#bob hoffnar

“In writing like this, especially the poetry, one is often trying to obliterate the self …“ Chris D writes in the introduction to his collection of writings “A Minute To Pray, A Second To Die”.

Chris D’s written work is such a fitful transmutation of earthly pain and disorientation, that you can hear the voice of a werewolf becoming human and shamefully surveying the damage. In his early poetry there is an underground sensibility and a lineage that connects sources like Huysmans, Baudelaire, and Poe, to modern California eccentrics Forrest Ackerman and Philip K Dick. In 70’s Los Angeles, these were certainly lonely and dark roads to explore. They were no less lonely when he set words to music with the Flesh Eaters, reaching a creative apex in the also titled “A Minute To Pray, A Second To Die”. The collision of African rhythms, Dr John, Bo Diddley with Catholic and Haitian mystic imagery was as combustible as anything in Jack Parson’s garage. Reading the lyric sheet is deceptive, it almost seems as if writing of this depth and devotion couldn’t cohabitate with music, but listen to the record. It remains an unapproachable gutted banshee wail from hell.

He’s researched and written obsessively about International genre film -Yakuza, Westerns, Film Noir, Horror, et al - and these discarded expressions of the cultural id have been subsumed in his distinctly American work. Its a broad, ongoing career of film, research, music, poetry, and fiction that is without peer, and fearless.

“All of you who have related to the chaotic spiritual turmoil that is the core of this book already know that anything can happen anywhere to anyone at any time. To those of you who have also experienced repeated heartbreak, fury at the cruel gaze of a cold, pitiless Universe, the egocentric stupidity and selfishness of one’s own personality - as well as the selfless joy of unconditional love and compassion- and the raw sensitivity that threatens to tear you open every time you peel away your protective armor, do not give in. Fight on with unconditional love - it is the hardest fighting to do, but it is ultimately the only kind of struggle that will flush the poison from your system.”

This is a rare opportunity to see Chris D read his work.

Chris D. became involved in the Los Angeles punk scene as a writer for Slash magazine in late 1977. He was an A&R rep and in-house producer at Slash Records/Ruby Records from 1980-1984. He is also known as the singer/songwriter of the bands The Flesh Eaters, Divine Horsemen and Stone by Stone. He saw release of his first feature film as director, I PASS FOR HUMAN, in 2004 (and its DVD release in 2006), and worked as a programmer at The American Cinematheque in Hollywood CA from 1999-2009. His anthology A MINUTE TO PRAY, A SECOND TO DIE, a 500-page collection of all of his poetry and song lyrics, plus scores of dream journal entries was published in December, 2009 by New Texture Books. Between 2010-2013, Chris D. published 5 novels and a short story collection, and April 2013 saw the release of his 800-page non-fiction GUN AND SWORD: An Encyclopedia of Japanese Gangster Films 1955-1980, all from Poison Fang Books. He is also the author of a chapter (“Punk as a Young Adult”) in the UNDER THE BIG BLACK SUN book by John Doe & Tom DeSavia from April 2016, published by De Capo Press.