Black Flag – Hope For Film

Punk Rock’s Cranky Old Man Speaks The Truth

I saw Black Flag live for the first time around 1984 and they blew my mind, full throttle. To see Henry Rollins powered by the band’s onslaught was to see rage and force and commitment unleashed. It was scary fun and is forever seared onto my DNA. I owe a debt to that band (among others). That must be why I find it so much fun to see him now tell it like it is, in his “cranky old man” guise — but he really gets it right, and you don’t have to be a “young person” to need to be reminded of this advise. It is not fair, but so what? Be stronger and don’t let their good fortune or bad ways get in the way of what you know must be done.

But oh man was he anything but that back when:

And check out this show too when it really was just people in a garage letting loose.

You may have picked up on how much music has been a driving force for me in inspiring me to do what I love and find the way I want to do it. I recently got a nice note from Elizabeth Agate regarding this and it is today’s guest post.

I finally got around to reading books like “Our Band Could Be Your Life,” and just about every band singled out had a very similar message of DIY and community (concepts filmmakers really could benefit from). Here’s a few quotes that mirror our current film world:

Conley from Mission of Burma writes, “Distribution was weak at best…there was no way to find out essential marketing information…it was like a new frontier, it was do whatever you can, call whoever you know. Everybody was just figuring it out for themselves. There weren’t too many secrets back then–everybody was just kind of helping everybody out.”

When Mike Watt talks about “jamming econo,” the financial limitations the Minutemen faced forced them to record in a certain way, and to me this is what helped establish their sound, influencing other bands, even if they never reached rockstar levels of fame. “You have to be econo so when the hard times hit, you can weather them.”

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