The following interview took place at Oz (Broadway) on December 13, '80 on a chilly winter night around midnight. Oz was still pretty empty because Flack Flag had played the night before (with the Effigies) and had been running around Chicago all day (Sat.) advertising the last minute for this show at Oz; they tried to catch a bit of sleep in various corners in Oz before the interview had started.

John of the Effigies (singer) assisted us, many thanks John.

The members of Black Flag which contributed to this interview are Chuck (bass), Dez (vocals), and Greg (guitar).

JOHN: Have you guys been pushing alot for airplay and stuff on the radio? You know, your single.
GREG: Well it just came out. It was supposed to have come out a couple weeks before we left but it ended up coming out just before we left. Ah, I guess it's doing pretty good in LA but I don't know.
JOHN: How is the scene out in LA? Sort of dying out or what?
GREG: Oh no, it's getting a lot bigger. It's kind of a real young scene out there in a way. A lot of people are getting into it.
JOHN: Do you guys consider yourself a second generation band from LA?
GREG: No, well that may have been kind of how it worked out. We've been aroundfor a long time. Since it had started in LA. We come from the suburbs of LA and we were kind of shut out of the scene in the city.
CHUCK: You weren't a punk if you're from the suburbs.
GREG: They wouldn't give us gigs.
DEZ: We were written up in all the LA magasines when all the second generation bands were getting written up--doesn't mean you're a second generation.
GREG: We were around since early '77.
DIANE: Who would be considered a first generation band and who would be considered a second generation band?
GREG: In LA? The Weirdos would be first generation. The Zeroes, the Germs, the Bags.
KAREN: Are they still together?
GREG: Some of them are.
JOHN: If you were looking for converts. What kind of crowd are you looking to play for?
GREG: We think everybody should be subjected to us, if they like it or not. A lot of bands and people have an attitude of, "OK we're going to have our little crowd here and we're gonna keep certain people out...We're gonna have our own private club," and that's bullshit. Everybody should be dragged in and subjected to it. Go out and make an effort--hitting people on the head, whether they like it or not.
DEZ: For years and years they've been saying in LA that our scene is this and our scene is that.
GREG: Allow everyone in.
CHUCK: That's just like a bogus punk attitude they have in LA which I think is garbage. If the band is for change, then they can have an effect in varying degrees on all kinds of different people. If you're gonna change anything you're not gonna by sitting in your living room, no matter how big it is.
GREG: For example, this club here is great right now. No age limit.
JOHN: How long is it going to stay like that?
GREG: Well now you see.
DEZ: That's what kept it alive from where we're from.
GREG: That's important if someone in Chicago should make sure there's a place without an age limit that anybody can go to. No restrictions, you don't have to look a certain way. Open to any kind of taste which means putting up with some assholes.
JOHN: Do you think a lot of energy you have up on stage is put down on record the way you like it?
GREG: We think it's been done good on record and it could be done good on video.
JOHN: What kind of bands did you listen to before you got into this?
CHUCK: Years ago, I use to listen to Black Sabbath, Iggy Pop all kind of bands
DEZ & GREG: All kinds of bands.
CHUCK: Alice Cooper
CHUCK & DEZ: ZZ Top
DIANE: What do you think of them now?
GREG: We like them. Ha. Ha. Ha. We don't have to agree with their stuff to listen to their records.
JOHN: Would you buy their latest stuff?
GREG: No, like Iggy Pop, people should listen to his early stuff. Raw Power. Fun House. Metallic KO. I Got a Right. Since then he's got really burnt out stuff out. It's kind of a sheme alot of people would consider Iggy Pop by his later stuff.
CHUCK: It's an excuse for new wavers to be like that. He still has some type, sort of personality.
KAREN: Reminds me of Johnny Thunders.
GREG: Someones who's off in that kind of quasi-adult burnt out world. He can support that fantasy. People are captivated by his personality rather than the emotion he use to put out.
DIANE: A lot of press releases that I've seen said you were coming here "straight from the Tomorrow Show" like that's your only claim to fame. What do you think of that?
CHUCK: That was ten minutes
GREG: The promoter, I guess, picked up on that. It has very little effect on people coming to see us.
CHUCK: It was just me speaking my mind.
GREG: It was not something we went out to do. They asked to talk to us and said they have the best intentions.
DIANE: Did you feel this was a way to get on national TV to view your point?
GREG: We never turned down anybody who wanted to talk to us.
CHUCK: No use being discretionary about it. What was said was said. If I got stupid they would have dropped the whole thing, well as long as I said real things then it came across.
JOHN: What do you think is going to happen to music a year or two from now?
GREG: Get much bigger.
JOHN: Like punk--its been around for 3-4 years and theres been a million kinds of bands.
CHUCK: It's getting bigger and faster now.
JOHN: But don't you think alot of the ideas might get deluded out?
CHUCK: What happens people came along they take up the uniform, the dogma, and don't have anything to do with the concept. They want to play rock star.
GREG: And also when we started as a band we were like totally against what everybody wanted to hear and there was no success in so of speaking "punk rock"--it was unheard of. It was totally against what was going on and now it is possible for bands to be successfull in some terms.
JOHN: What do you say about people who say what punks are doing now hippies did in the 60's? I mean, would you draw say any kind of line between the two? Not the hippies now but back then, counter culture shit?
CHUCK: The people were trying to be wild, let go, new ways thats a valid comparison. That's were it stops also you can they tried to do something new, try to shake it up a bit. Come up with a new form so they didn't have to obey the old rules and all that. What happens is obviously--look at the past 20 years, 10 years, you can see that it has just become the new rules.
GREG: We're living with alot of the results of the hippie nightmare.
JOHN: I agree to that.
GREG: One thing has got to be understood that the current day hippie is controlling the radio station and the mass culture. I just saw this singer hippie band on TV a couple of minutes ago and maybe she was trying to put on a little bit of a new wave image or something. Hippies have got control over the culture now, because they're the biggest population.
JOHN: You suppose money corrupts people no matter what you say, what would you do if someone offered you alot of bucks, you think you'll probably change your mind?
CHUCK: What are they going to ask for us? We lost $300 tonight by not playing over at this other place--That's a matter of ethics.
GREG: I think also where we're coming from, why in life, if we wanted to we can make money, thats not the issue.
CHUCK: Because if we wanted to we could get a job that paid a lot of money.
JOHN: So what did you guys study?
CHUCK: I studied psychobiology.
GREG: I studied economics.
(Everybody looks at Dez)
DEZ: Ah, I studied ah...micro, micro...wave ovens--No...um...micro fuckology.
DIANE: Is your single still available? Somebody wanted me to ask you. Can you get it here?
GREG: It's being repressed right now. It will be out in a little bit.
JOHN: Re-pressed or repressed?
GREG: Re-pressed.
JOHN: It's a joke. Never mind.
ALL: Ha. Ha. Ha.
GREG: I get it, the communist revolution.
CHUCK: Yeah, the commies are repressing it right now.
KAREN: Have you been enjoying the tour?
JOHN: Have you been getting alot of groupies after the show?
GREG: NO...
DIANE: Oh, where did you get your haircut?
DEZ: "It's so sexy." Oh, ooh.
KAREN: Any cities you have specifically liked?
GREG: Houston. I guess Austin.
GREG: A lot of people say that LA is laid back and mellow--I'd like to see alot of these people go to one of our gigs, get raped or something.
DEZ: Our scene would be more appopriate in a city like this.
CHUCK: It couldn't happen.
DEZ: It could.
JOHN: We're working on it.
JOHN: What kind of bands do you get into or like out in London?
CHUCK: Right now I don'nt get into any bands in England. My favorite bands are all from the West Coast.
JOHN: What are they?
CHUCK: I like the Stains. Dead Kennedys, DOA, Subhumans, UXA.
GREG: They (UXA) got a great record out. There are a lot of great bands.
DIANE: Lately we've just been hearing about the LA scene, how long has this been going on?
DEZ: Four years.
DIANE: Well lately in the past few months you've been hearing a lot about it.
CHUCK: Past year it's been real big, getting bigger and bigger.
DIANE: And do you people have the same values as the others? All of you against the same thing?
GREG: Not all of them.
DIANE: Like so many people seem to be jumping on the bandwagon.
GREG: People should be treated as individuals--it's easy to romanticize that the people were all rebels, this and that, but a lot of people were into that for the fashion. People should be treated as individuals.
DEZ: PEOPLE who use to be in the scene 3 1/2 years ago usually stay home now.
JOHN: Right.
DIANE: Why, do you think so?
DEZ: They're burnt out--several reasons they don't like the people they're tired of the hardcore bands, back then, and they listen to the Monochrome set or something like that and they go yeah, they play the Black Flag single or the X single, these bands are still out there doing it...I'm into the new thing, I still have respect for the old bands, I won't go see them play...it's just too rough, you know I'll get hurt. (imitating them) Basically they're just saying, "I'm burnt out."
DIANE: Yeah, but the reaction from the audience yesterday - the people who were sitting in the back watching these guys jumping around. I saw that 4 years ago, and they're still doing that now.
CHUCK: "I was cool--I was cooler than that I don't need to do that now." That is what their law is until they rot.
GREG: Probably they were never into it from the beginning, they were waiting for it to all disappear, all the time and they still are! Paved the way to New Wave
DIANE: Now don't you think it wasn't necessarily the music making the people act (pushing and shoving) this way. It was just for the fun of it.
CHUCK: I know I need that kind of thing, I know that other people need it.
GREG: That's an advantage to have recorded stuff so people can hear more lyrics. It is a problem of a live performance--it's hard to get the lyrics across but that is a problem with any other band.
CHUCK: A lArge percent of the emtions of what we're saying is in the music.
JOHN: What about the violence at your gigs? You get alot of violence in LA.
CHUCK: There is alot of violence just in people, it's not here or there...
DIANE: Why do the cops hate you? What is the problem?
CHUCK: We're not hitting each other--we're just petting it out.
JOHN: Good place for people to slug it out.
CHUCK: If somebody got hurt, it's not the end of the world.
GREG: Police are very facist...in LA. In the LA respect, they don't, like to see something new go on, and they see all this energy as a kind of threat.
GREG: Police consider it a threat--but they try to stop it--they call promoters up that put on our gigs, in LA and they try to intimidate them into not going ahead with stuff like that.
KAREN: What did you think of these guys last night (Effigies)?
DEZ: They were pretty rockin', rock and roll.
JOHN: Yeah, we knocked all our Zep covers out.
GREG: We really didn't think there was a hardcore scene here in Chicago.
JOHN: You guys do Freebird at all?
GREG: No, we dropped that from the set last week. We did this great new Steely Dan number. It's called "Wild in the Streets," no no.
JOHN: Do you have any last words?
GREG: Yeah, it's fucking cold up here. How do you guys survive? It's insane.
KAREN: This is nothing yet.
DIANE: Really.
KAREN: Wait til we get snow.
GREG: Well, we will be back in the spring--not before that--after it warms up.