NPR: Black Flag Re-Imagined from Memory

Black Flag Re-Imagined from Memory

Filed under: Music

Yale dropout Dave Longstreth is no stranger to the concept album. In 2005, as the "Dirty Projectors," he released a critically lauded album, The Getty Address, based around the imaginary story of musician Don Henley. This year, he released Rise Above, an album of Black Flag songs as re-imagined from memory. According to Dave, the project started when he stumbled across the empty cassette case to the seminal punk album, Damaged while doing some spring cleaning.

Here's "Rise Above" from the new record:

Win Rosenfeld

8:55 AM ET | 05- 7-2008 | permalink

Comments (Send a comment)

ooof, gimme Black Flag any day.
Henry Rollins may want to say something about this crap.

Sent by JC Delettrez | 12:59 PM ET | 05-07-2008

I don't know about the original, but i love the sound of this song :)

Sent by Michael Wood | 1:50 PM ET | 05-07-2008

I'm a Black Flag fan up to and including EVERYTHING WENT BLACK -- BF started sucking the second Greg Ginn discovered Black Sabbath and weed and turned them into a horrible blooz-metal band -- but what I most love about the Dirty Projectors album is that it makes Black Flag fans' heads explode. It's as if DAMAGED is this inviolable document, which...it's not. This album is more purely punk than anything Rollins has done since about 1985, because it's about flying in the face of expectations.

The BPP should do a story about R. Stevie Moore. I'm just sayin'.

Sent by Stewart | 1:52 PM ET | 05-07-2008

Am I the only person who thought this song sucked? Sounded kind of like sqealing to me.

Sent by Alicia | 5:28 PM ET | 05-07-2008

Wow. This guy absolutely raped that song. He took everything that made the song an anthem. The anger, the passion, the denial of societal conventions becomes some kind of nasty jazz masturbation session. Thanks for making sure jazz has to be pretentious.

Sent by Jordan | 4:57 PM ET | 05-09-2008

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