More Fun In The New World with John Doe, Tom DeSavia & Beth Spotswood

Videographer Craig Love made it down to Book Passage in Corte Madera to catch relatively recently relocated Marin resident John Doe as he read from his new book “More Fun In The New World”

Here John reads a passage about how time takes its toll and about the lingering influence of bands like The Germs, Gun Club and Flipper. He recalls the first waves of punkers and not quite classic rockers like Top Jimmy, Biscuit Turner, D. Boon, Jeffrey Lee Pierce and Will Shatter who didn’t get a chance to live long enough to make the kind of money and acceptance available to 21st century bands that would later ape their memorable moves and music.

John Doe and Tom DeSavia authors of “More Fun In The New World” engaged in a book discussion with audience members as well as with moderator Beth Spotswood. Thanks to Craig Love for getting down to Book Passage in Corte Madera, CA and documenting this book release Q&A event 6/8/2019 .

Towards the end of this nearly hour long video Q & A segment, John Doe talks about doing a documentary of the first book he wrote with DeSavia, “Under The big Black Sun”, and securing Allison Anders as show runner “… so she’s gonna be our advocate, and so far so good, someone has approached us about doing a scripted version of it and we entertained that…but I think I’m gonna put the kibosh on that because they always get it wrong. There’s no movie even if it’s the best best ever network, it could end up like that horrible show “Vinyl”, embarrassing. I don’t want to see that ruined and I think the final nail in that coffin was hearing what everybody had to say about that one.

He talked about artists who didn’t get their due, like Top Jimmy, who “was a great blues singer and he killed himself because he drank too much, and Country Dick Montana, who was a great, like very simple drummer, and had this awesome voice, and he passed away because he also did too much of everything. So people look back on that, or Rank-and-File…the Germs were were a complete mess, and they would end their shows by playing this song called “Shut Down” which is a kind of similar to the Willie Dixon song “Spoonful” and it was endless and they they just they ended their show through attrition. So they were great, they transcended moments. The Alley Cats, The Plugz were and The Weirdos were all fantastic bands that didn’t really get their due, or get great recordings.”

You can read more about this and other topics covered by John Doe and Tom DeSavia as well as see over 4 dozen rarely seen photos of the era in their new DeCapo Press book “More Fun in the New World: The Unmaking and Legacy of L.A. Punk” which is linked below for purchase online…