Black Flag: The First Four Years [SST]

Why you'll love it

It gathers the Nervous Breakdown, Jealous Again and Six Pack EPs, the "Louie Louie" single and two compilation tracks on one LP. The Guardian included it in its list of 1000 albums to hear before you die.

About the album

Black Flag went through singers the way other bands go through guitar strings. Before Henry Rollins arrived in 1981, Keith Morris, Ron Reyes and Dez Cadena each took the mic, and this collection gathers all three eras on one record, with Greg Ginn's serrated guitar as the constant. Ginn also ran SST, the label he started to put out the band's music, so the whole operation was gloriously do-it-yourself.

Morris spits through the four songs of the 1978 debut EP, "Nervous Breakdown" and "Wasted" among them, at full sprint. Reyes takes over for "Jealous Again," "Revenge" and "White Minority," bassist Chuck Dukowski barks his way through "You Bet We've Got Something Personal Against You!," and Cadena handles "Six Pack," "American Waste" and a gleefully trashed "Louie Louie." Robo pounds the drums on most of it. Spot and Geza X produced, and Raymond Pettibon's artwork set the band's look for good.

It's the blueprint for American hardcore, sixteen songs that still sound like they're in a hurry to get somewhere. Side A is over before most of us have found our reading glasses, which is precisely the point.

Also at Kops: more Black Flag on vinyl · browse Punk

Tracklist

Listen

On SST (cat# SST 021), a reissue of the 1983 compilation.