I can’t be exactly sure, but I remember reading somewhere that it hadn’t been issued on DVD because it was owned by some other production company and Spheeris was trying to buy it back or something. I could be partially or completely wrong about that, but I remember hearing something along those lines.
Yeah this has been unavailable for far too long. I don’t know what the story is but someones gotta do something. It’s not like it wouldn’t have an audience surely.
Do something, someone!!!!
It’s the only film I know of that captured the spirit of the late 70s/early 80s punk movement, and I don’t think there has ever been a DVD release. Baffling.
Anybody see part 2 (The Metal Years)? Maybe a double dvd would be even better.
The Metal Years was ok, but lacked the rawness and authenticity of the first. In addition, the punks were much more interesting and stood for something, whereas the metal years profiled a bunch of idiotic drunks and pretty boys whose most compelling statements seemed to be “I really want to be a rock star and will do anything to get there, or die trying.”
The official website has been promising DVDs “coming soon” for years now. Has anybody seen part III? It didn’t get distributed either theatrically or on video, but they were giving VHS copies away on the site for a while.
dp
This and its two sequels, not to mentioned Suburbia (the 80s film) and Dudes would make Penelope Spheeris a good Cup pick (all thematic, all very good to great films) as long as one is willing to overlook Waynes World
I haven’t seen Gimme Shelter but I guess this works for me as the best music doco I have seen. The style fits the subject matter perfectly and the characters are compelling.
@Junderhump – you might want to try “MC5: A True Testimonial” (my favorite rock doc- and I didn’t care for MC5 before I saw it)
@Lester: I liked “Decline part2”. It suffers from music performances that should have been shorter, but I felt that there is a honesty and a sadness to the desperation of some of the subjects. They lacked the mission and the “awareness” of the punks, but that made them interesting as characters caught up in their own illusions.
I believe there was a punk doc rumored to be released on criterion, but I could be wrong.
I could also see American Hardcore in the collection. That was a good film.
More interesting, yes, but I don’t know that the SoCal hardcore bands in Decline really “stood for” anything particularly sophisticated, Lester. Darby Crash was dead by the time the doc was released, and Pat Smear ended up in the Foo Fighters. The Germs were doing “reunion” shows with Shane West for a while. And don’t get me started about Black Flag.
Matt:
I think X more than makes up for any faults in the other bands.
FAULTS? Faults? Where do the faults in The Germs lie? They are without peer. They are without flaw. They are perfection. They are… are….excuse while I wipe away the spittle from the screen.
X were pretty good too.
For a bunch of hippies.
Dancing in fairy wings.
Which is what the mighty Germs made them seem like!
Hippies in fairy wings!
GERMS!
ARGHHHH!
I never said any of the bands had faults. Just that, if one perceives them to have faults, X makes up for them because they are objectively great and objectively without flaw.
this discussion represents the decline of western civilization!
this discussion represents the decline of western civilization!
WAAAAAAAAH! OOGA BOOGA!!
WUGGA?
@ Junderhump
I’m not criticizing the Germs, just the notion that they “stood for something” beyond the obvious, but they certainly weren’t perfect. They were horrible inconsistant and chaotic as performers, with the early stage show lifted more or less directly from the Stooges, Bowie and the Sex Pistols, and, at the later shows, Crash was often semi-conscious and semi-incoherent on heroin. On record, (GI) is pretty great, but it’s headed toward a cliff at full speed.
Value judgements aside, X was, well, as Bolo Tie said, something else all together—displaced Midwesterners, with Zoom coming out of the LA rockabilly revival of the 70s, and Doe and Cervenka really interested in conventional songwriting in a way the hardcore bands generally weren’t.
Don’t get me wrong. I like X but see its the fact that Doe and Cervinkaare are as you say into the ‘conventional songwriting’ and precisely all those ‘flaws’ you pointed out about the Germs that makes me prefer the other. Really though I can exist liking them both. In this case I just prefer deranged primal chaos to the subtle, crafted thoughtfulness and interplay of X.
I’ll take horrible, inconsistent and chaotic over U2 any day. ‘Early stage show lifted from Stooges, Bowie and Sex Pistols.’ Come one that whole type of argument is bunk. Bowie certainly was one of the biggest chameleons and borrowers ever, Iggy took his stage show from Jim Morrison and Sex Pistols : New York Dolls and Richard Third (If you believe Johnny Rotten
-Bowie certainly was one of the biggest chameleons and borrowers ever, Iggy took his stage show from Jim Morrison and Sex Pistols : New York Dolls and Richard Third-
Sure, sure—everything comes from somewhere else. They only real criticism I have of the Germs is that in their borrowing, they were at times too enamored with the Sid Vicious side of punk when they should have been paying more attention to the Johnny Rotten side. But maybe they new that and that was part of the point, too.
For the record, I’ll take the Minutemen over either the Germs or X.
That figures. See I’m a Flipper man myself- if we’re talking this kind of early eighties period. Bad Brains and Pre-Rollins Black Flag. Thats me.
I like Flipper. Bad Brains too.
Lester Burnham
Saw The Germs biopic “What We Do Is Secret” the other night and it got me thinking about The Decline of Western Civilization and why the hell it hasn’t been released on DVD yet. Anyone know the story? How hard can it be to secure the rights to this music? I think it would make a great Criterion? Get some punk into the collection. What do you think?