Taking Sides: Keith Morris vs. Ron "Chavo Pederast" Reyes vs. Dez Cadena vs. Henry Rollins -- BLACK FLAG VOCALIST SMACKDOWN!

As for who was best on stage, I will have to ask my boyfriend- he is lucky enough to have seen all the pre-Henry Black Flag lineups live!

Rollins was ferocious on Damaged (on that record he genuinely sounds like a pissed off, emotionally disturbed individual) but after that its like hes playing out the part of "crazy fucked-up-guy Rollins".

Latebloomer OTM. I can't fathom the hatred for Damaged here, though.

In Praise of.....Damaged by Black Flag

and for the entirely-deserved Keith-love:

In Praise Of.....Group Sex by the Circle Jerks

to all Rollins/later Black Flag haters: the "1982 Demos" bootleg (sometimes called the "83 Demos") is a bunch of the later era Black Flag material done by the 5 piece line-up at the peak of their powers, it is excellent, maybe my fave BF stuff...

btw, I saw an amazing BF show at the Santa Monica Civic circa '82-'83 wherein each of the previous singers came out and did their respective tunes.. hot shit ! Misfits were the openers I believe.

Also: Yes, Dez is in the Misfits now. So is Marky Ramone. And Jerry Only. It's a three piece.

And its AWFUL ON A SCALE THAT DEFIES ALL DESCRIPTION!

Chavo second, then, grudgingly, Rollins, with Dez dead last (though at first I had trouble distinguishing his croak from Rollins'; in any case "Swa" should consign one to last place in all matters).

http://www.archive.org/audio/etreelisting-browse.php?cat=Vida

Gotta warn you though, if you're looking for hard-core, this ain't it!
Tom Troccoli

My War is awesome but it doesnt have the rawness of the earlier stuff.

That said, I just watched Decline of Western Civ. I again and Chavo is no slouch.

Cheers for that link, Tom!!!!

Can we get Sylvia Juncosa up in this piece as well?

C'el Revuelta probably.

i think he mentions this in that 'get in the van' book. not that unlikely either, a brown recluse bite will fuck you up.

(but I still say Hank, 'cause the "My War" BF was the first and most mind-blowing time I saw them)

I know he didn't mean that to be funny, but I find it pretty fucking hilarious.

And yeah, there were other times he would Iggy out by simply finding a shard of beer bottle and start raking it across his chest. Very entertaining stuff, but not real musical, if you get my drift...
Tom

I saw Black Flag with Henry in Baltimore in 2 different places in the early '80s--Terminal 406 where he smashed his head into the mirror, and uh, I can't remember the other place where, on a bill with the Minutemen, he jumped off the stage and cut up his chest--Marble Bar maybe? I should dig out my old Thrillseeker fanzines and see if we reviewed those shows in there.

I think some people I know used to refer to him as Henry the Lobotomy because of the crazy way he'd act at the gigs of others(when he was living in DC and in SOA), as well as how he'd act at Black Flag shows.

I lived in a MD suburb of DC at the time and used to mostly see shows in the DC area, but occasionally went up to Baltimore.

hahahahahhaha

As for the question of best line-up, I only saw them once, in Madison, Wisconsin circa '85, when it was Ginn, Rollins, Kira, and the guy who replaced Bill Stevenson, who was actually really great. Rollins glared at the audience and I couldn't tell why, so it was a weird gig. They kept karate kicking would-be stage-divers. I got punched by a girl I bumped into. Idiots yelling "TV Party." It was that kind of vibe. But "Wound Up" sounded great.

On record, I'd have to go with Chavo. The Jealous Again EP is the best distillation of Black Flag in sound and attitude, and yeah, he rocks in the Decline of Western Civilization.

That's tons of interesting stuff, Tom. Thanks so much for dropping by. You're confirming a lot of my suspicions, too. I'm a huge defender of Spot, who I think ended up recording, on balance, the greatest SST output. The sound on Slip It In is wonderful, and I'd still play "Wound Up" first for anyone who says Rollins-era Flag sucked (then "Drinking and Driving"). There's an immediacy to The Punch Line, Double Nickels, and Zen Arcade that the later ones lack.

You're right about MOST of that, but in fact Husker DU took Spot's work back to Minneapolis with them and what you hear on the record is really THEIR production. That's Zen Arcade I am referring to. The Meat Puppets also started doing that from Up On The Sun as well.

As for the question of best line-up, I only saw them once, in Madison, Wisconsin circa '85, when it was Ginn, Rollins, Kira, and the guy who replaced Bill Stevenson, who was actually really great. Rollins glared at the audience and I couldn't tell why, so it was a weird gig. They kept karate kicking would-be stage-divers. I got punched by a girl I bumped into. Idiots yelling "TV Party." It was that kind of vibe. But "Wound Up" sounded great.

The drummer was Anthony Martinez, more of a straight ahead Rock and Roll drummer with very little experience in things 'Punk.' I remember that gig pretty well myself. My band opened, it was at a VFW hall, or old armory. Big old echoy hall with far too much bounce back from the rear of the hall. Once it filled up, it wasn't so bad. I had GREAT times on EVERY visit to Madison. GREAT coffee too! Now, PLEASE don't hunt your cats!

On record, I'd have to go with Chavo. The Jealous Again EP is the best distillation of Black Flag in sound and attitude, and yeah, he rocks in the Decline of Western Civilization.

To each his own. I think I might have liked Chavo better if I hadn't known him. He just didn't have the blood and guts seriousness and heaviness for me to make the music jump outta the grooves, and into yer lap. None the less, there is NO question that Jealous Again was one of THE greatest American Punk Rock records ever made.
And as a special aside to Mr. Vas Djifrens, I was never there for violence, EVER. I never rated one band over another because of the numbers of seriously wounded people being carted off at the end of the night. Why you should is beyond me!
It really was about the MUSIC!
Tom

And I still like the quality of Keith's voice the best .. but it's the Ginn that matters.

but is not the beauty of music the inseparableness of evil from which cannot it be unentwined?.

I'll have to check out Vida.
http://home.earthlink.net/~ttrocc7007/

Just started reading your D. Boon tribute page, Tom. I didn't know you wrote for the Squealer! How did that hook-up happen?
http://home.earthlink.net/~ttrocc7007/id5.html

Also, I'm hoping this turns out to be good:
Minutemen documentary is done

Nope! The music itself, and that means ALL music is an act of CREATION, violence is an act of DESTRUCTION.

i am not joking one bloody morsel! i am seriouser than even the most painful torturings. and my coldness 'rocks' the house.

yikes, was the audience all made up of members of former SST bands?

My favorite version of Flag was in-between "Damaged" and "My War" -- when Dez and Greg and Chuck were all still in the band, before Rollins had become such an out of control caricature (when the tattoo bill was still under a thousand bucks). When there were two guitarists in the band, Ginn was just so totlaly free jazz nuts hair flying madman, people literally lept the fuck back from the stage not out of fear of getting hair whipped, but 'cause you'd swear he was doing some Haitian possession ritual or something (sorry, I just watched Maya Deren's "Divine Horsemen" with my girl the other day).

Tom's Minutemen/ etc. pages are truly a great read and I really liked TTD when I saw them live -- but then again, I'm someone who wore Grateful Dead shirts to punk rock shows backintheday, and I liked Oktoberfaktion and Saccharine Trust as well (live anyway).

Ohhh, and back to D. -- to this day, Glenn Branca's comment in that "Forced Exposure" interview that he thinks the FBI offed D. Boon strikes a chord with me. Sure it's a bit ridonkulous, but still....

Yeah I don't really believe it but part of me wants to in a weird way to "make sense of" something that was and still is really tough to understand. It's just my little brain grasping at straws, really.

--Mike

http://rootsradicaluk.blogspot.com

Cool thread.

http://rootsradicaluk.blogspot.com

Cool thread. Nice one.

Mentioning Ginn and John Coltrane in the same sentance is absurd. a closer comparison would be Sonny Sharrock, but that' still off board. I'm sure he would tell you that himself.

Greg Ginn wrote some great punk rock tunes. However he's not a free-form jazzbo, nor a great soloist.

Regarding the qualities of the vocalists, I've seen most of them perform, and Rollins doing black flag material owns all of them Keith Morris does the best "Gimmie, Gimmie, Gimmie" - but he can't bring the rage like Rollins can. Of course, I'd rather watch 100 circle jerks shows than watch Rollins sing "low self opinion" but that's another story.

This was a great thread.

Nervous Breakdown was one of the best things Black Flag ever released, but Rollins gets shortchanged. Morris's version of the Damaged tracks absolutely do not compare. Keith was perfect for the time, but that total nihilistic eye-bulging, red in the face, vein popping Damaged era shit couldn't have been done properly by anyone but Rollins.

I agree. I prefer the later Rollins stuff too.

but that total nihilistic eye-bulging, red in the face, vein popping Damaged era shit couldn't have been done properly by anyone but Rollins.

exactly. as the music shifted from lean and wiry to beefy and gnarled it required a new front man, a new archetype.

dez cadena by a country mile.

― gygax! (gygax!), Sunday, January 2, 2005 7:04 PM (5 years ago)

OTM. gygax! was the first person to rep for dez until Tom Trocolli and his dog chimed in. RIP gygax!

I remember the Hernandez Bros repping for Dez as the best as well fwiw

Thanks for the bump! This thread is a fuckin goldmine.

I can tell you with ALL honesty that there were nights I was convinced without any doubt that Ginn was one of the top 10 most creative LEAD guitarists (he can't play rhythm real well) I have ever heard,

Tom Troccoli OTM.

i interviewed tom for my flag book last year, he had some fantastic stories

Way late to the party but I couldn't find another thread on this : The Off Eps record is ripping my tits off. Great fun to these weathered ears.

they play london next week, i CANNOT wait

Why can't I do anything without being yelled at?

I think all their singers have been pretty good vocal choices for what they were doing at the time they had them, though you could probably argue that each was an odd personality choice for that time as well.