This Music Leaves Stains: The Complete Story of the Misfits by James Greene Jr (review)

The preface to James Greene Jr.’s This Music Leaves Stains: The Complete Story of the Misfits acknowledges the practical and conceptual difficulties in constructing an authoritative biographical account of any popular music group, but particularly that of a punk band that came into prominence in the 1980s, much of whose affective power lies in the mystique of the undocumented tales told about them, as well as in the ephemeral accounts of their performances—musical and otherwise. One of the central methodological concerns for Greene is one that many music scholars will find familiar: How does one write about a musical group in whom one is currently interested, but after the group’s seminal musical output has long since been released, and is no longer part of the group’s live performance? Further, the methodological difficulties faced by Greene are compounded by the lack of traditional documentary evidence often used to construct a standard historical account of musical performance and production. Greene recalls that his first sonic experience of the Misfits occurred over a decade after the release of the some of band’s most infamous songs like “Die, Die My Darling” and “Mommy, Can I Go Out and Kill Tonight?” as well as over a decade after the departure of founding member Glenn Anzalone (Glenn Danzig) from the group. Nonetheless, Greene cultivated an intimate relationship with the music primarily through listening to Misfits albums. The cult magnetism of the Misfits’s music, combined with the lack of verifiable accounts of the events surrounding the band’s performances and the details of the members’ lives, served as the locus of desire for Greene to publish this text. As such, he suggests that his book should be understood as a glimpse into the mysterious history of the Misfits and their music. Rather than attempt to construct a comprehensive history of the band—an untenable task—Greene suggests that “[n]ot every mystery regarding this legendary band is solved in the pages that follow (which I suppose is just as well, lest these figures lose their entire sense of intrigue), but light is certainly shed on numerous aspects of the Misfits story . . . and the music is finally given what I hope is its full critical shake” (p. xii). As we are propelled into the body of Greene’s work, this gesture seems fitting as it recalls the title of the book in relation to the discursive practices of popular music research. Minute as it may be, the choice to call his text the “complete story of the Misfits,” rather than the “complete history,” seems appropriate. A story, after all, suggests an embrace of fantasy, of the mysterious ethos of the Misfits, even if there remains an unverifiable truth-value to such accounts. With this, Greene sets out into the murky waters in search of a story to tell us about the legendary punk band the Misfits.

The nine relatively brief chapters in This Music Leaves Stains form a structure that Greene’s writing traverses by jumping from node to node, switching between discussions of a cobbled-together chronology of the Misfits, the personal backgrounds of specific band members, performance history and analysis, and the myriad stories of the interpersonal drama that seemed to constantly erupt between the different band members, as well as between the band and their audience, the press, or anyone else they encountered. In addition, particular attention is given to Glenn Danzig’s post-Misfits musical projects, Samhain and Danzig, and brief mention of some of the other Misfits’s side projects are also included, such as the bass- and guitar-playing brothers Jerry and Paul Caiafa’s (Jerry Only and Doyle) short-lived Christian heavy metal band Kryst the Conqueror. Chapter 1 stands out as the only chapter in the book that does not discuss the Misfits as a band per se; rather, it sets...