Notes From The Record Room: Black Flag INSTRUMENTAL, $6.98 (and 40 Years Later)
Black Flag
The Process Of
Weeding Out EP
SST Records
Released: 9/85
“As far as Black Flag records are concerned, people don't look past Damaged as it is widely considered the band’s milestone. But, speaking as a fan, Black Flag made no album more complex or extreme than The Process Of Weeding Out, its combined energy, inorganic make-up and strangely amateurish experimentalism a troubling and unsettling byproduct of (Greg) Ginn’s dissatisfaction with scenester-ism.” — Letters From A Tapehead, 6/9/09
As a decades-long fan of Black Flag, the tired commentary regarding which of the band’s original four singers happened to be holding the microphone during its best era often leads to the conclusion that Henry Rollins, who was the fourth and final vocalist prior to the reunion that spawned the 2013 comeback album, What The… and an ensuing plethora of line-ups, was responsible for Black Flag’s inevitable ruin and what is perceived to be their creative decline. This is a fucking stupid take given that the band’s trajectory was set by its leader, guitarist Greg Ginn, and the acquisition of a rhythm section that would lead them away from the aggression of their first four years, the culmination of which can be heard on the first Black Flag LP, Damaged. With drummer Bill Stevenson (of Descendents and ALL) and bassist Kira Roessler, Ginn, no longer interested in the no frills assault of hardcore, didn’t bother to look both ways before stepping onto treasonous territory: hippie’fied metal’fied rock ’n’ roll.
By 1985, hardcore was losing steam and the violence that regional scenes cultivated had grown tiresome. With Revolution Summer, D.C. area bands had recalibrated and intro’d post-hardcore (a.k.a. first-wave Emo) to the underground / indie conversation. Weirdos like Butthole Surfers in Texas and The Thrown-Ups in Seattle thrived on inspired juvenilia and onstage spectacle while The Replacements became bored with punk rock and found Alex Chilton. Sonic Youth’s dissonant art punk began to incorporate hooks and Dinosaur (then-sans Jr.) committed the venial sin of bridging their tracks with guitar solos. The Minutemen and Hüsker Dü put out double-LPs, the latter (Hüsker’s Zen Arcade) being concept-driven, and Saccharine Trust were performing spoken word over droning and avant punk-infused, jazz rhythms.
The punk/indie underground could no longer be easily categorized and Black Flag had helped lead the way, showing signs of evolution via the metallic dirges captured on the B-side of their second LP, My War, a move well-suited to antagonize Black Flag’s fanbase: the immovable hardcore brood who were seemingly stunted by self-imposed, dogmatic limitations. So, why not fuck with them some more?
Penultimate to the band’s final 80s-era studio LP In My Head, Black Flag released what I believe to be their best and most subversive album, The Process Of Weeding Out. Issued in September of 1985—a recent fortieth birthday observed and celebrated—The Process Of Weeding Out is an ambitious four-track instrumental EP (no Rollins) that betrays some self-indulgence on Ginn’s part while also perhaps unintentionally previewing the musical direction he’d take for his eventual post-Flag project, Gone. Having already committed instrumental tracks to a single-side of the band’s 1984 album, Family Man (and one featured in the polarizing Slip It In LP) The Process Of Weeding Out finds Ginn, with a bong hit in his lungs and Mahavishnu Orchestra in his ears, leading a punk jazz trio.
In his essential and excellent account of the pre-Nirvana indie rock analogscape, Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground 1981-1991, author Michael Azerrad notes that Rollins’s nascent side hustle as a poet and spoken word performer may have motivated Ginn to compose and record The Process Of Weeding Out as a non-vocal project. “The title has a triple meaning,” Azerrad notes. “Besides weeding out Rollins and the obvious pot reference, it refers to the way the challenging music weeds out the band’s less insightful fans.”
Within seconds of dropping the needle, the bass sequence from Roessler that opens the track “Your Last Affront” begs the question: What would this instrumental have sounded like from Black Flag’s Damaged line-up and would Ginn have been able to pull it off? As Rollins assumes the role of era-barometer for the band, the sonic makeup of Black Flag’s revolving lineups tends to be overlooked in my opinion. Pair Roessler to Chuck Dukowski: clean funk vs. muddy chug. Pair Stevenson to Robo: both capable of the immediate 4/4 attack, while Stevenson could ably carry Ginn’s more musically progressive endeavors.
Digression ahead:
I’ll concede that the above statement is unfair since Dukowski and Robo weren’t part of the band when Ginn decided to “weed out” and considering how the Damaged-era rhythm section approached tracks like “What I See” and “Gimme Gimme Gimme,” not to mention how Dukowski built his other projects like Würm and Swa, it’s very possible that they could’ve also followed Ginn’s vision. That said, stylistically speaking, The Process Of Weeding Out would’ve been a different album without the Stevenson / Roessler anchor.
As if channeling Albert Ayler or Charles Gayle, with “Your Last Affront” Ginn violently tunnels through Roessler’s bass rhythm and Stevenson’s weighty snare/crash combo, a solid torrent of rev’d up volume that’ll make your teeth gnash. Stevenson eventually accelerates his pace as Ginn starts to follow Roessler’s busy fretwork until he collapses into more improv, his calloused fingers pressed into the service of atonality and dissonance while a few subsequent bouts of rhythmic variation are carried out.
I consider “Your Last Affront” to be one of the most dynamic and punishing tracks recorded for any Black Flag release, certainly more threatening and PUNK RAWK than every song heard on the inferior In My Head and on the same level as that rawest entries contained within the seminal and celebrated Damaged. For as much as Ginn & Co. venture away from hardcore, a punk subgenera noted for being purposely stripped of excess, the combination of anxiety and combativeness exhibited within the first few minutes of this 9-something minute intro track is as cathartic as “Fix Me” or “American Waste,” but not anthemic like “Rise Above.” There’s no call and response. No battle cry. This is a release valve knocked loose and best of luck to you if you happen to be in its sightline.
And while we’re talking about PUNK RAWK, “Screw The Law” is the musical equivalent of a gritty chase scene set to a tempo so urgent it almost sounds like Stevenson is on the edge of falling over his drum kit. The insurgent title aside, “Screw The Law” isn’t at all far removed from Black Flag’s origins, the “you put your avant in my aggro” arrangement near unnoticed thanks to the track’s immediacy and relentlessness.
Where the title of the album truly forces Ginn’s mission is appropriately with the title track, nearly 10 minutes of varying speed and protean guitar phrasing that bleed into a near-Sabbath evocative second act. Relying on Roesseler to hold things down, Stevenson slips into off-kilter snare fills and pattern shifts while Ginn falls in and out of time with the track, emulating the bass melody or ad-libbing solos.
Perhaps reading into this is a bit, album closer “Southern Rise” sounds bred as a response to the Miles Davis piece “Honky Tonk,” found in his 1974 fusion masterpiece Get Up With It, its buds ‘n’ suds sway evocative of MOR bar bands and the gathered haze from red-tipped Marlboros. The hi-hat open and the propulsion a straightforward contrast to the rest of Weeding Out, the closer is the EP’s least complete track, faded out to accommodate the oncoming dead wax. Or maybe the reel ran dry, a metaphor suitably attached to the status of Black Flag by the EP’s release.
Despite having one more album issued prior to their dissolution in 1986, The Process Of Weeding Out is a non-verbal statement of divorce for Black Flag: fuck the fans; fuck the frontman; fuck this punk shit. Some editions of Weeding Out show a set of liner notes on the back cover authored by Ginn (my copy has the INSTRUMENTAL, $6.98 LIST sticker on the front) where he states, “… even though this record may communicate certain feelings, emotions, and ideas to some, I have faith that cop-types with their strictly linear minds and stick-to-the-rules mentality don't have the ability to decipher the intuitive contents of this record.” One can surmise that these feelings could be extended to every album Black Flag produced following Damaged, each one pushing past the expectations of an audience unwilling to partake in their creative journey. Weeding Out was really Black Flag’s last opportunity to appeal to broadening tastes, tastes already largely challenged by the inventive bands and artists using hardcore’s D.I.Y. ethos as a means to tour and issue albums outside of major labels and the corporate apparatus. Instead, listeners seemed content to simply be weeded out. Hindsight’s a bitch, ain’t it?
Sincerely,
Letters From A Tapehead
