My Head Really Hurts

I'm going to be controversial. I've chosen a band that everyone should have heard of, but I've chosen an album that doesn't feature their must successful line-up. The album is also a compilation full of material available elsewhere.

Shocking stuff, I know.

The band? Black Flag.

The album? The First Four Years.

The thing about Black Flag is, they disappeared up their own arses eventually and their best work was done early doors. Their greatest era was definitely before Henry Rollins joined the band. I've got nothing against Mr Rollins and not just because he could easily have me in a fight either., but it's a simple fact. Black Flag were at their punkest in the beginning. It's no coincidence that the splinter band, Flag, who perform pretty much only the early stuff are now the most respected edition of the band

This album is like Black Flag's greatest hits, if you don't count Damaged which I really could live without.

Here we get a mix of vocalists – Keith Morris, Ron Reyes, Dez Cadena and Chuck Dukowski.

Greg Ginn's revolving door policy when it came to band membership was its craziest in the start, but luckily this was the period when the band were at their absolute best.

The raw power of Nervous Breakdown and Fix Me are the kind of songs most punk bands would kill to have in their arsenal. Remember this was 1979 and it was done on a shoestring. Strange then that it sounds better than most things released in the last ten years.

I've Had It, Wasted, Jealous Again, Revenge, White Minority – they all kick the arses of the output of a whole host of other supposedly legendary bands. There's none of the experimentalism of Husker Du or Minutemen here; it's all fast and frantic stuff.

No Values, Clocked In, Six Pack (especially the bassline on this) – all excellent and all need to be played as loudly as possible as many times as possible.

The cover of Louie, Louie might not hold a candle to the original, but it's amazing all the same. This song always reminds of Naked Gun anyway. You know, the bit where a marching band play it as they walk past the stadium and stand on the control that makes OJ Simpson go mental (unbelievable, I know)?

As mentioned earlier, Damaged is the one anomaly. It's not a bad song as such, but it's the repeated yelling of the song's title ten thousand times at the end which is overkill for me – a bit like one of those bits in Family Guy when Peter falls over and hurts himself and he writhes in agony for too long and it goes on and on, if you get my drift.

16 songs in just over 25 minutes shows that they weren't hanging around, but this is classic stuff. It's a great insight into very late 70s/early 80s US punk and shows why Black Flag are considered so influential by so many other bands.

In fact if you enjoy the first four songs of The First Four Years with Keith Morris singing, check out Off! They are still stuck in the early 80s, soundwise, and are churning out early Black Flag-sounding albums on a regularish basis.