It always sucks to hear about people suffering in this little scene. I’ll be the first to admit I wasn’t a huge J Church fan, even though I had a handful of their records and saw them live a few times. I appreciated their sound, lyrics and sentiments. It still sucks. He was young. It makes me think about mortality. It makes me realize we have a huge problem in this country where health care is only available to the privileged or gainfully employed, not musicians or artists, unless they have some modicum of notoriety and fame (equation for money). A good place to start in the J Church discography would be The Drama Of Alienation. Its a good 90’s punk record. It sounds fresh but definitely takes me back to a time of Krisna choker necklaces, trainers and hooded sweatshirts, hanging out at Wax Trax in Denver and spending the last couple bucks on soba noodles at Taki’s Golden Bowl.
REPOSTED FROM PUNKNEWS.ORG: Founding member of J Church and all around well-loved punk icon Lance Hahn has passed away. Hahn had been comatose since Friday, October 12th following a collapse during dialysis. According to a post attributed to Hahn’s girlfriend:
“as far as the doctors can tell, this collapse was due to a sudden, drastic drop in blood pressure, which in turn was probably caused by a recurrence of the infection he had had in september combined with the stress of dialysis. he received immediate cpr from medical professionals at the dialysis center, but as it took fifteen or twenty minutes to resuscitate him, he suffered neurological damage from lack of oxygen to the brain, leaving him in a coma from which he never returned.”
Lance Hahn was the lead singer, guitarist, and founding member of J Church. He also wrote extensive “punk rock history” articles for Maximumrocknroll. In addition of all of this, he found time to run Honey Bear Records. Hahn was working on a compliation book of writings on anarcho-punk bands, called “Let the Tribe Increase,” to be released on AK Press.
A Coat of Red Paint In Hell 