The Germs “Live at The Starwood Dec. 3, 1980″ 2019. Today, September 26th, would have been Darby Crash’s 61st birthday (b. Jan Paul Beahm, 1958). This limited edition (1,970 copies) on white and blue marbled vinyl is the first time The Germs’ final concert has been issued in its entirety on vinyl (it was released on CD by Rhino Records in 2010). Included in the double-LP set is a reproduction of the concert flyer and a 4 page fanzine replica.

As an avid Germs collector, I have several tracks from this Starwood concert that appeared on other records: on Lion’s Share (bootleg, date unknown, Ghost ‘O Darb Records) and What We Do Is Secret (1981 and 2018 Slash Records) but it’s really cool to have the whole concert in one spot, even if it’s a hot mess of a show (most of the Germs shows were from what I’ve read).  It’s purported to be one of their best, even though “Darby, as usual, rarely managed to sing into the microphone. It was a night of tinny wild, one-chord riffs, drums coming in with all the subtle finesse of a set of tom-toms kicked down a flight of stairs, and Crash howling, howling with all the–rage isn’t the word–the torment of a six-month-old baby plucked too soon from the breast, and he mumbles, screams, swallows his words…until, finally, with a hiccup, he runs out of air.” (Jonathan Gold)

The concert was a “reunion” show of sorts: the last show they performed before the Starwood gig was about a year earlier at The Fleetwood in Redondo Beach. According the Run Out Groove’s website (the label that produced this LP), “Crash contacted [Pat] Smear about doing a ‘reunion’ show to put punk in perspective for the punks on the scene. Smear has said that Crash told him privately that he only wanted to earn money for heroin with which to commit suicide. On December 3, 1980, an over-sold Starwood hosted a final show of the reunited Germs. At one point, Crash told the audience “we did this show so you new people could see what it was like when we were around. You’re not going to see it again.” Crash was correct – he committed suicide by intentional heroin overdose four days later. From the fanzine included on this release, “Even in the hot damp and the slippery fluids of The Starwood that night, you had to ask yourself when you were going to have the chance to see The Germs again. The correct answer, as it turns out, was never. As everybody in Los Angeles knows by now, Darby fixed himself a hotshot on Sunday, December 7, 1980, and got hand-stamped for that great Starwood in the sky, where the beer is free and the pills glitter like candy, and followers line up around the block to have Germs burns administered by the great man himself. Of course, even there, scroungy, little Germs heaven is forever in the shadow of the splendid marble edifice inhabited by John Lennon, who was shot the very next day, and who immediately wiped Darby Crash out of the minds of everybody but the misfits who were at the party in the first place.”

The songs The Germs performed were mostly ones that appear on their sole studio LP G.I., like “Manimal,” “Richie Dagger’s Crime,” “Media Blitz,” “Communist Eyes” and “Lexicon Devil,” but other, slightly rarer songs were played as well like “Forming” (a live-Germs staple), “Our Way,” “My Tunnel” (originally on the 1980 soundtrack to Cruising) and a cover of PiL’s “Public Image.” You can listen to the concert in its entirety here.