Black Flag
Damaged

Wandering back in time, "after work, leisure time, time passes and pastimes," I recalled a mumbling and tattered piece of glass. I noticed it yesterday, on the ground, shattered for ages, as I pondered along the convoluted streets of Milan, near San Babila, fresh from a fine "by" A. T. M. (34 euros: ever be praised...). Those fractures, those cracks of hidden memories: they were the ones that brought everything to the surface. There is no doubt about that. Offended and humiliated (or does it sound better in the plural, switching the terms?), I stumbled to the end of the tunnel: BLACK FLAG, "Damaged." That's what. It must have been my state of pure rancor, or my poor perception of the damage suddenly inflicted upon me, but I agreed with myself that I had been unjust to this band years and years ago...

Reflecting on what Sum41, the 182 blinks, as well as Linea 77 conveyed to me in my non-adolescent age (i.e., an abnegation of absolute nothingness), I again agreed that this "access," properly, I couldn't let slip away. But let's move on to the facts now: Black Flag were THE band, who best interpreted what was the only possible approach English punk could have in the "Fritz-Langian" metropolises of California and post-post-post-and-again post '29 crisis United States. Metropolises that began to see rising masses of alienated and alienating adolescents, perpetually down and out, in a continuous struggle against peers (possibly upper-middle class) attempting in vain to imitate their deeds, and against a society that made the mass media the cotton candy of the '80s.

What were Black Flag with "Damaged"? They were a loud, sweaty, and revealing Fuck You to what was shaping up to mystify the America of the Golden-Boy graduate, careerist, sexist (and I'd add, trailblazer...). Analyzing them, mindful of my "access," I discovered curiosities so astonishing, concerning their life and music. The lineup, founded by a "graduate" anything but a careerist Greg Ginn (lead guitar of the band) experienced various difficult times during its primordial dawn. Be it a reckless life of a forgetful neo-graduate, anti/societarist by birth, or drugs, or whatever you like... but the black flag was yet to be correctly raised. Henry Rollins took care of that during a concert held in New York, during which the Bad Boy still filled with penumbra, demons, and completely unknown, took the stage and began to scream in such a way, that it aroused the most unpredictable astonishment for the kind of evening. And here ends the first half of the legend.

Following Rollins, the band members had no doubts and proclaimed him their guru of pure audio-verbal disaffection. Rancid poetry his. Poetry whose metrics found lasting and eternal expression in each of the corroborating tracks in question: from the epochal "Rise Above," to the supersonic "Thirtsty And Miserable" you breathe rarefied air, as already expressed, sweaty and grueling until the most paroxysmal heartbeat palpitations. "Police Story" is an ode to intoxication that ironically leads to winning the battle against not so much the "institutions" per se, but against the fear of a claustrophobic and clownish society that kills through ordinary bureaucratization. Everything flows acidic, full of pure guitar mustard gas, and arrogantly miserable, up to pieces of expressive catharsis like "Depression," "No More" and the mythical "Life Of Pain" which for about a minute seems to want to ascend to Sabbathian parables, subsequently sliding into a punk'n'roll of disconnected chills. A breakfast of "Damaged II" and I think you can end the listen, proud to have been humble and guilty of laughing over what little good was irreversibly considered laughable. Obviously, without forgetting "No More." Ending the listen puts you in a state of full doubt. An almost mortal uncertainty. Concepts like self-production, arrest, silent and astonished venues, the smell of ultra-distilled gin-lemon beer on clothes, a reminiscent headache invoked to deities to overcome the cold, the one outside the door, whether it's January or March...

Where the hell did they go? I know the answer myself, and I think it's better I deny it to your reading. Meanwhile, look for it, download it, and compare it with the present, if you want to worry a little, that is... Has anything changed since then? No, so I think. And so only one thing can be asserted: the "Damage" is done. Still. And for a while, by the way...