#MoreMoore - Black Flag - Rise Above (1982)
Wij zijn de mensen van Absolutely Free Festival aka AFF Genk nog altijd dankbaar dat ze ons in 2015 de gelegenheid verleenden om een publieke Q&A te hosten met één van onze helden. Thurston Moore bleek bovendien nog een vriendelijk mens ook. De gitaristieke visionair van Sonic Youth, Chelsea Light Moving en al een tijdje solo heeft een bijzonder uitgebreide platencollectie en resideert tegenwoordig in London. Gevraagd naar diens favoriete songs aller tijden doen wij een greep uit het brede aanbod.
Tenslotte geven we aan het einde van een weekje Thurston Moore-faves het woord graag aan de meester zelf: “The record is 'Damaged', the band is Black Flag. For me, one of the greatest groups of all time. I was completely in love with ‘em when I first started getting into underground hardcore records in the eighties".
"Sonic Youth had already been around for a little bit, and I kind of felt like – coming out of punk rock and getting into no wave and post-punk – certainly we were post-punk. Then all of a sudden these bands were showing up that were younger than us and they were only referencing day one punk rock – stripping it down and making it more feral and primal".
"I was curious about It, so I remember buying the Circle Jerks first record, and the first Dischord 7 inches by Minor Threat and S.O.A., and then hearing about the singer from S.O.A. joining this group Black Flag, which I was aware of but I thought it might’ve just been some boneheaded thug punk stuff that I wasn’t interested in. But I was drawn towards it for different reasons – certainly the Raymond Pettibon drawing on the front of the 'Jealous Again' 12 inch".
"I remember buying that and it sounded so nasty – the guitar sound was crude and wild and didn’t have this refined aesthetic that I was getting into with, say, Scritti Politti! So it was this throwback, but it was a new kind of throwback. I kept going back to it and finding myself getting more and more into what the vocabulary of hardcore was until I became a convert".
"Black Flag’s 'Damaged' was an essential text to it. It wasn’t the generic hardcore formula – it alluded to it but it was also blowing it out and going in different places. A very important record and a very important band because of how industrious they were in ignoring the typical industry standard of how you’re supposed to put a record out or tour. They created a new standard of activity".
"When Henry Rollins joined the band – listening to him sing on 'Damaged' was curious, because it sounded really brutal; in a live context it was like blood spilling off the stage. Every time you’d see them, every night they’d come out, rip their skin open and flail themselves onstage. They would leave themselves and the audience wasted.” En in de bijgaande videoclip leest de jonge Henry Rollins nog niet als een stripverhaal, want de tattoos zijn nog in de minderheid op die blote bast.