VIA PRESS RELEASE | In connection with the release of the new Divine Horsemen album Bitter End of a Sweet Night (In The Red, October 27), The Philosophical Research Society welcomes punk rock icon, singer/songwriter, filmmaker, poet, and genre cinema expert Chris D. (aka Chris Desjardins) to PRS for an in-depth conversation onstage with PRS Executive Director and longtime friend Dennis Bartok on Thursday October 5, at 7pm.
Chris’ seminal L.A. Punk band The Flesh Eaters emerged from the same scene as fellow groups The Blasters, X, The Germs, and Los Lobos. Over the course of a 45-year and counting career the band released such classic albums as A Minute to Pray A Second to Die, No Questions Asked, Miss Muerte, and their ferocious 2019 LP I Used To Be Pretty featuring their “superstar” lineup including John Doe and D.J. Bonebrake (X), Dave Alvin (The Blasters), and Steve Berlin (Los Lobos). Formed in 1983 with then-wife and ongoing collaborator Julie Christensen, Chris’ band Divine Horsemen has released a number of stellar albums including Time Stands Still, Devil’s River, Middle of the Night, and their stunning new LP Bitter End of a Sweet Night.
In addition to his work with The Flesh Eaters, Divine Horsemen, and Stone by Stone, Chris wrote for (and served as a contributing editor to) Slash magazine between 1977–1980. He also was an A&R rep and in-house producer at Slash Records/Ruby Records from 1980-1984. He has produced/co-produced seminal albums by The Gun Club, The Dream Syndicate, The Misfits, Green on Red, The Lazy Cowgirls, Phoenix Thunderstone, and the crazy one-off Jeffrey Lee Pierce project, “Soulsuckers on Parade” (featuring Dave Alvin on guitar), as well as his own bands, The Flesh Eaters and Divine Horsemen. He has also produced songs by Top Jimmy, John Doe, and Julie Christensen.
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 film programmer at The American Cinematheque in Hollywood, California from 1999–2009. He taught genre film classes (film noir, horror, New Hollywood of the 1960s–1970s) at Academy of Art University in San Francisco from January 2009–June 2013.
Chris is also the author of the novels Mother’s Worry, Shallow Water, No Evil Star, Volcano Girls, Tightrope on Fire, and the short story collection Dragon Wheel Splendor and Other Love Stories of Violence and Dread, all from Poison Fang Books (all of which were published between 2010–late 2013). His anthology A Minute to Pray, A Second to Die, a 500-page collection of short stories, excerpts from unpublished novels and scores of dream journal entries, as well as all of his poetry and song lyrics, was published in December, 2009. His non-fiction Outlaw Masters of Japanese Films was published by IB Tauris (distributed by Palgrave Macmillan in the USA) in 2005. The long-in-the-works non-fiction, 800 page Gun and Sword: An Encyclopedia of Japanese Gangster Films 1955–1980, also from Poison Fang Books, was published in the spring of 2013.
Future works now in progress, a massive non-fiction tome, The Humanity of Femmes Fatales and Heartless Villains: International Noir and Beyond Genre and an extended, updated edition of his 2009 collection of poetry/lyrics/dream journals, A Minute to Pray, A Second to Die.
Following the conversation Chris D. will be available to sign copies of his novels and poetry collections. Ticket Price: $10 (in-person event and Zoom options available)
