6 Comments

What, no writing about the Vallely years?

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Process & Who's Got...were my first intro to Black Flag at 13. Those albums will always be my favourite version of Black Flag, even though I'd move backwards to the earlier stuff, and love that in a different way. But that unhinged heaviness of late Black Flag is way more in line with what I love of about mid 80s American underground–damaged, off-kilter, free to be on edge and dangerously weird.

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Honestly I could never quite tell if it was boldness or inattentiveness, but most bands would be embarrassed to release a live record as DRY as ...10 1/2. Not because there's anything inherently wrong with that sound, but because there's nothing to hide the slop and the mistakes. But they had nothing to hide here.

I can take or leave every other Flag record but for my money it's probably the best live album of all time, by any artist in any genre.

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Great band

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Thanks for the reminder on Black Flag, Phil. I haven’t thought much about their output in recent years but they were always more than just Damaged. IMO Greg Ginn is underrated as an improviser. Not sure if you’ve heard them but his jazz-rock band Mojack put out about a half-dozen great releases on SST between the mid-90’s and mid 2010’s. For those of you into jazz-rock, they are some exciting and unsung releases.

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I've always loved the later material and think that Loose Nut is their best record after Damaged, but during a listen to In My Head a few years ago I realized that Ginn's soloing on that record is some of his worst and least inspired, especially in contrast with his playing on the first Gone record, which would have been recorded within a year of In My Head. I still think the record itself is great but that realization bumped it down a little for me.

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