Circle Jerks

Keith Morris, Black Flag’s former frontman, joined forces with Redd Kross guitarist Greg Hetson in 1979 to launch the Circle Jerks. The quartet fused the Sex Pistols’ and Ramones’ defiant spirit with the high-impact physicality of the Hermosa Beach surfer and skateboarder scene, the same coastal enclave south of Los Angeles that sparked the first wave of hardcore acts. Bassist Roger Rogerson and drummer Lucky Lehrer completed the lineup that cut the band’s debut, Group Sex, for Frontier Records in 1980. Fourteen songs filled the LP, their durations compressed from one minute thirty-five seconds down to twenty-seven seconds, pushing punk’s velocity even further. Exposure through the documentary The Decline of Western Civilization, together with the group’s volatile concerts, quickly cemented its reputation inside the emerging hardcore scene.

The 1982 follow-up, Wild in the Streets, sustained that velocity yet introduced a comic edge by recasting the 1960s pop singles “Just Like Me” and “Put a Little Love in Your Heart” in the band’s slam-dancing style. Golden Shower of Hits, issued the next year, extended the gag with versions of “Along Comes Mary,” “Afternoon Delight,” “Having My Baby,” and “Love Will Keep Us Together.” The same record also introduced several pieces that stretched toward the three-minute mark, among them “Under the Gun,” “High Price on Our Heads,” and “Rats of Reality.” After those releases the band paused for two years, during which Hetson began splitting guitar duties between the Circle Jerks and the newly formed Bad Religion, a dual role he maintained well into the following decade.

Reconvening in 1985 with drummer Keith Clark and bassist Zander Schloss, the Circle Jerks delivered the metal-inflected Wonderful on Combat Records. Critics reacted unevenly to the slower, heavier hard-rock pulse that supplanted the earlier thrash approach, a shift that persisted on the 1987 Combat album VI. The group maintained a minimal presence through the early nineties, its sole release being the 1992 live collection Gig. In 1995 Mercury issued Oddities, Abnormalities and Curiosities, the band’s first studio album in eight years and its major-label debut; one of its twelve tracks was a rendition of the Soft Boys’ “I Wanna Destroy You,” distinguished by an unexpected vocal cameo from longtime fan Debbie Gibson, who occasionally joined the Circle Jerks onstage for the number.

By 1996 relentless touring had taken a toll, prompting another hiatus. Morris in particular confronted multiple health setbacks, including a back injury that required a brace, gastrointestinal complications culminating in appendicitis, and a 1999 diagnosis of adult-onset diabetes. Lacking insurance, he benefited from benefit concerts organized to offset mounting medical costs, allowing the now dreadlocked singer time to recover. In 2003, sufficiently restored, Morris resumed live work with his spoken-word jazz-punk project Midget Handjob while also touring alongside the Circle Jerks and the Rollins Band. His contribution to Henry Rollins’s benefit album Rise Above: 24 Black Flag Songs to Benefit the West Memphis Three included a reading of “Nervous Breakdown,” the same song he had first recorded with the original Black Flag lineup in 1978.