As soon as you drop the needle on the record, you’re floored. The punch of the guitars may be a visceral blast of sloppy riffage, but it is effective as hell. Opening track Nervous Breakdown was the debut single released by Black Flag back in 1978. Now the Flag never claimed to be the first punk band in the USA but along with the Dead Kennedy’s, Greg Ginn and company ushered in the hardcore scene which spawned a hundred thousand mini genres and a work ethic that influenced my outlook on how I should run the band I was in.
The band adopted a Do It Yourself approach which involved every aspect of what the group did, from overseeing artwork to booking tours and releasing the end product on their own label (SST in this case). Many hundreds of other bands caught on and a generation of musical misfits took note. Without them there would be no Minor Threat, Nirvana, Green Day or even a Gallows, just how influential this band is I could not put into words. But as with any scene it had to begin somewhere and all Black Flag’s early recordings can be heard here, neatly compiled for your listening pleasure.
Kurt Cobain turned me on to them as he did with so many groups and yet even with his endorsement The First Four Years, which effectively documents exactly what is says on the tin, is a truly overlooked album. In my experience people often start at Damaged when they get into Black Flag and because Rollins wasn’t part of the band before this, tragically ignore all these raw primal gems that went before him. Henry Rollins, front man of the group from 1981 after the tracks had already been recorded admitted during the Black Flag biography Get In The Van that The First Four Years was his favourite Black Flag record. It’s easy to see why. He was the fourth vocalist. The three previous line ups of the band were the ones Henry fell in love with. These songs were the soundtrack to his life. I can picture him on route to his ice cream van job from home with his trusty walkman on, Clocked In pounding his brain sideways and him dreaming of clocking off and joining the band as they took flight across North America from one shitty venue to the next. A year later that’s exactly what he did.
The First Four Years collects together the Nervous Breakdown EP, Jealous Again EP, Six Pack EP and Louis Louis single on one LP. My favourite track though, Machine was previously only available on a compilation album called Chunks. In it singer Dez Cadena pleads with anyone that will listen that he is “not a machine“, the way he delivers the line is not to observe or convey an idea but to scream at us that he is at his wits end. It’s such a wrenching vocal onslaught the untrained ear would consider it an outburst prior to suicide. Black Flag of any era is not an easy listen. But it is an essential one.
lostinrock 