American Guide #37 Haunted Hollywood. Darby Crash’s Ghost! Tidbits and snips from 1978 Crashed Memories.

Lord have mercy! Ghosts living and souls long ago passed on, are materializing from thin air! Again. Or not so thin air this being L.A. Let me begin with an older apparition’s haunting.” Christmas 1980 the saddest time for L.A Punk Rock and our circle of friends. Darby had ODed and died the night after his Germs Return to show and the L.A scene as well as the world is in a tailspin of sorrow and mourning. The world you say? Yeah,Darby’s big plan to go out in a blaze of glory and headlines was upstaged by the murder of none other than John Lennon, Talk about ultimate irony. L.A’s anti-rocker was upstaged by the murder of the “We are more popular than Jesus.”himself. Darby Crash was regulated to back page news in L.A and was barley a blip on any other media radar. His ghost began appearing in the apartment building we all lived in soon after his death. Within in days ‘ol snaggle tooth began his mischievous paranormal pranks on us. First of all, Darby’s favorite blue light flicked on and off constantly when we were at home, as if he was sending a Morse cod messagee from the beyond.I unplugged the light from the wall socket yet the light continued to turn itself on and off. It was creepy, really! The manager who did not know Darby had died 3 days prior, told us he saw Darby in the hallway but he would not turn around when he called to him. He wanted to know if Darby was feeling ok. I said Darby killed himself 3 days ago. The manager looked really pale after this news. Hey! I’m not going to reveal the entire haunting here, man! How am I going to sell any books?

Well after 35 years Amber appeared back in my life too. She tracked me down from the 1978 Crashed Memories facebook page. We talked. Could result in a new project. She has most of Darby’s manuscripts and other items. Well, I got a sudden hankering to do some haunting myself. Check out the old digs! If you read 1978 Crashed Memories you will recognize this line from the book “Yes, even the stars of Hollywood Blvd rolled under the urethane.” I filmed the video to reflect lines in 1978 Crashed Memories.A virtual reenactment! enjoy! Ohhh one ‘lil correction I will make as to the video, Don Kirk did not “live” there with us as Amber had left Don. He was always hanging around though, looking out for Amber.

https://www.facebook.com/pages/1978-Crashed-Memories/150270708382957?ref=hl

constructing 1978 Crashed Memories. The book.

‎1978 took me roughly 2 years to write. Amazingly, the details , events and names were surprisingly clear in my memory. I think having a ‘photographic” memory allowed me to learn foreign languages rather simply as well. The most difficult part about 1978 was sending out the manuscript to people in 1978 to sign off on my recollection of events.For instance Jay Adams was in prison and Pat Smear was on tour.A great thing about looking for these folks is I was able to re-establish friendships that had grown distant. About writing, anyone can tell a story, writing, however is a craft that takes years of commitment to develop into a style decent enough to garnish interest.Finally as world-renowned artist and creator of all and everything DT, CR Stycek wrote the forward to 1978, I knew I was on to something, as CR does not lend his name to any piece of excrement.