The Flesh Eaters Prepare Release of Reunion Album with New Video for “MY LIFE TO LIVE”

Magnet premiered the video

LOS ANGELES, Calif. — One of Los Angeles punk rock’s most admired yet little-heard bands makes a striking return to records on January 18, 2019, as Yep Roc Records issues an all-new collection by The Flesh Eaters, I Used to Be Pretty.
 
On the release, founding vocalist and songwriter Chris Desjardins — better known as Chris D. — is backed by the legendary “all-star” edition of the band, originally heard on the 1981 set A Minute To Pray, A Second To Die: Dave Alvin (guitar) and Bill Bateman (drums) of The Blasters; John Doe (bass) and D.J. Bonebrake (marimba and percussion) of X; and Steve Berlin (saxophones) of The Plugz (and later The Blasters and Los Lobos). The album was produced collectively by the band members.

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On five of the album’s 11 tracks, this superpowered unit is joined by Julie Christensen, Desjardins’ vocal partner in both The Flesh Eaters’ successor band Divine Horsemen and latter-day editions of the original group. The singers were married during the ’80s.
 
Release of I Used To Be Pretty, which will be issued in single-CD and double-LP configurations, will be followed by a series of U.S. tour dates — the very first shows, save for a lone U.K. appearance — to take this heretofore elusive group outside the West Coast.
 
Having released a video for “Cinderella” (https://youtu.be/fLi7LQbhlq0), a cover of the garage-rock forefathers The Sonics, on October 9, The Flesh Eaters released a new video, for “My Life To Live,” this week:“My Life To Live,” https://found.ee/mylifetolive
 
Desjardins explains, “I originally wrote ‘My Life To Live’ back in 1982, that version appearing on the third Flesh Eaters album called Forever Came Today. It’s a love song, but it’s coming from a fierce place, full of contradictions. I wrote the lyrics about someone I was deeply in love with then and for several years thereafter. She would come to every Flesh Eaters show and even now is still a fan and a friend. At the time, she had another boyfriend, but there was a window of time where she seemed poised to get together with me. I got conflicting signals and behavior from her about the situation. Most of her girlfriends saw me as the dark, intellectual weirdo and the other guy as a more agreeable, normal choice. 
 
“So it was a frustrating situation for about six months or so, before she gravitated back to him exclusively. When you’re in your late twenties/early thirties, I think some of us have a more straightforward, direct approach to going after who we want as a mate, ignoring certain perspectives on personality and relationship ‘wisdom’ acquired from experience that we might solidify later. The video is aimed at a younger generation, but it still gets that feeling across of holding on uncompromisingly to an ideal or a dream, no matter what the cost. Sometimes — like at the end of the video when an older embodiment of the character has to let go of his beloved truck — we don’t always have a choice and dreams are destroyed by forces beyond our control. This whole idea also fits in the with the I Used To Be Pretty album title, aging physically, but still emotionally in a ‘younger,’ more idealistic place.” 
 
Desjardins says he sees I Used To Be Pretty as a new chapter in the evolution of one of L.A. punk’s most powerful bands: “A few weeks after we completed the album, I was saying to the guys that what was so special is that we were no longer just the sum of our parts — we were more than the sum of our parts. We were like a single, symbiotic organism, and we each unconsciously, intuitively knew what the rest of the band was going to play split seconds before we played it. Sometimes I’ll listen to one of the songs now, and it really raises the hair on the back of my neck.