Best BLACK FLAG Album Poll !

I heard Everything Went Black before I heard Damaged. They play so tight on the Chavo/Dez songs on EWB that Damaged just sounded too loose and shambolic to me, like a rehearsal tape or something. Therefore, I don't like it as much.

I think the opposite is true if one has heard Damaged first, though. The Chavo/Dez versions on Everything Went Black sound too tight to me. That approach works better for the band's earlier material but I prefer the fuzzier, angrier and more chaotic approach they went for Damaged.

Damaged is the only Black Flag record where Rollins' voice truly suits the material, IMO. On Damaged it's like everything lined up right.

you are making me regret voting for EWB.

yeah, latebloomer otm. the chaos of Damaged is what makes it great for me.

Yeah, Damaged is my pick too.

My War just barely over First Four Years and Damaged.

What a great band

I love Damaged but the humorous songs kind of keep it from having the same impact as My War. TV Party works for me in the Repo Man soundtrack a lot better than it does in the context of this album.

The humorous songs are what keep Damaged from being so unrelentingly dark. My War is almost too much to take in one sitting.

True

bump

In September 2003, Black Flag played three reunion shows, two at the Hollywood Palladium and one at Alex's Bar in Long Beach, to benefit cat rescue organizations (a current passion of Ginn's)

?!?

Since no Process of Weeding Out, I vote My War, though it deeply pains me to have to not-vote for Damaged.

it wasnt a real reunion.

For reasons I can't fully explain, In My Head.

The ?!? had more to do with the randomness of "cat rescue" than anything else, chak. Why was it not a real reunion though?

it was just dez, greg and robo. keith morris was going to sing but backed out when ginn told him it was for cat rescue and he would not get paid.

sucks

Wonder if there will ever be a reunion with Rollins

I doubt it. Greg Ginn burnt his bridges with a lot of people over the years. And according to that New York Times article from a couple of years ago, he's been estranged from his brother Raymond for a long time, too.

It's kinda sad, actually. Raymond Pettibon has been getting more and more recognition over time (and deservedly so, I might add) but we're already at the stage where people are more likely to say 'Greg Who?' and associate the Flag with Rollins exclusively.

First Four Years, for me. First one I heard. I go home and listen to "I've heard it Before" when I've had a bad day at work.

MACHINE

Don't need your bogus attitude, got enough of my own!

WON'T WORK

greg ginn is a huge cat lover. i was gonna interview him for cat fancy once, but it fell through.

its ilx and no pussy jokes yet?

Who's Got the 10½?

I've only heard Damaged and My War, so I don't feel exactly qualified to vote in this poll. But you figure one of them is going to win either way, so Damaged it is.

Cant see anything other than Damaged winning even though more people have posted they prefer the first four years, you know lurkers will go with damaged.

Damaged just barely over The First Four Years.

and the non lurkers :)

who is doing the best Black Flag vocalist poll?

Damaged of course but I always loved that Live 1984 cassette esp. the slow-building intro

I still to this day only own Damaged. What should I listen to next? (I liked Damaged).

The First Four Years

My War was decent enough, but it fell greatly below my expectations with regards to the second side. Often described as total sludge, I mostly found it boring (a lot may have had to do with the album's production, actually).

That first song is a whopper.

Anyway, I will go listen to The First Four Years and probably want to change my vote.

Did anyone ever see them live?

twice: w/rollins dukowski and dez in 82 -- all I remember is the stage diving and slam dancing. sorry.
then w/kira and bill in 84. meats puppets opened. ginn was jamming and the punx got PISSED OFF.

I'm not suprised to see Damaged take it. It has some of their best songs. However, Rollins just doesn't deliver in the same way as either Dez or Chavo (or indeed Keith Morris) and for that reason alone I will go with Everything Went Black. It captures the sheer visceral intensity of Black Flag, lyrically, musically and vocally.

i saw black flag at least half a dozen times, and gone at least 10 times (remember that these bands toured constantly for years).

i feel swayed towards 'my war' partly because i saw them tour that material quite a lot. i lost a bit of hearing in my left ear b/c of one show where i was ridiculously close to ginn's monitor, which was all guitar.

and actually -- i'm super curious if any of the people who vote for pre-rollins era flag ever saw black flag ca. '82/ '83, when dez and greg were both playing guitar and henry was the singer? i know i'm showing my age in asking that. i was only 14/ 15 at the time, myself, but i saw them in that incarnation -- as we all know though that version of the band was never well documented because of legal problems. and i know some of the early records are great; i just can't imagine preferring any earlier incarnations of the group regardless of what i may think about rollins in general.

the totally angular/ jagged/ crazy stuff that dez and greg were doing together, and how awesome henry was as a frontman when he still seemed to feel he had to prove himself. flag shows brought all kinds of people in from out of the woodwork, and there were always a lot of skinheads tripping acid, that kind of thing. there was this scary vibe but also it felt really chummy, too. hard to describe.

at one show in miami beach in '84, rollins passed around a cup for money from the audience. he said it was for money so that he could go eat at dennys afterwards. he said he was going to do "a trick" for the audience -- he was going to drink his sock juice. and so he proceeded to take off his shoes and socks and he squeezed his dirty sweat into a cup, and gulped it all down, in exchange for this extra dough.

i have never seen anyone else drink their sock juice, and i def. gave him some of my lawn-mowing money in exchange for grossing me the fuck out.

I'm jealous of you guys. I assume you saw Husker Du, Bad Brains et al too?

only saw the bad brains twice, both shows in support of 'i against i' -- the one gig at the ritz was pretty amazing but the cb's show was so oversold that people were passing out left and right and there wasn't enough room for a pit so the place felt like a cauldron of pent-up testosterone.

husker du = one of my favorite bands of all time, and sure i saw them 5 or 6 times, too, all before 'warehouse' era. they were so incredibly loud and trebley it was really really hard to go see them. one show, them at 688 in atlanta, they were so loud and it was a pretty small club, it was so loud that you couldn't hear them, it felt like you were underwater or inside a vacuum or something -- might have even been close to mbv levels of loud.

the totally angular/ jagged/ crazy stuff that dez and greg were doing together

that's why I vote for Damaged, the two guitar attack was never duplicated elsewhere and that is what moves my soul.

Are you deaf because of it Mike? ;)

actually yes -- what else could explain my love fro bands like slovenly and half japanese and trad gras och stenar and blind mamie forehand and etc?

I'VE NEVER ACTUALLY HEARD ANY OF THEM.

i just think they are cute!

supposed to say love FOR bands but i also like the idea of "love fro bands" as a genre -- ohh yeah they're another one of those "love 'fro"
bands.

http://www.freewebs.com/theconspirators/Britny_Fox_-_Britny_Fox-fro.jpg

scary pic

man black flag really did embrace their glam side at the end of their run didn't they

just a few hair/wardrobe tweaks:

http://www.ipass.net/jthrush/flag86b.jpg

ends wednesday get those votes cast

i like their style tbh

rollins' early writing is kinda charmingly amateurish to me, like very self-consciously Dark and Heavy, Man while also getting very playful and silly. "armageddon man" + the instrumental side are great and have always been imo

OK good point on the instrumentals

the timeline of this band is fucking wild to me. early singles with lineup shifts seemingly every few seconds -> damaged -> two years of legally being unable to record -> five studio albums in two years -> break up

x-post

I did not vote for Family Man but I bet my finger hovered over the button for a few seconds

Not mention in two yrs being unable to record they went through three drummers!

An insane band

would prob vote for in my head at this point, beautifully deranged record

rollins/ginn/roessler/stevenson is objectively the best lineup of this band

Their most iconic work (Damaged) is not their best. This I am sure of. Mostly because it sounds like absolute dogshit. It’s not even the good kind of crappy production. Muddy is OK with hardcore (cf. the Bad Brains ROIR debut); paper-thin bass and drums is not.

First Four Years is my go-to, but those last two records are intriguing and I need to revisit them.

all you really need is whos got the 10 1/2 and damaged!

Much as I have trouble with Rollins, it'd have to be a tie between Damaged (though the occasional goofiness detracts) and My War (esp. when they get into that proto-Caspar Brotzmann Massaker slow groove). Can only dream of how great those records would have been with Dez singing.

Muddy is OK with hardcore (cf. the Bad Brains ROIR debut); paper-thin bass and drums is not.

I've only ever owned a beaten-up vinyl copy of Damaged but it sounds great and not paper-thin to my ears (I've always thought SST CDs sounded p bad)

damaged is totally their best-sounding record.... lol

i do love the watery flooded basement sound where every instrument feels like it's recorded separately yet is still slightly out of sync

in the best cases (second side of my war, entirety of in my head it serves the murky confusion of the music itself

Damaged sounds physical, like you're being whalloped by a heavy object or something

Anyone notice that The Stains, the early SST band whose freak guitar arguably influenced Ginn's guitar style, just started an instagram page? Their debut is brilliant, and costs $$$ and has never been reissued.

otm - great album

Black Flag records do sound pretty murky - sometimes wonder if someone accidentally turned the treble down when they were mixing the albums

The treble supply was used up making the Husker Du records.

lmao

also lmao

people say oh well it was an underground punk label they had a low budget but I think we have to accept that SST were just shit at recording punk music. there are loads of punk labels and bands from that time with a lot less sales than SST that sound way better

like Dischord releases from then sure they sound a little thin maybe but it blares out of the speakers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sp_x1BIGwUs

hello

I think a lot of it is Spot's aesthetic. But also, those records are what they are, and I don't know if production can always be plotted on an axis of good/bad. And Meat Puppets II still sounds divine to me.

Blight would have been a better nickname for Spot

My fav recording of the band was teh one time I saw them marquee 84. the 4 piece with Kira and Bill Stephenson. Seemed to have an element of Link Wray or similar buried in the sound alongside the writhing heaviosity. Not sure if that comes out as much elsewhere . Didn't seem to feature in Live 84 to what I could hear, I know the live video was within a couple of days of that Marquee gig so may be there.
Do wonder how different taht band would have been if Kira had been writing her own parts. Not sure how long jam sessions worked with her using lines Ginn had given her. Anyway do love that sound in 84 and that particular live set is one that I have probably listened to more than any other live set.
The material they were recording around taht time sounds really great in the form of the 5 piece band with Dukowski still on bass and Cadena on 2nd guitar in the recordings of the final days of that lineup and the demoes introducing the material .
But that heavy, writhing thing that I think was a major influence on the stoner rock of a few years later is so great. I think it was heavily disliked in the hardcore scene at the time but presumably must have been influential there too.
THink the band might be another one that was much better live. & My War was recorded with Ginn on bass under a pseudonym so means tha teh set up presumably wasn't as great as it could be. I assume the best set up for recording would have been as close to live as possible certainly not with a whole part being missing. Doesn't that effect spontaneity etc. & i thought improvisation was part of teh sound by tht point at least.
I do like Damaged a lot too

Love the Bill and Kira era rhythm section, and often think of what Kira told me while I was researching my Flag book, that she and Bill would rehearse the songs at half-speed, and slowly increase the tempo, so they could be both fast and heavy.

I appreciated that part of the interviews, yes

Damaged sounds amazing, wtf. listen too "What I See" for the full bass/drum overload attack

would love to hear the rhythm section playing together with anybody else. has that happened at all? Like her now ex Mike Watt spent like half his career playing around in different combinations often pretty pick up, so taht wasn't a habit she got into at all was it.
Like not sure who else she played with at all outside of BF & Dos with Mike Watt.

My opinion on Damaged is a big challop (controp?), one of the only ones I actually have about a canonical record. But I only know the CD - maybe a poor master was the problem. But I also don't have the same issue with any Husker Du before Candy Apple Grey, or even most other Spot productions. Damaged just sounds thin, thin, thin to me. Anemic. I was SO disappointed when I got it as a teenager, and unlike a lot of other consensus classics it never grew on me with repeat listens. And I blame the production. Just not my style.

What can I say - I hate tinny-ass drum sounds. Took me decades to really appreciate something as foundational as the 808 in rap, for instance, but I got there eventually. Maybe I'll come around on Damaged, too. Songwriting-wise, I like the first side fine. And I do love the cover.

And sound quality aside, I'd still argue that First Four Years beats Damaged song-for-song. I'll take Bad Brains or Minor Threat over pretty much any Black Flag, though. BF were funnier, I'll give them that.

Spot was a terrible producer, face it. Almost everything he touched could have sounded much better. But it is what it is.