An Audience Who We Weren't Allowed To Kill ...

I wish I had seen Black Flag back in their glory days. Everything I read or hear about their shows sounds awesome. I guess I was a bit young for my parents to agree to drop me off at a Black Flag concert where death for me was guaranteed. I did catch Rollins Band once, in 1991, but that was hardly the same.

I just read an interview done with Rollins by nutty Canadian Nardwuar the Human Serviette. Nardwuar loves to bring up questions pertaining to Canada, loves to repeat himself and brings up oddly obscure crap from people's pasts. All of this often throws off the interviewee which I enjoy quite a bit.

I like the following exchange, not because of the confusion factor, but rather because I think it is great how Rollins goes from angry to reflective. He is fuckin' nuts. Nuts when he was in Black Flag and still nuts now. His spoken word tours and poetry aren't fooling me:

Nardwuar: Why do you think that people think you hate Vancouver or Winnipeg, because people think you hate Vancouver or Winnipeg. People think that you hate Vancouver or Winnipeg.
Rollins: 'Cause I used to very much. 'Cause I would come up here and you guys would be a shitty, spitting, heroin shooting, equipment stealing audience who we weren't allowed to kill ... So, after I got out of Black Flag and I didn't have to come here anymore, when I became the boss of the system, I stopped coming here so I didn't have to get spat on and have my equipment ripped off by, by idiotic punk rock junkies. So I gave the city about seven years to cool off, and came back and found it to be a very wonderful place.

Nardwuar: So it's no longer "Drunkville" to you?
Rollins: No.