HAPPY BLACK FLAG DAY
February 14th in my youth was known as Black Flag Day. In high school I dated a boy who was in this noisy skinny pants sort of band and loved No Means No and San Diego hardcore, often called “fags” by sXe hardcore jocks. Every year, his faux-nihilist friends did this Black Flag Day thing in lieu of Valentine’s. Even though we were in love, ended up dating for 6 years and our relationship thankfully shielded me from the nastiness of college kid fucking/cheating/lying, I was still down with Black Flag Day regardless. My BFF adopted it as well, giving out Sylvia Plath poems with references to the oven suicide and attaching condoms to their red envelopes with “Venereal Disease Day” flowerily written atop.
Ever listen to ‘My War’? Rollins might as well have been the original emo lyricist for more than half of that record. Love can fucking suck. And not to get all philosophical about Black Flag, but isn’t that band a total commentary on the shitty parts of humanity, of society? Where did they get their name? Black Flag was a brand of roach poison repellent. A black flag is also the opposite of a white flag, the universal symbol of “surrender”. At 19 years old and already tired of vulture boys and jealous girls, you don’t expect roses when you’re listening to Crass’s “Batamotel” and dabbling in recording projects called Fuk Repellent Republika like a bunch of angry cliche teenagers do. You RISE ABOVE. Or at least you think you do.
We can’t deny the charade of love in the music scene. The subject matter is not discussed in our musical dialogue but its presence is in the air everywhere, in every bar. If you ain’t talkin’ bout love, you got songs about fucking. There are starry eyes for, mixed tapes made, and some huge percentage of songs scribbled due to Cupid’s aim. After all, we are humans and we need to be loved. In the modern world, though, modern love is a tricky little beast. Our insecurities are heightened by our 1st World egos. We have enough time to be bored, to feel sorry for ourselves. We yearn to feel the warmth of a lover. We want to be like Prince and get on a motorcycle with a hot babe who believes in us, who will stay true, and give us mind-blowing oral sex while also having the power to make us laugh. In music we refer to these ideals as dreams, angels.
Then there's the cold harsh reality. There’s always gonna be some dude or dudette trying to break up somebody’s wild romance. When you play the game of love, you sometimes lose. Heartache ends in disillusionment. You let the dream die and claim that’s what growing up does. There is no Santa Claus. Yet how disheartening it is to see these younger punk kids coked up with their Adolescents records in tow afraid of girls yet still baffled by their biological urges to fuck. And late in the night with enough drinks, these urges aren’t hidden very well. It ends up playing out like a Cramps record... sleazy, sleazy, sleaze.
One time there was a free show at 529 with Bukkake Boys, Acid Freaks and Dino Boys, the last place for L-U-V. It was right before the full moon and however little punk kids believe in the pagan hippie-isms of astrology, I fully feel chaos magick going down whenever there are free shows around full moon time. Shit gets crazy. Energies are electric! Fights break out, people put on full PDA, our “adult” life becomes high school with money. It’s hilarious from a spectator standpoint, shitty if you get punched or punch someone in the face and adorable if you end up making out to New Order’s “Ceremony” on Goth night in the middle of fog machine madness. There are a thousand stories unraveling in all directions and the romance factor is not without. Girls wear tiny dresses of sequins and sparkles and leather and lace and every singular spectator boy sniffs around the ladies’ kitten prowling perfumery. It might as well be a fucking ball, Jane Austen stories at the dance hall replaced with Wire blasting between the sets downing shots of whiskey in medicine cups.
Romantic archetypes ensue. From the clouds of smoke rises the town’s towering social butterfly, a glamazon in Elvira gear, a thousand lovers tucked into her red hot lipstick tube. On the other end of the bar is gothy Greta Garbo, wielder of a fuzzed out bass in a sea of boy bands, accidentally melting ice cold hearts even though she’d rather be left alone. She’s drinking PBR with a witty metal head who is not getting enough romantic attention. A particularly tall hot mess falls on the stage. She spends the evening lunging at fresh ex-boyfriends, blues guitarists, nerdy sweet mannered engineers, and makes her way to a currently heartbroken bro who would be playing his own renditions of Black Flag style hardcore later in the night. He had already made threats to beat the shit out of some dude who shacked up with his girlfriend if the guy so happened to show up. One frantic thwarted lover scoffs in the corner at a thong-totting vixen’s advances on a young impressionable baby punk. Girl hatred kicks in when water is offered to the MDMA ridden, brain probably melting, in-your-face ghetto girl responses of “DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?”. Hipster bar waitresses and tragic star crossed bimbos clash. But they all have a lot in common. WHY? Because love starvation is pure sadness. And I don’t mean sad as in “pathetic” though desperation can be embarrassing (but what’s a walk of shame if you don’t remember it the next day?). It’s the sort of shit Smiths songs are made of. Don’t act like we haven’t all been there.
Crying at home to your records is of course counterproductive and cliche. Even in all the Smiths tragic mopey love starvation, there’s still the great idealism that pushes us to “GO OUT AND FIND THE ONE THAT YOU REALLY LOVE.” And thus drunken make-outs are a part of our musical landscape. It’s all in good fun to kiss on your friends when there’s no love in sight (until your make-out buddy starts falling asleep at the table and you have to bite their ear to wake them up). If only it were that simple in the era of Vice magazine. We love dirty things that come from a deep dark place of wanting attention and validation and the occupation of time. It’s easier to wake up next to many somebodies you don’t know that well after a while, people who don’t know how to fuck you good (and possibly have really shitty record collections)... sort of. Just wait until you fall in love with someone who has no intentions of loving you back, then you got tears in beers and if you’re not careful here comes a regular for the rest of your grumpy Black Flag Day days.
Two fights broke out that February full moon night. A pissy brute shoved a sassy babe and all hell broke loose in the name of shit that goes wrong between two people. The fire alarm went off for no reason. Bukkake Boys were better than ever. Exes were ignored, drinks were spilled. The dialogue between my dude friends went from the earlier chillax gear grubbing to the “damn, so-and-so is fine” to the fully drunken “why don’t I have a girlfriend?” - all alpha male vibes out the window. A tall gent from the pit bowed at me in apology for almost knocking me over in my heels during a rowdy mosh set. Jane Austen, eat your heart out! But some grumps are gonna turn into permanent casual-sex-er alcoholics and will fully embrace something worse than Black Flag Day sentiment forever. ):
LOVE, though. Love! Love is the crystalline dream, the foundation of all fairy tales. It’s why M83 is popular. It’s sometimes why we even bother. Where is your Jonathan Richman, ladies, your real Modern Lover? Are you gonna find your dream lover at The Earl one day, downing rum and Cokes, or will that chick be ruined forever by one of the broods? Will most of Cvlt Coca-Cola go on without a partner in crime? We give our props to the young lovers who play music and live the love-musical dream rainbow connection together but even then it's a facade. Lovers break up. I personally have no interest in seeing Thurston Moore without Kim Gordon.
I wrote songs about falling in love in hopes to fall in love, not caring that putting out my cheese ball works of powerslop into the world would result in embarrassment because I am a lover of love. And somehow the universe brought back to me a rock’n’roll cowboy with the wit of Oscar Wilde in an Oscar Mayer weiner Americana sense of humor in the body of a chiseled lean hunk with beautiful auburn hair, though we have our troubles, as all lovers do. So I get it. I get why we hate that fucking marketing scheme of Cupid’s day sometimes, even when we have significant others. I get that shit. I get that we fuck ourselves over and we get fucked over, that bad shit happens when you put yourself out there, that being fucked over can turn us into bad people sometimes and then we do bad shit to other people in return. Love is not a bed of roses. Love is not always what it seems. But if you’re a brave soldier or soldierette, you keep on keepin’ on and you rock the heart you got.
I don’t know where the balance is between Black Flag’s “Nothing Left Inside” and Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing”. But seriously, don’t stop believing. Love yourself and the rest will follow. Hopefully that shit they say is true, that true love will find you in the end. But until then, Happy Black Flag Day from yours truly.
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