1981 Part IV – Black Flag – Peanuts In My Pocket

Black Flag released Damaged in 1981. No song from the album came anywhere near the Billboard Top 100. That should tell you something. There are few songs like the ones found on Damaged. It was pure punk rock: raw, angry, unfiltered, and groundbreaking for its time. While polite society was busy listening to Air Supply, The Police, or Kim Carnes, Black Flag was shaking the foundations. Billboard tracked popularity, not importance. Punk wasn’t popular, but it mattered.

Damaged sits at No. 240 on Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. That places it behind The Heart of Saturday Night by Tom Waits and ahead of Play by Moby. It even ranks above Stop Making Sense by Talking Heads, one of my favorite albums. Damaged may be the best album most people have never heard. I listened to it once in 1981 and a few hundred times since.

When I first played it for my wife, she asked me to turn it off. I tried playing it for friends, the same reaction. Nobody liked it. No takers. But I could play it for myself, and I did. Something about it spoke to my younger, angrier self. I say “immature” now because my tastes eventually moved on. Maybe it was age, or maybe it was getting a real job, but more likely, I just grew up.

Still, I never lost my love for the band or for Henry Rollins. These days, I tend to listen to Damaged on Friday afternoons while stuck in traffic. It probably doesn’t help my mood. I consume more of Rollins’ post–Black Flag work now: his music with the Rollins Band, his spoken word albums, podcast appearances, books, YouTube clips, and lectures. The man is intense, but he’s always interesting. His worldview is different from mine, but I appreciate where he’s coming from.

The Damaged album cover was shot by legendary punk photographer Edward Colver, another influence I admire. One of his photos, Hollywood Sucks, taught me to look at graffiti in a new way. I’ve been photographing environmental graffiti ever since. His cover photo for Ice Cube’s Greatest Hits is everything I ever wanted to capture with my own camera.

One of the few films my wife and I ever walked out of was the 1984 sci-fi punk cult classic Repo Man. We made it right up until Black Flag’s “TV Party” started blaring from the screen. That was her breaking point. She stood up and walked out. I followed. And yet Repo Man still makes my list of favorite sci-fi movies. It’s dark, weird, and satirical. The soundtrack is a punk masterpiece, featuring Iggy Pop, Suicidal Tendencies, Circle Jerks, The Plugs, Fear, and, of course, Black Flag.