Black Flag at Warsaw
Ron Reyes, aka Chavo Pederast, fronted Black Flag for less than a year the first time around. He’s the one in the 1981 documentary The Decline of Western Civilization — a wiry kid of 19 or 20 with a sweet rattail, ricocheting off the crowd and screaming “It’s not my imagination…I gotta gunimmyBAAAAAACK!” Last Friday, at Warsaw, I struggled to connect that kid with the man who walked onstage and screamed those words once again. With his long black hair, flavor saver, and easy-fit West Coast style, Reyes looked more like a friendly surf instructor than the singer of a band that had once been the emblem of violent, smelly hardcore punk.
Black Flag at Warsaw
Reyes was rock solid throughout the band’s hourlong set. But he was less about projecting frontman charisma (unlike Henry Rollins, who became the singer in 1981) and more about providing vocal tags to the relentlessly bawling guitar of Greg Ginn — Black Flag’s one consistent member, its reticent mad scientist.
Ginn, tall and stooped with close-cropped gray hair, rocked side to side, rolled his neck, and occasionally smiled at the crowd as if he’d just noticed our presence. The lurching, tooth-gnashing Ginn you see in Decline and Rollins’ book Get in the Van was not onstage at Warsaw; at his most animated, Ginn would thrum the frets of his guitar with one hand and work a Theremin with the other.
Greg Ginn and Ron Reyes of Black Flag
Throughout the show, Ginn’s guitar threatened to drown out everything else — even Gregory Moore’s kit, whose kick drum is the size of an industrial laundry machine. Despite having obsessed over the collection Everything Went Black and the live album Who’s Got the 10½? in my teens, I didn’t recognize most songs until they got to the chorus. Only then did the guitar sludge resolve into “Nervous Breakdown,” “Depression,” or “Police Story,” touching off eruptions of chanting and fists.
Black Flag at Warsaw
At one point, Reyes, who said very little between songs, asked the moshers and crowd surfers to respect each other. Maybe he’d seen something I hadn’t, but aside from a few cups thrown onstage, this crowd bore little resemblance to the ones that used to pelt the band with bottles, blows, and loogies. Making my way around the pit (one of my favorite things about punk shows: you can use the pit as a sort of express tramline to wherever you want to be on the dancefloor), I got way more comradely back-pats than kidney blows.
The set ended with a mini-arc that led from new stuff (Black Flag’s first album since 1985 is due out this year) to hits, and from the slow lurch-core of My War to the party-band anthems of their early years. “Down in the Dirt,” which was released in May, gave Reyes a chance to try out Rollins’ snarling monologue style. As if to add context, they followed this with the My War song “Can’t Decide.” Then three singalongs: “Rise Above,” “Jealous Again,” and their perennial closer “Louie Louie.” Black Flag has always swung manically between nihilistic hardcore and boozy party jams; what I love about Who’s Got the 10 ½? is that they break up all the doom and gloom with a Rollins ad lib on the cock sizes of each member (hence the name). That split was less distinct at Warsaw, mostly buried under the obliterating roar of Ginn’s guitar. Still: what a roar. I’m glad I finally got to hear it straight from the source.
Crowdsurfer at Black Flag at Warsaw
Outside the club, I removed my earplugs and discovered that my ears were ringing anyway. All four of the night’s bands had explored extreme volume in different ways: the Netherlands, a trio dressed like Druid auto mechanics, paired detuned guitar with deep, sawtooth synth.
Netherlands at Warsaw
Good for You, which consists of Black Flag fronted by pro-skater/actor/screamer Mike Vallely, stuck with the My War-style slow jams.
Good for You at Warsaw
And the Men, perhaps worried that the audience still had some upper-frequency hearing left, offered trashy guitars and Lemmy-like razor bass. The Fender Rhodes, sitting on top of all that searing noise, was a nice touch.
The Men at Warsaw
Review and photos by James Rickman
