by Mikey Bean
630 pages, approx 8.5 x 11 = massive!
and exhaustive. Hundreds of photos and flyers and adverts from the time.
When drummer Don Bolles was sacked from LA punk band the Germs he was already a member of Vox Pop, girlfriend Mary was quickly becoming 'Dinah Cancer' and their horror-punk band 45 Grave was in its infant stages.
Around the same time, bands like the A-Sexuals, the Decadent and Speed Queens would soon become Christian Death and Super Heroines. Add to this the early incarnations of Kommunity FK, Nervous Gender and Voodoo Church, plus Castration Squad, Aphotic Culture and Die Schlaflosen, along with Radio Werewolf, Ex VoTo, Screams for Tina and a host of others...
The roots of the Los Angeles deathrock scene, an integral part of the later goth movement were starting to take shape.
Phantoms is supplemented with an incredible amount of flyer material, photographs, and zine imagery. Mikey has taken pains to ensure that his survey of deathrock includes not just the musicians, but club owners, promoters, ‘zine-makers, poets, filmmakers, and indeed the whole of the community that made the deathrock movement possible, including some of those responsible for the unique fashion the scene would have (Ron Athey and Shannon Wilhelm, among many others).
