MOSH APPEAL: The Adolescents are at least playing to adolescents. |
Punk rock has never been a seemly genre in which to grow old. Not that that’s kept bands on both sides of the Atlantic from reuniting regularly, especially in the wake of the ’90s neo-punk renaissance. In some cases — X are one good example — the very nature of punk rock’s anything-goes æsthetic has allowed artists to mature without losing their edge. If D Boon were alive today, he’d still be making music, under the Minutemen umbrella or otherwise. But one strain of punk — hardcore, with its loud, fast rules — has always screamed YOUTH MUSIC! And like Sid Vicious, a number of hardcore’s more notorious characters have followed the advice of the Who’s “My Generation” and died young. Germs singer Darby Crash OD’d in 1980 after just one Joan Jett–produced album by the band. Flipper singer/bassist Will Shatter lasted a bit longer before he OD’d in 1987. That hasn’t kept either of those two bands from joining another formative California hardcore outfit, the Adolescents, in reuniting for tours this summer. The Adolescents and the Germs played back-to-back nights at Axis at the tail end of July; Flipper are set to play the Middle East downstairs this Saturday. There’s not much in the way of new music here — just the old stuff played by older guys (and one gal, Germs bassist Lorna Doom).
The music these bands made was written and recorded when the members were young, angry, and caught up in California’s burgeoning hardcore movement — a scene that sprang up in the wake of ’70s punk explosions in New York and London. What could it be like to form a band as a teenager, call it the Adolescents, and then find yourself playing those same songs at the age of 42? A little, oh, ironic, wouldn’t you say?
I put the question to Adolescents bassist Steve Soto backstage following their Axis set. “Whenever anyone says that, I say, ‘Do you think the Circle Jerks sit around and jerk each other off?’ ” Point taken. And if the Adolescents, who did release the new OC Confidential (Finger) last year, weren’t touring? “We’d stay home, sit on the couch, and not play,” Soto deadpans.
Soto is encouraged by the Adolescents’ audience, which he estimates is three-quarters kids. So they’re at least still playing to adolescents. The mosh pit was buzzing with youthful adrenaline during their set at Axis, as was a smaller but equally intense pit the following night for the Germs. “We started doing this again almost five years ago. If we’d found we were just playing to our peers, I don’t know if we’d have kept doing it.” Besides, the Adolescents have a genuine kid on guitar: long-time family friend Joe Harrison, 16, filling in for temporarily on-leave oldster Frank Agnew.
Soto and singer Tony Cadena formed the Adolescents with Agnew in ’79, after leaving Agent Orange; in ’81 they began a series of break-ups and reunions. Dozens of members have come and gone (even Germs/Nirvana guitarist Pat Smear was once an Adolescent), and Soto says there have been four major versions of the band. Derek O’Brien is now the drummer. How that’s affected the Adolescents’ legacy is up for debate. Soto himself doesn’t seem too concerned about it.
Pat Smear, who’s back with the Germs after stints with Nirvana and Foo Fighters, says, “I always go on the assumption no one knows about us ’cause we never left LA, but I’ve met people on tour who know all kinds of shit — more than we realized.” He’s amused by the “haters who say, ‘How dare we play without Darby?’ ” — as he puts it backstage at Axis, “That’s from kids who weren’t even born then.”
Although they emerged from the same scene, the Germs and the Adolescents are slightly different beasts. The Adolescents favor speed, snarl, and pop hooks; the Germs have the speed and the snarl but an almost total disregard for hooks. Both keep their songs and their sets short. But the Germs reunion has less to do with keeping Smear and company off their couches than with a film about the band — a bio-pic — that features singer Shane West (who famously plays a doc on ER) in the role of Darby Crash. Smear says the film’s 85 percent done. “We’re a Hollywood band, so it fits right in. I don’t think Val Kilmer ever toured with the Doors. For the movie, I work on the music, and we have actors playing the band. Shane’s great, perfect. It’s been so long, it’s hard to really remember what it was like back then.”
“I was four,” West says of his age when Darby died. (He was born in June of ’78, so he was really two.) He admits that playing Darby is a challenging role, but when it comes to the tour he’s more circumspect: “It’s not really me trying to channel him. It’s having the opportunity to sing for the fans.” And Smear’s down with the program: “It felt right instantly — the instant we started playing together,” he says of West. “I forgot how much I loved being in a punk-rock band.”
