Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Black Flag Comes to Flint



This is a clipping from the Flint Journal covering an early '80s visit to Flint by Henry Rollins and Black Flag. They played the decidedly un-air-conditioned Ukrainian Hall.

I recently uncovered it tucked between pages 318-319 of my old copy of A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole, who committed suicide after failing to find a publisher. His mother, with the help of writer Walker Percy, managed to get the book published posthumously.

There's a single paragraph underlined on page 318, presumably by me: "A scarf here. A cutlass there. One or two deft and tasteful suggestions. That's all. The total effect is rather fetching."

The quote fits nicely with the fan in the Tam O' Shanter near the stage, who, if memory serves me, just might be Flint Expatriate Scott Hiteshew.

UPDATE: Of course, the great Take No Prisoners has the full article on the 1985 show! Thanks, Aaron.


9 comments:

  1. Henry Rollins with hair! Those were the days...

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  2. The full article is available at www.takenoprisoners.info in the Images & Stories section (10/85)

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  3. Hair and running shorts! That look should make a comeback.

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  4. I now recall, at this performance, that the young lady featured between Henry's legs spent the better portion of one song rubbing his naughty bits. Then he made out with another girl by the stage right speakers and came back on stage with a woody. Thus the transition from punk rock to rock star. The next tour was the one that black flag had a tour 'rider' that Doug hung on the door at Wyatt Earp, and we ridiculed it for months.

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  5. Black Flag, tartan fashion, an author suicide, and Flint. What a heady cocktail ... I'm off for a lie down (but I'm going to have to look out a copy of Confederacy of Dunces when I recover)

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  6. Safetyville and Black Flag. They are both on my very 1980's button collection bullitin board, although up until now I hadn't put them close together. Truthfully, I saw BF at Clutch Cargos in Detroit, not Flint, but it was with my Flint peeps, which if memory serves, included the tartan topped Mr.Hiteshew.

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  7. the girl between henry's legs is NOT the girl who did the handjob thing. it wasn't even that show, man!(it was the next years show) source: i'm the guy on the far right in the circle jerks shirt

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    Replies
    1. Thank god we got that cleared up after nine long years! Thanks, dude.

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    2. Thank you, Anonymous. You are correct - I've never touched any of HR's naughty bits. Never heard about it until now & don't want to know more.

      Hope you are doing well.

      - Anonymous

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Thanks for commenting. I moderate comments, so it may take a while for your comment to appear. You might enjoy my book about Flint called "Teardown: Memoir of a Vanishing City," a Michigan Notable Book for 2014 and a finalist for the 33rd Annual Northern California Book Award for Creative NonFiction. Filmmaker Michael Moore described Teardown as "a brilliant chronicle of the Mad Maxization of a once-great American city." More information about Teardown is available at www.teardownbook.com.