Black Flag @ QXT's, Newark, NJ 8/2/24

 

Bill: Black Flag

Venue:  QXT's, Newark, NJ

Date: 8/2/24

Door: $35, bought bought ticket online $45.48

Headliner: Black Flag (2 sets)

Latest Release: What The... (SST, 2013), none with current vocalist

Active: 1979 (Hermosa Beach, CA)

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Guitar God Greg Ginn takes his current, recently stable live lineup on the road with regularity nowadays.  For a time, there were enough people in the original lineups to warrant larger venues, but this one with Mike Vallely singing since 2013's final departure of Ron Reyes, the Jealous Again vocalist that returned for touring and the What The... LP before Mike V took the vocals once and for all.

Now that he has been on the road with the band over a decade, it seems odd to look at him as "the new guy" but since the band has primarily served as a nostalgia entity to keep Ginn's songs played on the road without constraints like new material it will probably always be that way.  Drummer Charles Willey is a session pro, bass player Matt Baxter just joined last week.  People are in and out all the time with the bars.

There were two sets no opener this time around.  The tour was advertised as the first four years and most of those hits were played as well as later Ginn standards from the Rollins years.  I was psyched to hear "I Can See You."   Also they had an ACTUAL NEW SONG that the reprised a couple times throughout the show called "Fucked Up," a Cro-Magnon anthem with the standard solo.  Perhaps some day it will be released.

Mike V being from Edison, NJ got a little extra roar from the crowd, so with over a decade under his belt he seems settled in.  Much was made of the Flag band "doing it right" or Rollins doing his West Memphis 3 shows with a greater passion over a decade ago, but at the end of the day, nobody plays guitar like Greg Ginn.  He still stands today which is something to be said.