PLAYER: GREG GINN
BAND: BLACK FLAG
While Bad Brains was over in D.C.
drawing up the blueprints for East
Coast hardcore, Black Flag was
doing the same thing on the West
Coast, blending Ramones-inspired
blasts of punk with a healthy dose
of caustic paranoia. At the helm
of Black Flag was guitarist and
primary songwriter Greg Ginn, a
restless eccentric with a distinct
musical vision and seemingly
zero barriers to creativity. Ginn’s
approach to guitar progressed
along with the direction of
Black Flag’s music, from the
straightforward hardcore of the
Nervous Breakdown EP, to the later
My War era, which blended punk
with a dissonant sludge influenced
by Black Sabbath, John Coltrane,
the Grateful Dead, and Tony
Williams’s Lifetime, among others.
Ginn’s tone was also one of the
most distinct of all early hardcore
guitarists, consisting primarily
of
his
electronically
gutted
Ampeg Dan Armstrong Plexiglas
guitar, and what was basically an
overdriven solid-state PA system.
It was a fearsome, unholy grind
perfectly suited to the genre’s
most fearless innovator.
Essential listening:
“Rise Above” from Black Flag’s Damaged.
ToneReport.com
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