Chris D.


Chris D. is a punk poet, rock critic, singer, writer, actor and filmmaker. He is best known as the lead singer and founder of the early Los Angeles punk/deathrock band the Flesh Eaters.
Desjardins was a feature writer at Slash magazine in 1977, when he formed the Flesh Eaters with several friends from the Los Angeles punk scene, including Tito Larriva. Their second album, A Minute to Pray, a Second to Die, recorded and released in 1981, featured John Doe, DJ Bonebrake, Dave Alvin, and Steve Berlin. The band recorded two further albums; Forever Came Today and A Hard Road to Follow with Don Kirk on guitar, Robyn Jameson on bass and Chris Wahl on drums, Chris D. on vocals and occasionally Jill Jordan on backing vocals.

Personal life

Desjardins was married to Julie Christensen. The pair divorced in 1988. Following the divorce, Desjardins sought help for drug and alcohol problems in a 12-step program.

Music

The Flesh Eaters were a staple of the LA Punk Scene in the 1980s. The band played alongside seminal bands like The Misfits and The Meat Puppets. A number of original Flesh Eaters releases, like "River of Fever", were recorded through Shakeytown Music/BMI. Others were produced by Upsetter, Invasion/Bomp, Zippo/Demon or SST. When not working with The Flesh Eaters during that time, Desjardins was the co-leader, with then-spouse Julie Christensen, of the Divine Horsemen between 1984 and 1988. In early 2006 Desjardins performed several times in California, and once in London, with John Doe, DJ Bonebrake, Dave Alvin, Bill Bateman, and Steve Berlin as The Flesh Eaters. This line-up of the band had not performed together since 1981.
Desjardins issued a solo semi-acoustic LP on America's Enigma Records and the French New Rose label, called "Time Stands Still" by Chris D./Divine Horseman in 1984. The album was later released in Australia by Dog Meat Records of Melbourne. It features guest musicians John Doe, Jeffrey Lee Pierce, Linda "Tex" Jones and Dave Alvin. Desjardins issued a second solo album entitled "I Pass for Human" as Stone By Stone following the end of his marriage to Julie Christensen. He released a further solo album "Love Cannot Die" through the Sympathy for the Record Industry label in 1995.
From 1989 to 1993 and from 1997 to 2000, Desjardins performed live with varying line-ups of The Flesh Eaters. Two albums, "Ashes of Time" and "Miss Muerte", were released during the latter period.
Chris D. worked as an A&R and in-house producer for Slash and Ruby Records from 1980 until early 1984. He produced all the Flesh Eaters' albums and co-produced The Gun Club's debut album, Fire of Love, with Tito Larriva in 1982. Desjardins produced the debut albums of The Dream Syndicate, Green On Red and The Lazy Cowgirls. He remixed The Misfits' LP Walk Among Us with Glenn Danzig and the Germs' What We Do Is Secret with Pat Smear.

Upsetter Records

Upsetter Records was a Los Angeles, California-based record label founded in 1978 by Chris D. and his then-girlfriend, the animation and graphic artist Judith Bell.
Named in tribute to Lee "Scratch" Perry and the dub reggae, popular with the early punks, Upsetter was specifically created to release the early discography of the Flesh Eaters, The only exception in the label's catalog is the seminal Tooth and Nail compilation released in 1979, an album full of outstanding early Californian punk rock from the Controllers, Middle Class, the Germs, U.X.A., Negative Trend, and the Flesh Eaters themselves.
In parallel with their record label, Desjardins and Bell, in collaboration with Exene Cervenka, published the short-lived punk zine The Upsetter.

Writer

Illiterati Press published Double Snake Bourbon, a 139-page collection of Desjardins' poetry, lyrics and prose. Desjardins wrote for the magazines Slash, Forced Exposure, Asian Trash Cinema and Cult Movies. He has spent almost twenty years researching and compiling an encyclopedia of Japanese yakuza films. Titled Gun and Sword: An Encyclopedia of Japanese Gangster Films 1955-1980, research for the book was partly funded by the Japan Foundation Artist Fellowship. He also wrote liner notes and audio commentary tracks for DVDs of a variety of classic Japanese genre films, Italian cult and arthouse films.
In 2005, Desjardins' tribute to fringe directors of Japanese cult, action and exploitation cinema of the period 1950 to 1980, was published by I.B. Tauris, entitled Outlaw Masters of Japanese Film.
A Minute to Pray, A Second to Die, a 500-page anthology of Chris D.'s written work, was published at the end of 2009. Four additional works, No Evil Star, Dragon Wheel Splendor & Other Love Stories of Violence and Dread, Shallow Water, and Mother's Worry were all published in 2012. In April 2013, Desjardins' long-researched Gun and Sword: An Encyclopedia of Japanese Gangster Films 1955-1980 was published by Poison Fang Press.

Film

Desjardins has acted in a number of films, both independent and big budget. In 1987, he had a small role in the Orion film No Way Out alongside Kevin Costner and Gene Hackman as an assassin. The same year, Desjardins played a role in Border Radio, an independent film that was later released as part of the Criterion Collection. In Border Radio, Desjardins plays a musician who struggles with the consequences of a robbery.
In 2002, Desjardins wrote and directed his first feature film, I Pass For Human, which was produced and edited by Lynne Margulies. It was released in theaters in March 2004 and on DVD in October 2006. Desjardins had been attempting to produce the film since the 1980s under the original title "Hell's Belle". He worked in the programming department of the American Cinematheque in Los Angeles from 1999, and was a programmer there from January 2006 until August 1, 2009. He teaches film studies in California and also does DVD commentary for several films.