"Lexicon Devil is, pure and simple, the finest volume on punk to have seen the light of print. (Yes, folks: that includes Please Kill Me.) Great book!"-Richard Meltzer

Production has started on the documentary feature based on the book.

CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.0 based on 29 reviews)

Lexicon Devil

actually i started reading this book while my son had it. he had borrowed it from a friend and had to return it. it is very interesting and for the most part factual. but even the unfactual stuff is told by the actual person involved. if you love punk rock you will love this book!!!

like the music this book contains many references to sex and drugs. a very interesting look at the beginning of the punk scene!!
March 25, 2008

breathtaking cultural history

As a cultural history of Los Angeles in the 1970s, this book can't be beat.

Visually stunning photographs and a refreshing, multiperspective commentary bring qualities of both Faulkner and the blog together in a chronological progression to the suicide of Darby Crash. I especially enjoyed the coroner's document and the funeral bill, but all the exhibits were great.

The book includes an unbelievable involvement of church and state in the Scientology influenced Innovative Program School in Los Angeles which 'graduated' Darby in 1976. This section once again shows the importance of LSD in late 20th century culture.

The dynamic of LA punk as it emerged in artfag circles, was subsumed in a Huntington Beach testosterone surge of disaffection and violence consuming punk and creating thrash hardcore. Darby Crash's closeted homosexuality and his apparent fear of rejection for it in late 70's culture, adds historical depth to the effects of discrimination, even among the young.

The book is compelling. I missed Darby's show at the Mabuhay, although I saw the other big show of the weekend, the Sex Pistols at Winterland.

The great strength of the book is the stylistic approach, the book being years in the making. Adding the content into that, I think it's the biggest thing in American literature since Douglas Coupland's Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture in 1991.

Best music history I have ever seen or read.
November 11, 2007

Good book on an awful band

This is an interview style book with personal recollections on The Germs, in particular Darby Crash and the socal punk and cultural scene circa late 70's early 80's.

I found this to be a fun entertaining read. Much of this book is a great look into not just the socal punk scene during that time period but a glimpse into the overall weirdness that was southern California during those days. The experimental Scientology based school that Pat Smear and Darby Crash attended together where part of the curriculim was doing acid with the teachers that was fully funded and sanctioned by the local public school system is really far out and you almost have to believe that it was some sort of covert government mind control experiment/program going on at that place. When talking about it Pat Smear seems genuinly baffled that a school like this was even allowed to exist. There are a lot of other examples of what an off the wall place southern California was then in this book too. The world sure has changed. You also get a lot of dirt on other people and bands that came out of this scene. It would probably shock a lot of people that a girly pop band like the Go Go's came out of this insanity.

One last thing I would like to add. I consider many of the groups that came out of the socal punk/hardcore scene during the late 70's up until maybe the mid 80's to be the best music that can be labeled as punk that was ever made but The Germs are absolutely, positively, one of, if not the, worst completely unlistenable bands ever. They were an interesting story but I'm sorry they made horrible music.
August 28, 2007

hot times

this book is super but be warned, i bought it years ago and loved it, bought a copy recently and it has been censored..nude photos are re edited and i worry the text has been altered..not cool..try to buy an old used copy to get the orignal...bob
March 15, 2007

Historical...

I was expecting a little more scene-driven story, but this book focuses mainly on Darby's life, not just in his punk days. Overall, I give it 4 stars because you definitely feel like you get to know who Darby was and what he was about by the end of the book. Granted it's probably Mullen's version mostly, but it seemed pretty accurate based on the other reading I've done about Darby.
November 26, 2005

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