***1/2 Black Flag

LIVE '84

(SST)

Previously available only on cassette, Live '84 documents what was arguably the most crucial Black Flag line-up in the band's tangled history doing what they did best -- pummeling through a damaging live set. Having just emerged from a legal squabble with Unicorn Records in 1984 -- a situation that had virtually silenced Black Flag for a couple of years -- guitarist Greg Ginn regrouped with then long-haired singer Henry Rollins, bassist Kira Roessiter, and Descendents/All drummer Bill Stevenson, who would be gone by the time Black Flag recorded their next live album, 1986's Who's Got the 10-1/2? (SST).

The disc opens, as did most of their shows in that era, with a long, torturous display of Ginn's inimitably sloppy and intentionally artless fretwork, the 8:37-minute instrumental "The Process of Weeding Out," which brings to mind what Cream might have sounded like if Clapton had never learned how to tune a guitar. Then Rollins jumps aboard for a blast from the past, the short and sour thrasher "Nervous Breakdown." The rest of the 75-minute set, which was recorded at the Stone in San Francisco, bypasses oldies like "Gimmie Gimmie Gimmie" and "TV Party" in favor of the proto-grunge of the bitterly paranoid Flag discs of the day -- '84's My War and Slip It In, both SST releases, and both as essential as Live '84 to the American postpunk experience.

-- Matt Ashare