WRITING FOR SLASH 1977 - 1981 The Know It All Years - Reviews

These are the earliest published works of Chris D., an author of novels, short stories and film writing, who is best known as singer/songwriter for the bands, The Flesh Eaters and Divine Horsemen. WRITING FOR SLASH features vintage, passionate, naive, funny, often savage and self-righteous musings – sometimes under Chris' pseudonyms: Bob Clone, Half-Cocked, Mr. OK – on the qualities rock music should embody in the late-1970s punk era. All these reviews of records (albums & 7" singles), live shows and even some films appeared in the legendary punk newspaper/fanzine, Slash between 1977 – 1981.

“The best “punk” writing emulated the music – immediate, smart, semi-tuff, and funny…writing which sprang manifest of the sound and fury, where you take a swig of beer and light a cig after writing and/or reading it. Chris D is the perennial whip-it-out on the click-clack typewriter...and then slap it onto Kickboy Face’s desk. Done! Who’s next!? Chris D’s Slash slashings are a master class of literature as amplifier, cranked to ten.” – Thurston Moore, co-founder of Sonic Youth, Ecstatic Peace Library

"Righteous dispatches from the ugly front line of L.A. punk rock in its first detonations, spewed forth by a smart, discerning artist/critic/observer with clear eyes, an honest heart, excellent taste, an appropriately bad attitude, and a very sensitive bullshit detector. In the day, Chris was one of the reasons Slash was mandatory reading every month, and here’s the proof.” – Chris Morris, music critic, the Los Angeles Reader (1978-96), author of “Los Lobos: A Dream in Blue”

"...You would read Slash’s reviews with pen and paper in hand to make notes about about what you absolutely needed to get. Chris made some of these records sound so essential, you would moan piteously if you discovered they were sold out...But where the writing here is at its most fevered pitch is in his live reviews...back on the East Coast, it was almost hard to believe the tales of brutal police aggro and out-of-control bands, but corroborating reports made us realize it was all true...The knee-jerk reaction we’d had towards West Coast punk dissolved when we could finally hear the records, but Chris’s writing played a huge role in hipping outsiders to the actualities of the scene." – Byron Coley, co-founder/co-editor of Forced Exposure, co-founder/editor of Bull Tongue Review, writer for Arthur, Spin.

“When the music is your special friend, dance on fire as it intends”— Jim Morrison said that. Said it and surely he meant it as a rule — a commandment — not optional! — and veteran fire-dancer Chris Desjardins is not one to shirk his duty as a sacredly acclaimed rockclit, ’scuse me, rockcrit practitioner...Acknowledge music as fire — from the getgo — or you are a soulless armchair simp — a wuss — a frigging schmo. Having eyeballed every page/paragraph/word of this blazing volume myself, lemme ASSURE you Chris is no schmo, not a once...he never stumbles, he never falls, but hoofs, breathes & suckles FI-YER from flaming first to butt-searing last! Cookin’ out!!!" – Richard Meltzer, author of The Appomattox of Rock (plus The Aesthetics of Rock, and more…)

"Rock and roll for Chris D. did not start with Ramones or “Anarchy In The U.K.”...he deploys his considerable pop-historical knowledge in an almost offhand way: There’s no sighing about better r ‘n’ r days gone by, no cudgeling the reader with his superior expertise. Chris knew...He’s done so much since these writings first appeared: composed songs...led bands, produced records...published books. Writing For Slash can stand with anything in this sprawling, decades–long corpus of expressive effort." – Andy Schwartz, editor and publisher of New York Rocker.