In terms of unlikely musical reformations, Black Flag’s What the… is a strange beast, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good one. While a sprinkling of the LP’s tracks raises it from the clutches of outright failure, the whole is as underwhelming as any sensible mind would expect.
To put it succinctly, Black Flag remain an immensely important band. Had their run culminated with 1981’s Damaged, a monumental event in American Hardcore and one of the ‘80s great records, their significance would still be so. But even prior to that cornerstone effort Black Flag was blazing a trail that, as the years have piled up, has become a superhighway of retrospective punk fandom.
The pre-Damaged EPs, 78’s “Nervous Breakdown,” ‘80’s “Jealous Again,” and the following year’s “Six Pack,” reveal a group burdened by near-constant lineup changes and a growing societal distaste for both their art and lifestyle, shaking off those troubles and distilling punk into a severely potent combination of form and content. It was a new wrinkle in the style and in the ensuing decade it would catch fire and briefly run rampant throughout the global rock underground.
As those early Black Flag releases were finding their target audience, the large majority of their peers and predecessors were either abandoning punk or softening the music in hopes of gaining wider acceptance. Indeed, much of the slight press Black Flag initially received was concerned with how these knuckleheaded troublemaking kids were heading in the wrong direction.
All three of those EPs are included with additional tracks on the compilation The First Four Years, and the whole survives as an essential punk document. Furthermore, the songs found on the ’82 2LP Everything Went Black, while not recommended for newcomers, also shed much illumination upon Black Flag’s development as they shifted vocalists from Keith Morris to Ron Reyes to Dez Cadena (additionally, there was a change in drummers, with the Columbian rhythm machine known as Robo replacing inaugural kit-man Brian Migdol.)
The acquisition of singer Henry Rollins found Cadena moving into the rhythm guitar role, the band swelling to a five-piece as they cranked out an amazing blitz of primal rock ferocity. As a standalone object, Damaged truly excels, but it’s also a transitional record, and for many it’s where the Black Flag story either begins or ends. To really understand the group’s contribution to the greater rock narrative however, their existence needs to be taken as one big whole.
Doing so reveals them as sort of the inverse Yardbirds, with the guitarist being the only constant member from beginning to end. While scores of folks understandably find it impossible to separate the hugeness of Rollins’ personality from the whole equation, the truth is that Greg Ginn is the heart and soul of Black Flag.
So if a new album baring the name and logo has inexplicably hit the racks after over a quarter-century of highly prudent legend-building studio inactivity, Ginn’s involvement therein is a prerequisite. The debate over whether 2013 actually needs a new Black Flag release is answered with brutal clarity with What the…, but the reasons why relate directly to the strides made in the post-Damaged era.
A long legal tussle with MCA Records (the label’s Unicorn subsidiary distributed Damaged, at least until the cold hard reality of the disc’s decidedly noncommercial and formidably anti-authoritarian stance gave them a fit of the shivers) left them unable to issue music under the name Black Flag for roughly two years, but after that quagmire was resolved in ’84 their release schedule took on a dizzying frequency lasting until their breakup in ‘86.
The first LP in that surge was My War, and it’s the best from that period, with the first side of the album giving punk orthodoxy one last deep-tongue kiss goodbye as the flip explored three extended numbers detailing the shape of what was to come. Specifically, Black Flag transitioned into the ‘80s most fascinating and in large part due to the soon to be signature cover art of Ginn’s brother Raymond Pettibon, unsettling hard rock unit.
All of the post-My War records suffer from flaws, but they are also missteps born from the intense ambition of a dogged and highly restless band, and as a whole they’ve aged exceptionally well, which is doubly impressive given the ground they cover. Along with two studio long-players, Loose Nut and In My Head, both from ’85, there’s also a pair of live discs, Live ’84 and ‘86’s exceptional Who’s Got the 10½?
They even found time for digressions into sweetly bent instrumental expansiveness and even spoken word, the talking mouth of Rollins basically commencing with ‘84’s Family Man. Depending on your maturity and worldview, Henry’s misanthropy-drenched poetic/monologic excursions (much dif from his later stand-up/motivational speaker-styled direction) will either wind your crank or leave you ice-cold, but hearing it at least once is useful in illustrating just how deep the divide between Black Flag and the ‘80s mainstream actually was.
Regarding the instrumental work, the ’85 12-inch EP “The Process of Weeding Out” is often belittled as an example of Ginn’s self-indulgence and his folly in documenting everything as his label SST became one of the main focal points in the ‘80s underground. But after some thought, that four-song effort actually stands as a prime example of what made Black Flag such a unique entity.
For starters, there was Ginn’s spectacularly outbound guitar playing, loaded with full-bore atonal gnaw as it pushed beyond rock’s expressive norms to flirt with the textures of full-blown noise. While he does receive a fair amount of praise, Ginn also remains somewhat underrated as one of his genre’s more aggressive stylists. Or perhaps better put; when the talk is directly concerned with punk string-burners, Ginn’s name nearly always comes up. But when the discussion is more general, he sometimes goes completely unmentioned.
To some extent, the reason for this relates directly to being out-of-step with their era, not just in those aforementioned mainstream terms but also in relation to the thriving sub-culture to which they begrudgingly belonged. Yes, they maintained a strong fan base up to the point of their breakup, but it was also a constantly shifting one; for every new listener gained, somebody else bailed, and inside of the ‘80s rock u-ground they helped to define, Black Flag isn’t best assessed as a beacon of popularity but rather as just an incessantly touring force of nature.
They went from town to city to backwater to metropolis like a light bulb attracting moths of widely differing stripes. Obviously, most of those fluttering beings were rebellious teens or disaffected adults. But others were merely curiosity seekers, a few were odious troublemakers and many were in the club just to rock out, man. Along the way Black Flag disappointed as many as they satisfied, which is to be expected when fresh ground is being broken.
Those who particularly dislike their later material often gripe that by so readily embracing experimentation and diving so deeply into a revamped hard rock sensibility Black Flag were effectively punk Judases. But in actuality the group was in a state of constant evolution; Loose Nut is as different from My War as that record is to Damaged, and if it all began as a gob of spittle in the face of the prevailing establishment, by ’86 they’d grown into a live unit of astonishing professionalism. Unlike far too much of the ‘80s hardcore scene, Black Flag wasn’t a hobby. It was a full-time business.
Even though Ginn has been quite active over the last few decades in a variety of projects, What the… unfortunately connects like a sideline. With the exception of a meager few tracks, the LP lacks any traces of the growth and severity of approach that marked their prior existence. Instead of being born from necessity, it registers as the result of too much spare time. And due to its egregious cover, what once was threatening has been lowered to cartoonish depths, with the sleeve almost seeming like a preemptive slap in the face to anyone that would dare to take this doomed “reunion” too seriously.
In joining up with Ron Reyes to make new music as Black Flag, Ginn has also reversed a key aspect of their recorded historical trajectory. Many people exited, but once gone they didn’t reenter the fold. Well, almost; the Jealous Again sessions were apparently fraught with Reyes’ on-again off-again participation.
But that situation pertained to Black Flag’s fitful rise to peak performance; once Ginn temporarily settled on Reyes’ replacement Cadena, any idea of backsliding was steamrolled by continual forward motion. With all this said the recent onstage firing of Reyes ends this creative hiccup with a real sense of the familiar.
Previously, there was never any doubt over who ultimately called the shots in Black Flag, and the jettisoning of Reyes reveals this to still be very much the case. This aura also extends to the music found on What the…, but in a terribly disappointing way. While it’s at pains to sound like something other than a blatant regression into Black Flag’s past, the 22 songs are devoid of the creative sparks and the evolutionary intrigue that continues to make the pre-breakup work so vital.
On the plus side, Ginn continues to be an imposing guitarist. But one instrument does not a band make, and while longtime Ginn collaborator Gregory Moore is better than competent on the drums, his contribution is rarely anything more than perfunctory. It’s always been clear that Ginn was in charge, but Black Flag’s earlier recordings were still an intersection of distinct musical personalities pushing and pulling into a cohesive unit. However, the drumming on What the… could’ve been executed by any hired hand, and the bass playing sounds like it might’ve been overdubbed by Ginn himself.
Well that’s because it was, the guitarist reviving Dale Nixon, a pseudonym he employed as the bassist on My War. At that point Ginn was filling a void in lieu of a proper replacement for the axed Chuck Dukowski, and his needing to do so was unsurprising given the freshness of the musical direction detailed on the finished product. But once the wickedly talented Kira Roessler (in my estimation Ginn’s greatest musical foil) showed up, there was no need for double duty.
And beyond the snares of ego and misdirected perfectionism, I can think of no tangible reason for Ginn’s dual role on What the… There are surely dozens of eager bass-playing beavers within close proximity of Ginn’s homestead that could’ve done the job just as well and likely even improved the majority of the LP’s overabundant running time.
But this is an album dominated by two contributors, and the singer’s portion of this burden finds him falling well short of the mark. Reyes is more than an adequate vocalist, but partially because of the scarcity of decent songs, he lacks the ability to captivate and annoy, frankly two qualities that were once ubiquitous with a Black Flag front-man.
Compounding the problem is a lyrical thrust that’s at best serviceable to some thoroughly undistinguished measurement of punk attitude. And at their worst the words are hard to differentiate from out-and-out parody, a feeling enhanced when it’s taken in tandem with that horribly duff Reyes-designed sleeve. On the whole though, What the… is dominated by a sense of the participants trying in vain to recapture the essence of the past while appearing germane to the present.
This is the very stuff of reunion efforts, but due to the public and legal acrimony between Ginn and certain ex-members of the band, this LP is far less of a reunion (Reyes’ fleeting reenlistment to the contrary) and much more an attempted act of setting the story straight. But I can’t help thinking Ginn’s protest of clarity is all much ado over, if not nothing, than at least very little.
Yes, some of his estranged former collaborators have been out on the road playing old Black Flag tunes under the latter half of the group’s name, but I can’t imagine anybody that’s not willfully ignorant or nine years old confusing what Morris, Cadena, Stevenson, and Dukowski are doing as FLAG with anything other than middle-age bonding and a financially lucrative exercise in nostalgia.
Perceived injustice has fueled many a great record though, and in fact it was just this very scenario that kicked Black Flag into motion in the late-‘70s. But again What the… lacks any great songs (and songs were another weapon in their once considerable arsenal), undermines their crucial full-band dynamic (what’s here is raw and distorted, but in the end it ain’t all that heavy, and good rock music is always heavy), and most problematically is far longer than any punk album should be (and if you’re doubting What the…’s intention as a punk alb, just take another gander at that cover.)
Shorn of half of its excess baggage and keeping the stronger moments, What the… would stand as an average statement. The better selections include opener “My Heart’s Pumping” and its follow-up “Down in the Dirt” (a solid beginning quickly waylaid by a pair of early miscalculations, the distressingly punk-soulful “Now is the Time” and the lyrically downright retrograde “Wallow in Despair”), the combination punch of “Go Away,” “The Bitter End,” and “The Chase,” (intelligently sequenced together to give the ear a brief glimmer of dashed hopes), and the disc’s highpoint at track 13, the scorching “I’m Sick,”
It would still be a long distance from great, though. Sadly, the overkill manages to lessen the impact of the few worthwhile moments that do make the cut (if indeed there was a cut; I’ve the nagging suspicion they just decided to include every song they practiced.) After “I’m Sick,” the LP runs in increasingly constricting circles and is victim to dubious ideas, with the worst one saved for last. Closer “Off My Shoulders,” which sounds like an overzealous mid-tempo groove-vehicle from some justifiably forgotten outfit from the post-Grunge ‘90s, leaves a truly bitter aftertaste.
And if Ginn’s guitar prowess is still in evidence, I’ll also note that at very few points does his playing strike my ear as being in the same league as his strongest work, with too much pure riffing and not enough strung-out searching for my taste. But hey, I’m in the minority that considers “The Process of Weeding Out” to be one of Black Flag’s finest showings. Those who cherish the great (but in my mind formative) offerings of “Jealous Again” might feel differently.
But I suspect that all but the most accepting of ears will recognize What the… as a blunder that’s destined for the status of a footnote, one that just happens to include Ginn’s befuddling (and not necessarily in a bad way) addition of the Theremin to Black Flag’s instrumental kitbag. In fact, even though the record’s physical manifestation is less than half a month old, when taken with the unceasing stream of public dysfunction that currently envelops the group it already gives off the whiff of yesterday’s tabloid newspapers.
Yes it’s all a bum trip, but one thing art history teaches with cruel lucidity is that great artists can be counted on to sully their prior achievements, and furthermore often do so for the most ill-advised of reasons. As a few weeks of living with What the…’s paltry rewards have unraveled, I’m left feeling not much of anything. Well, except a minor twinge of discontent over the reality that, after more than twenty-five years of digging one of rock’s most interesting bands, I’m no longer a Black Flag completist.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
D
