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Motorhead “s/t” + Black Flag “Damaged” - Observing the Obvious

These are 2 of maybe 5 records that basically my entire musical palette is built on. Motorhead and Black Flag both have other records of note and influence, some arguably more-so, but for both bands, their first full length releases were the ones that established them as unignorable forces on the ‘world stage’ so to speak. Both have been scoffed at time and again by fools, parents, critics, and so on as low brow garbage. Noise. Shit. Of course each of these dismissals only serves to qualify what should be obvious to anyone with ears. That each preserves the tradition of Rock N Roll and its original rebellious nature, in full. I mean I shouldn’t have to say it, but sometimes I just flip when I find out people really don’t think Motorhead and Black Flag are the best bands ever.

Rock and Roll was originally just loud electric blues. It pissed off parents and authority figures, and it was cause for concern. As such the disciples of this new form of noise began dreaming up all kinds of imaginary qualifiers and desirable characteristics for a rock band to possess, and viewing it as a misunderstood art form, which in turn was absorbed into the collective consciousness of the music world, and then regurgitated, in a circular pattern, until eventually shit like Genesis was rock n/or roll and the original spirit had been totally warped and obscured. When you hear the distortion thick bass intro at the beginning of Motorhead, or the thick descending guitar line that comes in at the beginning of Rise Above, it’s an invocation of the primal aspects of Rock ‘n’ Roll, and a return to the inevitable. For everything that Rock music can be dressed up as, in the end it’s inherently written into its DNA that it’s animalistic and ‘low’. You can teach a dog all kinds of tricks to make it seem smart, but in the end, you still have to take it outside to piss on a fire hydrant.

As it pertains to this site, I’m of the opinion, that basically everything covered here can have a line drawn back to a handful of records. Probably less than 10. These are 2 of them. Motorhead aren’t really a punk band, but they’re not really a proper metal band, and they’re not quite like any Rock ‘n Roll band before them either, and even though Black Flag can be easily grouped as Punk or Hardcore, they spent as much time deconstructing what that could mean as they did building it up. SO why am I making this post? Some days you just wake up, and remember, no matter what, Lemmy and Ginn are the greatest of all time, even at their most obvious. Sometimes it’s all you need to remember.