Flesh Eaters & Mudhoney at The Echoplex 1.19.19

All photos by Deb Frazin

In case you haven’t heard the big news, the original line-up of L.A. punk legends The Flesh Eaters have reunited and recorded their first album together since their 1981 masterpiece “A Minute To Pray, A Second To Die”.  The new album “I Used To Be Pretty” features some incredible new songs (“Black Temptation”, “Ghost Cave Lament”), some great covers (“Fleetwood Mac’s “Green Manalishi”, The Sonic’s “Cinderella” and The Gun Club’s “She’s Like Heroin To Me”), as well as powerful new renditions of old Flesh Eaters songs (“My Life To Live”, “Pony Dress”, “Wedding Dice”, “Miss Muerte”). This album is a magnificent gift to hardcore Flesh Eaters fans (like me)! If you haven’t heard the new album yet, what are you waiting for? Go buy that vinyl!

The original line-up (Chris Desjardins, John Doe, Dave Alvin, Bill Bateman, D.J.Bonebrake and Steve Berlin) are currently on tour to celebrate and promote “I Used To Be Pretty”. On Saturday night, they played with Mudhoney to a sold-out crowd at The Echoplex. EVERYONE was there (so many familiar faces)! Mudhoney played a FIERCE set (I’ve seen them many times, and I think this might’ve been my favorite Mudhoney show). Mark Arm was a fucking mad man on that stage as they plowed through old favorites like “If I Think”, and “Touch Me I’m Sick”, as well as songs from their newest album “Digital Garbage”.

After the stage cooled down, Chris D. and The Flesh Eaters opened with “See You In the Boneyard”, then proceeded to plow through a vast, blistering set. The special “bonus” of this show was the addition of Chris Desjardin’s Divine Horsemen ex-bandmate (and ex-wife) Julie Christensen. She contributed vocals on the new album, and she was on-board to add a dynamic sound to the set.

My favorite part of the show was the last song of the encore. They played one of the new songs “Ghost Cave Lament”.  I looked at Chris and Julie standing there up on the stage, older and gray (like all of us old punks in the crowd), and it was just so beautiful and touching to me. Once, we were all kids standing in The Whisky watching The Flesh Eaters, once we were young adults standing in Club Lingerie watching Divine Horesmen, and now, decades later, we’re STILL TOGETHER, lucky enough to have another opportunity to be watching the original Flesh Eaters again. Chris and Julie were wailing wildly at the end of “Ghost Cave”, they strolled off the stage together as the band kept playing, and then it was over. The perfect ending to a perfect show.

We all used to be pretty, but some things are STILL pretty damn good.