Scars and Bars: Past and Present With Black Flag

My relationship with punk and hardcore music was one I didn't wade into carefully. I did not dip my toe in to check the temperature or throw a stone into the deep end to see if predators lay in wait. I leapt into into those murky fathoms, monsters or unpredictable currents be damned. When you do that you tend to get a little boiled, often a little chewed up around the edges by some apex predator. As of yet I'm still mostly whole and I'd like to think, medium rare. I started experimenting with what kind of music I truly liked around middle school. With no older brother to thrust Static Age or Black Sabbath at me, it was my local library and a growing array of friends who ended up shaping my auditory degeneracy. This arrangement made for some strange bedfellows on the CD stack. I remember going on a vacation with my family and 3 CDs on hand: Boys Don't Cry by The Cure, End Transmission by Snapcase and Take Off Your Pants and Jacket by Blink 182. That combination feels like a concoction of leftovers Steve Martin would dutifully blending to a puree and then chug in a scene from one of his early movies, but I was just seeing what worked. Over time the Happy Madison-esque angst/fart/repeat combo of Blink 182 would recede into the background in favor of Robert Smith's plaintive wails and Snapcase's fevered chant of "Believe, revolt!" As these things go I eventually found my way to Black Flag.

I think the first time I heard Black Flag was when James Franco's character did in Freaks and Geeks. Franco's Daniel is searching for an identity and looking to impress a girl. In doing so he tries the "punk lifestyle" on for size, ultimately finding that adopting an identity without conviction is a hollow crusade. His look definitely reads more Sid Vicious than Circle Jerks, but he ends up picking up a copy of Damaged. When he gets home Daniel puts needle to the wax. That's when something reached out of the tv screen and throttled me in a way I hadn't known I needed. That's when I first heard the sonic violence of Henry Rollins and the chaotic chainsaw that is Gregg Ginn's guitar. It hit me like a fist shattering a mirror into a spiderwebbing ruin of glass.

Cut to freshman year of college and I'm knee-deep in the early Black Flag and Misfits records while dabbling in Bad Brains, Minor Threat and The Screamers. I'm navigating dorm life surrounded by shitty jocks at a cultural time when homophobia and sexism aren't just hanging around. That shit was gleefully screaming in your face like Andrew Dice Clay. My perpetual scowl has purpose, my closed fist has fuel... It really feels like my war. I end up listening to Get In The Van and taking every word as gospel, right down to Hank's scathing roast of the time he saw Venom perform. I cover Damaged at a friend's house party to a small crowd with an admittedly warm reception. Then years pass and while I never stop listening to Black Flag, its presence in my life wanes. In veterinary school I'm introduced to Black Metal and that very specific rabbit hole leads to my glorious exploration of all manner of Metal sub-genres. In between Iron Maiden and Macabre and Impaler I'll sometimes throw on Six Pack or Nervous Breakdown.

Now to the present. I never really ventured beyond parts of Slip It In as far as the band's discography. The one exception to this would be Family Man, a song I find to be equal parts poignant and hilarious. So I fired up Loose Nut and In My Head. It's hard not to like what I heard. There's a definite sludgy metal quality to the guitar work with periodic moments of even weirder experimentation. For his part, Rollin's vocals fit perfectly and he still has that rabid dog "Try me" quality to his delivery that can't be duplicated. The twisted guitar line followed by the discordant background work on I'm The One has been stuck in my head for days. It feels like reuniting with an old friend.

My War was the first of the band's output that existed as an act of defiance. The band that some say invented the conventions of hardcore punk had put out an album with long songs played by members who now had long hair. This was different and therefore the worst sort of betrayal. So, the only appropriate thing to do was to double down on subverting expectations. I love the shit out of that. This was a band wanting to evolve and their rejection of the status quo was met with jeers and thrown beer bottles. There's a misnomer that being part of an alternative sub-culture makes you more free-thinking or nuanced. Spoiler alert: There are plenty of assholes, they just wear The Cramps tees instead of Adidas slides.

I also took the time to revisit Get In The Van. I think back to my youthful capacity for sustained rage and understand how someone like Rollins would only have those feelings sharpened by his experiences. I believe that type of energy never leaves, but maturing gives you the gift of learning how to harness it more effectively. I'm also floored by what the band managed to accomplish on these tours. There was no GoFundMe to fix the van and no Airbnb to find a cheap place to crash. This was a group of young guys touring by the skin of their teeth, dodging the fists of cops and skinheads alike. They slept like shit and ate like shit, but passion drove them ever onward. I chuckled to myself when I heard young Henry's eviscerate Venom for being corny. I'd say that's sort of their whole bit. My Loose Nut vinyl will be sharing space with many a Venom album and at 37, those aren't strange bedfellows to me. Sometimes I'm in the mood to be in league with Satan and sometimes I want to have a TV Party. I guess this is growing up.

-Dr. Benny Graves