this weekend, and I'm here to answer a few pressing questions, like: Did they suck? Did Shane West suck? Would people bleed? How hot was Bijou Phillips?
There were quite a few of 30-something ex-punks in the crowd at the Echo Saturday night that wanted to find out.
To answer the question I posed above, no, they didn't suck. In fact, they are probably better now than during their heyday in the sense that they can actually play their instruments and they are able to finish an hour-and-a-half set without destroying the entire venue, falling down from abusing too many substances or bleeding profusely on stage. However, this presented a bit of a conundrum for the fans. The seminal LA punk band was "good" precisely because they were bad. Their gigs were famed for the way they destroyed the stage and incited near-riots. The fact that they could barely play their instruments just added to the air of excitement, danger and unpredictability of a Germs show. So, when compared to this lofty standard, the 2008 iteration wasn't exactly bad, but they certainly weren't punk rock. Though, they tried. Pat Smear still rocked it.
These kids were totally in to it.
There was stuff scrawled on Shane West's (deliciously rock-hard) stomach. I have no idea what it said, because I was too distracted counting his abs.
West went for some Jack Daniels realness.
West's hotness, however, did not serve him live. To compare West's two performances— in the film and on the stage— is an instruction on what makes an actor a compelling person to watch on film, versus what makes a live performance transcendent and visceral. Another guy had a more succinct solution."You know what would be totally punk rock?" he announced to no one in particular, "If someone would just punch him in the face. Like, bust his nose." He pounded his fist into his hands. He meant it in a totally nice way. What he meant, is that West was too Hollywood pretty for a punk band. Especially considering the fact that he committed the worst of Punk Rock Sins. He smiled. There is no smiling at a Germs show!
In fact, they were all smiling.
So was Bijou Phillips, who played Germs bass player Lorna Doom in the flick. She spent the duration of the show dancing like a go-go girl on the side of the stage, leading my cohort, an entirely naive and innocent 20-year-old fresh off the boat to LA, to ask, "Why was there a Calvin Klein model on the stage the whole time?" I had no plausible answer for him.
