They Didn't Die. They Escaped.

An eternity of not knowing, or caring, what stupid shit Ye just said seems absolutely heavenly.

In the Metaverse your dreams will not be commercial free.

The text came in Friday night. At 7:59 pm.

“DH Peligro died…My sister’s husband found him.” In Van Nuys, California is where they found the Midwest native and longtime drummer for the Dead Kennedys. The paramedic that called it in, my friend’s sister’s husband, dropped that they found information that indicated he had cancer as well, though the listed cause of death was accidental fall.

I sat on the information, not for any reason more solid than that I hadn’t wanted it to be true and imagined by not acknowledging it, if the news cycle didn’t pick it up, maybe it didn’t happen. Validation by news cycle. In the briefest of moments between the text and the news, I was also treated to an endless diet of death by gunshot, death by nightclub, near death by hammer, and threats of death by a “major” “celebrity” whose issue is not so much that he HATES Jews but how much he LOVES Hitler.

Darren and I first met in 1981. I don’t recall seeing him after 1989, but we were thrown together often on account of a public lack of imagination regarding race and rock and roll. Two Black guys in punk rock must warrant a mention when discussing Black guys in punk rock because what an interesting thing it must be to be two Black guys in punk rock. Insert: sarcasm. Just about anywhere here.

[S]eeking safe harbor from, well…you, me, us and the whole billionaire construct of a marketplace where the only thing produced, consumed, sold and desired is shit-based.

In fact, we all actually did keep informal tabs on each other. Long before the “AfroPunk” documentaries there was some semi-formal record keeping. Howard Twigs, Dmitri from Shok, Claudette from Antiwarfare, Lefty from DC, Orlando from Special Forces, Michael Cornelius from JFA, Bubba from Void, Ron from Juvenil Justice and way more and, of course, the lodestar by way of Bad Brains. If we didn’t, or hadn’t met, or known each other, we knew the others existed. Not that it much mattered. None of us seemed to need the validation. We just did what we did and left it to whoever else cared, to contextualize the Black people in punk rock concerns.

The circumstances under which I first met Darren though, all I ever called him if I wasn’t calling him “Peligro,” were curious and came at the conclusion of me and the rest of Whipping Boy commandeering the stage and playing four songs after being announced as “The Circle Jerks…..from LA!” Under a fusillade of beer, spit, beer bottles and generalized abuse, we laughed, kicked the audience in the face, and played four songs before yielding the stage to the headliners, the actual Circle Jerks…from LA. Total elapsed time, seven minutes and 40 seconds.

Wandering through a crowd of people now slapping us on the backs while they were trying to figure out what the hell had happened, two guys braced us. One was Klaus Flouride, the Dead Kennedys bass player, and with him was Darren. They wanted to know who the hell we were and what had just happened. When I explained that since our whole band was at the show we just asked if we could play four songs and we were not denied. We were called Whipping Boy.

Looking at Darren’s face I remember the look and can’t describe it any other way than as a request. Specifically, “please do not be a bug negro.” Now this might need to be contextualized. We were small in number, us Black folks in punk rock, but any one of us had an outsized effect on the rest.

“Who the fuck are you calling ‘Master’?” It was a Black fan from Santa Cruz and he had misheard the lyric from a song we did called “Myster Magi”. After much back and forth, and this was face to face as the Internet did not exist then, we had figured out that he misheard the chorus of "Myster Magi”. He had stopped talking to me for months in the face of my perceived Black anti-blackness before this though.

But I was no more or less of a bug Negro than any one of us, and so the remainder of my memories of Darren are fun and fun loving. The fact that so much more ink will be spilled on the vicissitudes of Kanye West and the imbroglio of his crawl and fall into antiblack, antisemitic, and madness-fueled agitprop, nauseates me though. In a way that causes me to start seeking safe harbor from, well…you, me, us and the whole billionaire construct of a marketplace where the only thing produced, consumed, sold and desired is shit-based.

To be free, really and truly free, in a society of those willingly enslaved is to be a stranger in an increasingly strange land where you’re outside of language, culture and custom, buffeted about by an algorithm that now has “Nigger” trending on the Musk-owned Twitter. So, Darren died of injuries sustained in an accidental fall? So are we all.

[Y]es, I am noting that while I am celebrating his life and the part he played in ours, I’m mostly just feeling sorry that we’re still here.

But “accidental” has little, or nothing, to do with our steadfast hunger for the entropy on the menu. In fact a friend of mine, both a coder and a writer, had posited this in a screenplay, as of yet unpublished, where the creator of a social network had written some code whose sole purpose was to build stronger social connections. Through some curious quirk it was designed though to build stronger social connections to him, the writer of the code.

AI had subsequently figured out that building stronger social connections to the writer was easier to do if our social connections to each other were weakened, so the app had started to aid and abet exactly that. Texts that you wouldn’t send to one friend were sent to that friend. Emails to your lover were sent to your husband. Through cross connections you were outing yourself at work, rest and play, until we were all isolated from each other, ideologically, physically and spiritually, though not from the network’s god who, was fundamentally desperate enough for connection that he created this world in the first place.

“Can you call him Elan?” The screenwriter who now works at Youtube doesn’t want to make waves. He just wants to sell a screenplay. “Or Ilan? These are totally different from Elon if that’s what you’re thinking.”

He declined and so here we are.

I loved Darren, and those first few Dead Kennedys records and singles are revelatory. His death will mark me as it may mark people who had no idea he ever existed. I just wish he could have gone out to something other than a headful of the garbage we’re choking on, every minute of every hour of every day.

And yes, I am noting that while I am celebrating his life and the part he played in ours, I’m mostly just feeling sorry that we’re still here. I’m sure I’ll feel even sorrier after the elections coming up in about eight days time.

Mostly though I miss having him among us. Just like I’m going to miss having you all among us when you go. But you know what? While you hear a lot about misery loving company, you rarely hear about company loving misery.

So here’s to the freedom that is now his, and the freedom that awaits us all. And until that day, well, at least we have some good music to listen to. Good non-bug negro music. To take our minds off of where we are, who we’re with and the fact that despite all other extant indicators while we are, indeed, getting older, we are also definitely not getting better.

Rest in Power, brother man, brother man.