Scam-Issue 9, "Damaged"; Fall, 2012

Disaster Amnesiac just got done reading Erick Lyle's great evocation of Black Flag's doomed 1981 opus Damaged, and I have to say that it will be required reading for any Flag fans out there. A lot of the info therein has been covered many times before, but the reader will be rewarded by reading Lyle's insightful questioning of the Punk Rock nostalgia trip, many rare photos (one in particular, a seemingly surreptitious shot of five really young teens in Hollywood, is particularly striking for its knife-edge intimacy; did Carducci snap this shot?), and new interviews with all members of that iteration of the band, minus Robo. There is none of the finger pointing and blame assignment that had been on display a few years ago, but the principals are honest in their assessments of that period of their creative lives and the macro-societal dynamics in which they moved at that time. Lyle's best zinger of the issue: "[W]hile music mags were filled in 2011 with tributes to the twentieth anniversary of...Nevermind, the true story of that anniversary in many ways is the story of the thirtieth anniversary of Damaged".
Joe, though art avenged.