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Black Flag

Black Flag

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Black Flag: My War

Review by Roy Trakin, Creem, July 1984

WHAT HAPPENS to hardcore bands when they get old? They turn into Hawkwinds, that's what. Redondo Beach's finest have let their skinheads grow out and ...

Audio interviews

SST's Greg Ginn (1991)

Interview by Mark Sinker, Rock's Backpages audio, Spring 1991

The hardcore label boss talks about setting up SST in order to release Black Flag's recordings; about learning how to run a label and the importance of independent distribution; the perception of SST and its subsidiary labels New Alliance and Cruise; SST's audience(s), the reactionary fanzine scene, and the challenge of selling "out-there" non-rock music.

File format: mp3; file size: 28.4mb, interview length: 29' 38" sound quality: ***

Henry Rollins (1994)

Interview by Andy Gill, Rock's Backpages audio, May 1994

Henry reflects on Kurt Cobain's recent death; Black Flag's influence on the new bands; his disapproval of slackers and his ascetic lifestyle; his disciplinarian father; violence in America; what he likes and loathes about England; his youthful fondness for Ted Nugent, and '70s hard rock in general; the difference between Black Flag and his Rollins Band; music vs. spoken word; his literary influences, including Nietzsche; his mother's record collection; being knocked out by punk rock; his gym work... and his relationship with his fans.

File format: mp3; file size: 79.5mb, interview length: 1h 22' 46" sound quality: ****

List of articles in the library

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LA Punk

Report by Mick Farren, New Musical Express, 11 April 1981

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA is always preceded by its own legend. There is no way you can avoid that legend if you grew up with the price ...

Southland Punk Discs: A Primer

Overview by Richard Cromelin, Los Angeles Times, 5 July 1981

BESIDES MAKING names for themselves in local rock clubs and in the hearts of the police and the media, the Southland's hard-core punk bands have ...

Slamdancing in the Big City

Report and Interview by Richard Harrington, The Washington Post, 19 July 1981

THE PIT is ferocious and frightening: Young men's bodies slam into each other, arms and elbows out, fist flailing, like razor-edged Mexican jumping beans popping ...

The Decline of Western Civilization (Dir. Penelope Spheeris)

Film/DVD/TV Review by Don Waller, New York Rocker, September 1981

THE DECLINE of Western Civilization, Penelope Spheeris's documentary of the L.A. punk scene circa late '79/early '80, is by turns funny, provocative, pretentious, inspiring, boring, ...

Black Flag: Me No Popeye

Interview by Mick Sinclair, Sounds, 19 December 1981

Hot on the heels of the Dead Kennedys come L.A. punx Black Flag. ...

Black Flag: Damaged (SST Import)*****

Review by Garry Bushell, Sounds, 30 January 1982

Hardcore heaven ...

Black Flag: Damaged (Unicorn/SST, import)/Panther Burns: Behind The Magnolia Curtains (Rough Trade)

Review by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 6 February 1982

AS GUN Clubs and Blasters abound and multiply from the original Slash stock of X’s and Flesh Eaters, the LA hard punk core gets back ...

Black Flag in the California Scum

Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 20 November 1982

  WHEN BLACK FLAG came to England last winter, they felt more than the ice and snow – they felt the cold studs on leather jackets, ...

Black Flag: Everything Went Black (SST)

Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 26 March 1983

HERE WE GO GATHERING NUTS IN L.A. ...

Black Flag Hangs At Half-Mast

Report and Interview by Richard Cromelin, Los Angeles Times, 11 June 1983

MOST ROCK bands send out photos and press clippings with their records. But inside the new album Everything Went Black is a copy of a ...

The Truth about Black Flag

Profile and Interview by Mark Leviton, BAM, 12 August 1983

LET'S FACE IT – much of what passes for music in our country is, in fact, nothing more than product, the worthless, soulless result of ...

Black Flag: My War (SST)

Review by Don Watson, New Musical Express, 31 March 1984

TO SAY that Black Flag's Damaged was the punk LP of 1981, is tantamount to (if I may be allowed to lapse for a moment ...

Wheel Me Out Flagging!: Black Flag: Marquee, London

Live Review by Mat Snow, New Musical Express, 26 May 1984

"SEARCH AND DESTROY" is the tattoo emblazoned across the sweat-rivuleted, hawser-taut shoulders of Henry Rollins. ...

The Flag Is Up For Henry Rollins

Interview by Richard Cromelin, Los Angeles Times, 20 July 1984

SUNDAY AFTERNOON, Henry Rollins will work himself into a frenzy as he leads L.A. punk kingpins Black Flag in a special matinee performance at West ...

Black Flag: Heart of Darkness

Interview by Don Watson, New Musical Express, 15 September 1984

RUN! THIS can't be happening! The headlights of the car bearing down on Greg Ginn and Bill Stevenson capture two slack-jawed faces, stark with astonishment, ...

Black Flag's Private War

Interview by Mark Leviton, BAM, 29 March 1985

LOS ANGELES — Henry Rollins simply will not look at me. The Black Flag vocalist has been described as everything from Jim Morrison with Charlie ...

Punk Lives: The Minutemen, Meat Puppets and SST Records

Report and Interview by Michael Goldberg, Rolling Stone, 18 July 1985

They don't sound like the Ramones, and they don't look like the Sex Pistols, but bands like Hüsker Dü, the Minutemen and the Meat Puppets ...

Black Flag: 9.30 Club, Washington DC

Live Review by Simon Witter, New Musical Express, 27 July 1985

THE INTENSE energy with which they maliciously rioted across the grooves of Damaged inevitably doomed them to an early burn out, and tonight's show was ...

Black Flag: Damaged (SST 007) ****/In My Head (SST 045) *****

Review by Neil Perry, Sounds, 16 November 1985

THE ELECTRIC box in the corner is getting as tedious as the night is getting chilly. Cold comfort indeed, and time to slip on something ...

Black Flag: My War (Continued)

Report and Interview by Richard Grabel, New Musical Express, 12 July 1986

FRIDAY NIGHT at New York's Irving Plaza, filled to the rafters with punks letting their freak flags fly. Tattered, dazed and confused kids line the ...

SST Records: Working Muscles, Packaged Wallop

Report and Interview by Danny (Shredder) Weizmann, L.A. Weekly, 5 September 1986

YOU COULD SAY this is the darkest Dark Age the music world has seen yet, what with commercial radio more dead than death itself and ...

Ex-Black Flag Rockers Battle The Mainstream

Interview by Don Waller, Los Angeles Times, 27 November 1986

"WE WEREN'T a band that came out and played a lot of our old songs," reflects Black Flag founder/guitarist Greg Ginn in the wake of ...

An Oral History of Hardcore Punk

Retrospective and Interview by Pat Blashill, unpublished, 1995

NOTE: I conducted these interviews and more for a magazine story that never ran. What follows is a rough, incomplete edit of the piece. I ...

Marc Spitz with Brendan Mullen: We Got the Neutron Bomb - The Untold Story of L.A. Punk

Book Review by Barney Hoskyns, The Village Voice, 2001

IT'S KINDA IRONIC that the untold story of the Los Angeles punk scene should be officially told (tolled?) at a time when New York City ...

Flying the Black Flag

Book Excerpt by Michael Azerrad, Our Band Could Be Your Life, 21 July 2001

The following is the first chapter from Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground 1981-1991, in which Michael Azerrad vividly ...

The violence. The drugs. The death. From Black Flag and Social Distortion to Bad Religion and The Offspring, this is the story of 20 years of LA punk.

Retrospective by Ian Winwood, Kerrang!, 19 January 2002

On the long, straight drive from Los Angeles airport, down a curving freeway, past oil wells and gas stations, diners and office supply stores, onto ...

L.A. Punk: California Screamin'

Retrospective by Don Waller, MOJO, July 2004

Ignored by the major labels, hounded by cops, fuelled by booze and drugs, L.A. punk was born in a concrete basement in Hollywood known as ...

Black Flag and All That: Joe Carducci's Enter Naomi

Memoir by Barney Hoskyns, eMusic.com, Winter 2007

THE RECENT PUBLICATION of Joe Carducci's moving and fascinating Enter Naomi: SST, L.A. and All That... (Wyoming: Redoubt Press) takes me back 25 years to ...

R.I.P. SPOT: Glen M. Lockett, 1951-2023

Obituary by Joe Carducci, unpublished, March 2023

I HATE TO type out the words but... SPOT passed away after 10am today/Saturday (Mar. 4, 2023) at Morningside Healthcare in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. His nurse ...

see also Circle Jerks

see also Henry Rollins

see also Gone

see also SWA

see also State of Alert

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