There was a time where every single song on this release seemed to speak to me. Today, I still reference it. "Rat's Eyes" actually came up in a conversation earlier this week, which is not surprising with the hell week I've had. These days, however, I don't listen to it every day or even for months at a time. I try to have a little variety. After all, that is the spice of life.
I found that Black Flag has remained one of my go-to bands for those days where everyone seems to be spouting nonsense and nobody seems to care. It reminds me what it means to be thinking in a sea of what often seems to be brain-dead kelp in human form. It helps keep me sane. In the '80s, this release helped me get through the periods, assaulting my ears between classes and on the bus home, where a hierarchy of seats seemed to mirror the social order. Later, those seats positions would shift. The losers making ass grooves in the back of the bus are now losers making ass grooves at their local bar, never having the gumption or skills to leave their hometown. Alcohol fuels them. Complacency drives them. They go home to wives they grew tired of fucking four years and forty pounds ago. They have kids who gather around their feet and cry for the kind of attention daddy never got. They melt in front of the tube and wait for pay day. They don't only live to check to check but drink to drink and show to show.
Slip It In reminds me of that. Of how good it feels to sometimes not even fit in and how the desire to remain outside of that is not only a good thing, but a healthy thing. It is survival. It is the only thing separating you from the animals. They still value the soothing power of high school football and the hope that one of those underage cheerleaders will forget her panties. They remember those days. They don't live them anymore. There is a sadness to that, but it's not my sadness. My sadness extends in different directions. I don't want to relive the past. I want to survive the future.
Black Flag, on any of its numerous releases, gives me fortification so I can survive. It gives me firepower and offers promise. Everyone should have a band that does that. Nobody should feel like all hope is lost, but some people have gone so far from that notion that they no longer know what hope looks like. Hope is not a promise of a better tomorrow, but that your favorite CBS sitcom won't be canceled. Hope is not light at the end of the tunnel, but the barrel of a gun.
"You say you don't want it/But then you slip it on in." Take what you want from those lyrics. Just be careful what you're slippin' on in.
