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The disc contains the entire unreleased concert, considered by many fans to be The Germs’ finest hour. Performing together for the first time in a year, the quartet played possessed, blasting rapid-fire through nearly every song in its arsenal. After opening with “Circle One” from the 1978 EP Lexicon Devil, the band bashed its way through all but two songs from (GI)—the band’s sole studio album—including “What We Do Is Secret,” “Our Way,” and “Shut Down (Annihilation Man).” “Caught In My Eye,” an outtake from the (GI) recording sessions (produced by Joan Jett), found its way onto the set list as well.
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 represents the band’s final performance with founding member Darby Crash, who committed suicide by overdosing on heroin on December 7, 1980—less than a week after this show.
The collection’s liner notes provide a vivid eyewitness account of the show penned by Jonathan Gold. Describing the band’s place in history, he writes: “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.”
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