![]() One of the biggest criticisms of Rollins-era Flag, shared by both fans of the earlier iteration of the band and by Greg Ginn himself, is that later Flag takes itself too seriously. Additionally, going through this playlist, you’ll notice the production changes from album to album, especially on Rollins’ vocals. Songs like “Sinking” are night and day in their studio and live versions. On the live albums, Rollins may go out of key, but he sounds more comfortable than in the studio. There are also plenty of great live recordings of the band from 1982 onward. As Carducci notes, this is how the songs on My War and Slip It In were supposed to sound. The best recording of the band in the Rollins era are the 1982 demos they recorded as a 5 piece with Chuck Biscuits on drums and Greg Ginn and Dez Cadena on guitar. Someone like Greg Ginn’s brother Raymond Pettibon, waded through those murky waters with much more enduring results. I understand having to make art like that to stay sane in the cesspool of the Reagan/Thatcher 80’s, but it doesn’t say much me to now. Retrospectively, looking at things as a grown-up, most of that edgy 80’s culture, from Genesis P-Oridge to Nick Zedd, has aged pretty badly. But, add in Henry Rollins (a/k/a “ Hank the Crank”), a military school misfit who kept snakes as pets, and suddenly the music stopped being so party hardy.Īs the 80’s unrolled, Rollins started hanging out with transgressive, self-consciously HEAVY 80’s personalities like Lydia Lunch, Nick Cave, and Diamanda Galas and writing lyrics about pouring salt on slugs. These geeks hitched their horses to the punk wagon and somehow became righteous dudes. Somehow from 1977 to 1981, a gangly nerd like Greg Ginn wrote a bunch of music that some of the dumbest jocks and surf nazis in Southern California used as a soundtrack for complete mayhem. That’s the thing with later Flag, they’re not cool: it’s dork music. That said, “DRINKING BLACK COFFEE, BLACK COFFEE” is easily one of the stupidest rock song choruses I’ve ever heard in my life. Like Carducci says, considering the environment in and around the band, it’s fortunate that so much good music was released. I like the Black Flag records from 1983 onward and think there are a lot of great songs on them. Later Flag records vary from extremely righteous to totally self-indulgent depending on how much herb you’ve smoked. And, by most accounts, Greg Ginn started smoking a lot of pot. The tempos went down, vocal cords were no longer shredded raw, and there was certainly a lot of jazz fusion going down. Black Flag’s approach was all of the above. The Meat Puppets produced a more tuneful result once they slowed their cacophony down from 78rpm. Bad Brains showcased their jazz fusion roots more, slowed down their tempos, and upped their production values. “Going metal” was the most common decision, whether the midtempo groove that bands like SSD or Corrosion of Conformity adopted, or the crossover thrash of DRI and Gang Green. This is the fun punk sing-a-long stuff, you know: REVENGE!!! TV PARTY!!! WASTED!!!.Īfter the hardcore movement lost its initial momentum, the bands that were left then had to figure out a new direction. When people say they listen to Black Flag, they usually mean the bands material from 1977-1981: the stuff recorded before Henry Rollins joined and Rollins’ first album with the band, Damaged. The ones that didn’t had to change their sound there isn’t a hardcore band in America that sounded the same in 1984 as they did in 1981 (this alone is pretty interesting, think about how many bands sound the same from say 2009 to 2019, never mind the troglodyte hardcore bands that have sounded the same for 25 years…). After a couple 45’s and maybe an album, most first generation hardcore bands broke up by ’83 or ’84. There’s only so long you can play as fast as possible while screaming about cops. The first flowering of American hardcore only lasted until 1983. I mean, we’re lucky the stuff exists considering the fucked-up situations. My War and Slip It In are written for two guitars but recorded with one. Everything Went Black is the way it should sound. ![]() Damaged is an album full of songs written for one guitar but recorded with a two-guitar lineup- it doesn’t sound how it should. Well, he was frustrated for other reasons too: everything was pent-up. Joe Carducci: The last record, In My Head, is the record Greg was trying to make since Damaged.
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