Tag: Chris D
Uncategorized
Jay HinmanGalleryLeave a comment

Well, this is something of a find – a good-quality audience tape of the very first FLESH EATERS show at Los Angeles’ Masque in December 1977…! Are you kidding me? I would have given my right arm for this thing at any point during the past 30 years, and it’s just been sitting there since May waiting for all of us to listen to it.

Thanks to Jon Hope for hipping me to this site Noise Addiction II – I’ve barely even dug through it yet and have already found that the site is just bursting with LA punk and oddities from the 70s and 80s. Don’t mind me, I’m over here shoving files into my piehole.

So the Flesh Eaters, in their very first show, still sound searing and raw on most tracks. This was from Chris D.’s “screaming” phase, which you can read him disowning in our own Dynamite Hemorrhage #1 fanzine, which has a lengthy interview with him about this era. The tape contains their cover of the Magic Band’s “Plastic Factory” as well as another cover I can’t place right now….can you? The tape cuts out just as the monstrous “Automaton Bombs” is just getting locked and loaded.

I can help a little with the song titling as well. Minus the one I don’t know, here’s what you’ll hear:

FLESH EATERS – live at the Masque, December 21st, 1977

  1. Disintegration Nation
  2. Agony Shorthand
  3. Police Gun Jitters
  4. Plastic Factory
  5. Achieve That Reject
  6. Brain Time
  7. title unknown
  8. Jesus Don’t Come Through the Cotton
  9. Automaton Bombs

Download the thing here.

Uncategorized

Satan’s Stomp: The Flesh Eaters’ ‘A Minute To Pray, A Second to Die’

Jay HinmanLink1 Comment

  The Flesh Eaters’ A Minute to Pray, A Second to Die album was one of the musical highlights of 1981—and certainly of the entire Los Angeles punk era—but outside of Southern California, or major cities, it wasn’t an easy record to find out about, let alone stumble across. For A Minute To Pray, head Flesh Eater Chris Desjardins, aka Chris D., an aspiring filmmaker and writer for Slash magazine, assembled a “super group” from the LA punk scene: Dave Alvin (Blasters) on guitar, John Doe (X) on bass, Steve Berlin (Los Lobos) on sax, with Bill Bateman (Blasters) on drums and DJ Bonebrake (X) on the marimba. The group, unshackled from their “day job” bands, writes noted music maven Byron Coley in his liner notes, “all played like fucking maniacs.” (Coley also calls A Minute to Pray, A Second to Die “the best rock record ever recorded.” Whether or not this is objectively true, I’ll leave for you to decide, but hey, just having Byron Coley declare your record “the best” ever recorded is one hell of a compliment, isn’t it? The man is known for having exceptionally good taste.) There is a dark, disturbing…

Satan’s Stomp: The Flesh Eaters’ ‘A Minute To Pray, A Second to Die’

Uncategorized
Jay HinmanImageLeave a comment

Now available, once again – Dynamite Hemorrhage #1 fanzine. We put this out the final week of December 2013 but had to stop selling our remaining copies due to a summer-long stint in Norway, which is now over.

Head over here and take a look at the right-hand column to order and pay via Paypal if you’d like a copy of this 68-page behemoth. It’s $7 plus the true shipping cost to get it to you in your country.

(Dynamite Hemorrhage #2 is coming in October 2014 – more bloated and more obsessive than ever)

#1 includes:

– An in-depth interview with Chris D., Los Angeles-based punk rock earth-turner, who founded and fronted The Flesh Eaters; ran a pioneering record label called Upsetter; almost released the first Black Flag album; wrote dozens of reviews and helped to edit the seminal Slash magazine; put out his own fanzine with Exene, John Doe & Judith Bell; and much more – all before 1979 was finished. This interview focuses solely on that period of his career

– The first and only retrospective and posthumous interview with SALLY SKULL, a fantastic 1990s all-female Scottish band who made raw, jarring garage punk music with dollops of angularity and dirty pop hooks

– Mail interviews with SEX TIDE and HOUSEHOLD, two current bands working the circuit (Household R.I.P.) who happen to be two of Dynamite Hemorrhage’s very favorites

– Quickie interview with BONA DISH, a recently-resurrected early 80s UK countryside band who are poster children for the rough-hewn, spaced-out DIY sound that we’ve all come to worship from that era and country

– Big retrospective on 1980s and 1990s underground music fanzines (like Damp, Butt Rag, Dagger, Two Hundred Pound Underground etc.) by the editor of Fuckin’ Record Reviews blog

– 60-something record reviews written by Erika Elizabeth and Jay Hinman

– 15-something book reviews by Jay & Erika

– Advertisements from today’s top labels

Won’t you order one today?

Uncategorized
Jay HinmanImageLeave a comment

UPSETTER fanzine #2, 1978. This was put together in Los Angeles by Chris D. (Flesh Eaters), Judith Bell and Exene Cervenka.

You can read all about it in Dynamite Hemorrhage print fanzine #1.

I was surprised during my interview with Chris D. in said fanzine that Upsetter even existed in magazine form, and if you happen to have a copy you could “loan” me, that’d be real great.

(By the way, this image and many other fanzine stunners can be found at Ryan Richardson’s excellent Fanzine Faves – check it out).

Uncategorized
Jay HinmanImageLeave a comment

UPSETTER fanzine #1, 1978. This was put together in Los Angeles by Chris D. (Flesh Eaters), Judith Bell (pictured; an artist and Chris’s then-girlfriend who designed the sleeve and labels for the Flesh Eaters’ first EP) and Exene Cervenka.

You can read all about it in Dynamite Hemorrhage print fanzine #1.

(By the way, this image and many other fanzine stunners can be found at Ryan Richardson’s excellent Fanzine Faves – check it out).