Everything Went Black

***Everything Went Black*** is an archival double album released in 1982 by Black Flag. The album contains unreleased recordings from the band's pre-Henry Rollins era.

## Background

Black Flag were entangled in a lawsuit with Unicorn Records, who had sued the band and SST Records after the band made an inquiry about missing royalties from the sales of their *Damaged* album. As a result of the lawsuit, the band were legally prohibited from releasing new material under their own name.

In order to keep the band's name as well as SST Records alive, Ginn and Chuck Dukowski elected to compile outtakes from the sessions from the band's pre-*Damaged* sessions, mixed and compiled by Spot, for release as a double LP.

## Content

The first side of the album features Keith Morris on vocals. The first four tracks, with an uncredited Brian Migdol on drums, are outtakes from the *Nervous Breakdown* sessions. The rest of the side consists of what were meant to be basic tracks for the first full Black FLag album, and feature rough guide vocals by Morris.

The first half of side two contains recordings with Ron Reyes on vocals, and are outtakes from what eventually became the *Jealous Again* EP. Tracks 5 and 6 on side two album are also from the *Jealous Again* sessions, but feature Dez Cadena on vocals instead of Reyes. Track 7 is the audio of an early Dez-era performance at Target Video, sourced from a cassette.

The last track on side two and the first track on side three were the last tracks Black Flag recorded at Media Art, as the facility's lease had expired. According to Spot's liner notes on the album, Dez's vocal overdub on the version of "Louie Louie" was the last track Spot -- or any other artist or producer -- ever recorded at the studio. The studio's equipment was disconnected and moved out of the building the next day.

The remaining five tracks on side three are outtakes from the *Six Pack* sessions done at Golden Age Recording with Geza X as co-engineer and co-producer.

Seven of the 24 outtakes for the album were mixed on October 13, 1982 by Spot at Music Lab, another studio Black Flag had briefly used after Media Art's closure. The rest of the material already had existing mixes that were considered ready for release.

Side four, "Crass Commercialism", is a side-long compilation of radio ads recorded and performed by the band and various associates, including Spot. At the conclusion of one of the ads, Greg Ginn can be heard yelling "Get in the van!", which would later inspire the title of Rollins' best-selling book of his Black Flag tour journals. Another ad features a sample from the Minutemen's "Joe McCarthy's Ghost", and a third samples the live version of Fear's "I Don't Care About You" from the soundtrack of *The Decline Of Western Civilization*.

After mixing the above mentioned tracks, Spot compiled the entire album at Total Access later in October of 1982.

## Aftermath

The band felt that releasing this unreleased material, which was still under the copyright of the band and SST, would be a legal way to release material without violating the Unicorn injunction. Lawyers and representatives for Unicorn felt diffferently and ordered the release as it stood withdrawn, claiming that the band could not use their name on *any* new releases, irregardless of the age of the recordings within. SST got around the injunction by reissuing the album with the band's name and logo blocked out and the individual band mambers' names (with Keith Morris being credited a "Johnny 'Bob' Goldstein" and Ron Reyes identified by his post-departure, Ginn-and-Dukowski-devised nom-de-plume "Chaco Pederast") used in their place.

Unicorn saw the matter differently and slapped a second injunction in place on Black Flag, and in the wake of this, Ginn and Dukowski were found guilty of contempt of court and sentenced to ten days in Los Angeles County Jail.

(Unbeknownst to Unicorn, Black Flag had already done a one-night demo session at Total Access Studios with Chuck Biscuits on drums, a session that was later widely bootlegged and may have been intended as a measure to get a head start on recording the band's second studio album, with an eye to completing the recordings once the lawsuit was done with.)

The Unicorn injunction did not extend outside of the United States, as the album was released with the band's logo and name untouched by SST/Pinnacle in the UK and Aggressive Rockproduktionen in West Germany. The uncensored cover would not see domestic release again in the USA until 1987, once the remaining stock of the original "censored" cover was exhausted and the CD edition was released.

Unicorn went out of business completely in 1983, freeing Black Flag from any and all further legal entanglements. Unfortunately, but the time the lawsuit fizzled, Dukowski and Cadena had both left the band in 1983. Down to a three-piece of Ginn, Bill Stevenson and Rollins temporarily, the band were finally free to legally record the long-overdue follow up to *Damaged*, *My War*.

## Track Listing

*All songs written by Greg Ginn except where noted.*

### Side One

#### Johnny 'Bob' Goldstein era

1. Gimmie Gimmie Gimmie
2. I Don't Care (Keith Morris, Greg Ginn)
3. White Minority
4. No Values
5. Revenge
6. Depression
7. Clocked In
8. Police Story
9. Wasted (Keith Morris, Greg Ginn)

### Side Two

#### Chavo Pendergast Era

1. Gimmie Gimmie Gimmie
2. Depression
3. Police Story
4. Clocked In
5. My Rules

#### Dez Cadena Era

1. Jealous Again
2. Police Story
3. Damaged I (Greg Ginn, Dez Cadena)
4. Louie Louie (Richard Berry, Dez Cadena)

### Side Three

#### Dez Cadena Era

1. No More (Chuck Dukowski)
2. Room 13 (Greg Ginn, Medea
3. Damaged II
4. Padded Cell (Chuck Dukowski, Greg Ginn)
5. Gimmie Gimmie Gimmie

### Side Four

1. Crass Commercialism

* Tracks 1-4 recorded and mixed January 1978 during the *Nervous Breakdown* sessions.
* Tracks 5-9 recorded October 1, 1979 during basic tracking for what eventually became the *Jealous Again* EP.
* Track 10 recorded and April 1980 during the Jealous Again sessions.
* Tracks 11-14 recorded October-November 1979 during the Jealous Again sessions.
* Tracks 15-16 vocal tracks recorded August-September 1980 over instrumental tracks recorded October-November 1979.
* Track 17 recorded live at Target Video.
* Tracks 18-19 recorded January 1981 during the "Aborted Police Story Project" session that later sourced the *Louie Louie* single.
* Tracks 20-24 recorded April-May 1981 during the sessions that led to the *Six Pack* EP.
* Side Four recorded at various times,mostly at Media Art, between 1980 and 1981.

## Personnel

All tracks produced by Black Flag and Spot except tracks 1-4 where Spot was only an assistant engineer at the time.

* Keith Morris (credited as Johnny 'Bob' Goldstein) - vocals on tracks 1-9
* Ron Reyes (credited as Chavo Pederast) - vocals on tracks 10-14 and opening segment of "Crass Commercialism"
* Dez Cadena - vocals on tracks 15-24
* Greg Ginn - guitar; voices on "Crass Commercialism"
* Chuck Dukowski - bass; voices and 'Johnny Stash' vocal and acoustic guitar on "Crass Commercialism"
* Brian Migdol (uncredited) - drums on tracks 1-4
* Robo - drums on tracks 5-24
* Spot - assistant engineer on tracks 1-4, engineer and co-producer on all other tracks, voices on "Crass Commercialism", possible piano on track 15 and keyboards on some "Crass Commercialism" segments.
* David Tarling - engineer on tracks 1-4
* Geza X - co-producer and co-engineer on tracks 20-24