BLACK FLAG: FAMILY MAN (1984)
1) Family Man; 2) Salt On A
Slug; 3) Hollywood Diary; 4) Let Your Fingers Do The Walking; 5) Shed Reading
(Rattus Norvegicus); 6) No Deposit – No Return; 7) Armageddon Man; 8) Long Lost
Dog Of It; 9) I Won't Stick Any Of You; 10) Account For What.
Black Flag's project-number-two for the
prolific year of 1984 happens to be the most universally despised Rollins-era
Black Flag album, and for quite an objective reason: this is not really «Black
Flag» as such, but rather two brief solo mission statements from Henry and
Greg, the former reciting unaccompanied examples of his spoken-word poetry,
and the latter playing a bunch of his avantgarde punk improvisations. The two
cross paths in the middle of the record with ʽArmageddon Manʼ, but in an almost
accidental manner — with Henry overdubbing his texts across Greg's «noodling»
without any idea of voice-melody unity.
Defending Family
Man would be indeed a hard task; whether you are able to like it or not
will really depend on how much you like «opening your mind» to pretentious,
self-consciously arrogant «groundbreaking artistic ideas» that choose shock
value, provocation, and minimalism over hard work and traditional lines of
inspiration. The title track quickly sets up the scene: after Rollins has informed
us that "I come to infect, I come to rape your women, I come to take your
children into the street, I come for you, family man!", there is little
left to do other than join the man in his crusade against petty bourgeois
morality — or yawn in a «oh no, not another
crusade against petty bourgeois morality!» kind of way. Personally, I have
nothing against such crusades in general, when it comes to artistic expression;
but Henry Rollins simply does not strike me as a person who has any particularly
great way with words. I mean, for that matter, didn't Patti Smith already say it
all almost ten years earlier?
Out of all the other spoken-word exercises, I
vaguely remember ʽSalt On A Slugʼ (where the «slug» in question, of course, is
yet another metaphor for the ugly, smelly, bloated underbelly of the bourgeois
society), recorded in worse quality than everything else since it seems to have
been taken from some public reading (and, consequently, accompanied by rather
silly laughter outbursts from the small audience present), and ʽLet Your
Fingers Do The Walkingʼ, which largely consists of the title repeated over and
over. Is this important? I have no idea.
As for the instrumental parts, my only
comparison could be that of a headless chicken running in the yard. Many of
these riffs and solos sound like they totally belong in any number of classic
Black Flag tunes, but without a specific focus, usually provided by the frontman,
they simply make no sense. At least the last two tracks are fast, which makes
listening to them slightly less excruciating than sitting through the entire nine
minutes of ʽArmageddon Manʼ (if that
is what the Armageddon is supposed to look like, I am totally retiring my
financial support for the Antichrist this very instant).
Of course, Family
Man is yet another self-conscious «experiment» in the endless war against artistic
stagnation, and could be partially redeemed by the good old «well, at least
they're trying» argument. But the
bottomline is that I cannot imagine anybody wanting to give the record a second
spin of their own free will — in the place of, say, giving a third spin to Damaged — and if such people do
exist, it is only because they probably feel themselves wronged by the family
man, and take exquisite sadistic pleasure from pouring salt on slugs, be they
only metaphorical ones. My own level of bourgeoiserie still allows me full well
to enjoy Damaged, but sort of starts
boiling over with Family Man — if
you want to poke fun at conservative conventions, at least have the
intelligence to poke it in an unconventional manner. As it is, I consider the
experiment a failure, and give it a retrograde thumbs down.
Check "Family Man" (CD) on Amazon
Check "Family Man" (MP3) on Amazon
Great album cover. Awful, awful record. The main problem with Greg Ginn is that for every album full of great riffs and (accidentally) catchy hooks (Loose Nut), you also get a second helping of what usually amounts to pure bubbleheaded swill (Process Of Weeding Out and the wretched waste of plastic currently under review).
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