Review: 'The Music Leaves Stains: The Complete Story of The Misfits'

This Music Leaves Stains: The Complete Story of The Misfits is a real-life This Is Spinal Tap and author James Greene, Jr., is the Jersey horror punks' very own Marty DiBergi. With a straight face (and a tendency toward clunky wording) Greene tells the tale of a group that started as the eighties' best punk band and ended up bizarre self parodies. Glenn Danzig comes off as an inflexible, homophobic dick not above telling his biggest fan "I SHOULD FUCKING KILL YOU RIGHT NOW!" (those are Glenn's caps, by the way). Bassist Jerry Only is even zanier, fronting a Christian Viking metal band called Kryst the Conqueror as "Mocavius Kryst" and transforming the reformed Misfits into pro-wrestlers. His band mates were so dismayed by his obsession with pro-wrestling that they considered replacing Only with Vampiro... a pro-wrestler. Greene doesn't really play this absurd story for laughs, but it's so funny he doesn't really need to. This Music Leaves Stains is respectful, informative, and thorough (despite its wee 120-page length) enough not to alienate hardcore Misfits fans as humorless as Danzig, but pretty much anyone will get a kick out of it.