There’s a world of difference between feral and virile. Hardcore was feral—Civilization-ending little beasties with guitars making a nihilistic, machine gun din. Henry Rollins, on the other hand, was virile. His Hugeness looked like he hung out at a Gold’s Gym, probably because he hung out at a Gold’s Gym, and I don’t think I’m alone in believing it was his machismo that spelt ruin for Black Flag.
Instead of snotty bon mots on the besotted state of America’s youth, ala Keith Morris or Dez Cadena, Henry Rollins gave us his thick-skulled, drill-sergeant’s bark and steroidal posturing on the two things that mattered to Henry Rollins, namely his own suffering and his two cents on things he’d never tried and had no right to judge.
It’s hard to pin down exactly what transformed Black Flag from the best hardcore band in the world to a mediocre (at best) metal band—Greg Ginn certainly deserves his share of the blame, but even in the grim extremis of the later albums he lays some truly gnarly atonal guitar genius on ya. No, yours truly puts the onus on Rollins, who was not quite smart enough to know how exactly dumb he was. And the proof is in “Modern Man” off 1985’s desultory Loose Nut—a terrible song off a so-so album, a state of affairs that became the norm as Black Flag heaved itself like a dying dinosaur towards the epoch-ending tar pit of 1985’s In My Head.
“Modern Man” clomps along like “Iron Man” with a, well, loose nut, then takes off, leaving Rollins to bay platitudes that don’t even rise to the level of clichés. I stare at the lyric sheet with utter mystification. Who is this “modern man” Rollins is crucifying? A straw man, for sure, but beyond that it’s hard to say. The closest he comes to a concrete sentiment is in the chorus: “Living tomorrow is everyone’s sorrow/Modern man’s daydreams have turned into nightmares.” Well, if you and Thoreau say so. “I’ve only got time for a few and not you/Modern man,” screams Rollins, and “I’ll push you hard/I can’t know you/Modern man,” and one can only wonder what happened to the bad old days when Black Flag was skewering TV-addicted punks, wasted punks, wasted TV-addicted punks, punks with no values, punks who don’t care, and punks who say gimme, gimme, gimme.
Unfortunately that Black Flag—whose “They hate us/We hate them/We can’t win”—is wittier and more perspicacious than anything Rollins ever wrote, disappeared with feral (as opposed to virile) vocalists Keith Morris, Ron Reyes, and Dez Cadena. As for Rollins, whenever I think of him I think of “Scream” off 1984’s My War, where he sings, “I might be a big baby/But I’ll scream in your ear!/Until I find out!/Until I find out/Just what I’m doing here/Until then… until then… until then… until then… Aaaaaaaaaahhhhh!”
Have a pacifier, Henry. I can tell you exactly what you’re doing here. Ruining a once great band, that’s what.
