What We Do Is Secret News

Brendan Mullen, documentarian of the early L.A. punk scene, died this past Monday at the age of 60.

The Past and the Pending Can't accept a handsome movie star leading legendary punk band the Germs? Get over it The Germs with actor/new singer Shane West on the right As a teenage punk, I would have laughed at the thought of the Germs performing with any singer not named Darby Crash.

Is it blasphemy that an actor who once co-starred in "A Walk To Remember" alongside Mandy Moore is now fronting the recently reformed, legendary late '70s LA punk band the Germs? Some fans and punk rock figures think so.

As Jersey laments the passing of a sopped and sunless June, we set our hopes high for the coming of Independence Day weekend, when the fire in the sky can't compare to what sears on the stage.

You've only got one option here: Accept it as passion, or deride it as impression.

Rock 'n' roll 'staycation' Bono once described the passion that makes us all move as the impetus for a blurry, full-bore sprint from "Friday night, running/to Sunday on my knees." Even if we strip the Catholic imagery of cyclical sin/redemption from this couplet, it still smacks of hard-won truth.

West played Crash in The Germs' biopic What We Do Is Secret , and will be center stage with the punk legends at Reggie's Rock Club tonight.

Friday 6.19 SMOKEY ROBINSON Smokey Robinson recently appeared on Elvis Costello's Sundance Channel talk show The Spectacle, sounding and looking like he'd spent the past few decades in a vacuum, his voice nearly flawless after all these years.

But going on a muscled, hard knuckle 50 years old, Joan Jett still manages to be tougher, cooler, and more aware than the terminally fair faced Stewart will ever hope to be, no matter how many Camel straights she might smoke during the filming of The Runaways , the upcoming Jett biopic in which she has been cast in the lead.