The 1982 Demos

***The 1982 Demos*** (sometimes known as ***The Complete 1982 Demos*** on some editions) are an album-length demo recording recorded by Black Flag in 1982 at Total Access Studios in Redondo Beach, California. The recordings are the only studio session in existence to feature the five-piece lineup that briefly featured Chuck Biscuits on drums.

### Background

Black Flag were in the middle of their lawsuit against Unicorn Records and were unable to record and release material under their own name due to a court injunction. However, several new songs were already being played live, and the band wanted to get a studio-quality recording of the material on tape while the material was still fresh.

Around the same time, the band and SST had been solicited for business by Total Access, a relatively new studio looking for clients. Total Access pretty much became the go-to studio for most SST artists at the time (at least one album by every one of SST's key classic artists was recorded there between 1982 and 1986). Spot, the label's in-house producer/engineer, was given access to the studio.

Although the band were prohibited by the Unicorn injunction from releasing material or even recording it, the band still booked a late night session at Total Access to record some of the new numbers the band had been playing live. According to Henry Rollins on the *My War* episode of the *Henry And Heidi* podcast, the band had recorded to multi-track tape, but the sessions were only ever rough-mixed to cassette at the end of the session.

In addition to featuring early versions of songs that would later appear on the *My War*, *Slip It In* and *Loose Nut* albums, the demo features two Dez Cadena compositions, "What Can You Believe?" and "Yes, I Know". that were initially performed live by Black Flag, but dropped from the set list after Cadena amicably parted company with the band in the summer of 1983. Cadena would later record the songs himself for the first DC3 album, *This Is The Dream*, retitled "I Believe It" and "Ain't No Time Here Now", respectively.

It is likely that the session may have been a bit of a preemptive strike done to get a jump on tracking the follow-up to *Damaged*, with an eye towards doing overdubs and final vocals and guitars on the live basic tracks once the band were free of the injunction. Any intentions of using the recordings as the basis of a new Black Flag album were made moot after Chuck Biscuits left the band later in 1982.

It is unknown how the recordings leaked outside of the Black Flag circle (one theory proposes that Biscuits had a cassette that he allowed to be copied after he left Black Flag; Ginn later blamed other members for the leak after bootlegs started proliferating after the band's breakup), but the tape became a frequent source of bootlegs and fan-traded albums.

As of 2021, it is not known if the multi-track masters of the 1982 recordings even exist anymore (if they do, the tapes may be in the possession of either Spot or Greg Ginn), and Ginn's ambivilance towards remastering the Black Flag catalog make it unlikely that the tracks will see official release anytime soon.

### Track Listing

1. What Can You Believe (Dez Cadena, Henry Rollins)
2. Yes, I Know (Dez Cadena)
3. Slip It In (Greg Ginn)
4. Modern Man (Chuck Dukowski, Ed Danky)
5. My War (Chuck Dukowski)
6. Black Coffee (Greg Ginn)
7. Beat My Head Against The Wall (Greg Ginn)
8. Can't Decide (Greg Ginn)
9. I Love You (Chuck Dukowski)
10. Nothing Left Inside (Henry Rollins, Greg Ginn)
11. Scream (Greg Ginn)

* Some editions of the bootleg album accidentally merge "Nothing Left Inside" and "Scream", sometimes not listing the latter song.
* Some CD editions of the bootleg album add a 1984 radio session and interview recorded at Radio Tokyo Studio around the time of *My War* and *Slip It In*, with the Ginn/Rollins/Kira Roessler/Bill Stevenson lineup:

1. I Love You
2. My War
3. Interview
4. The Swinging Man (Henry Rollins, Greg Ginn)

### Personnel

* Henry Rollins - vocals
* Greg Ginn - guitar
* Dez Cadena - guitar
* Chuck Dukowski - bass
* Chuck Biscuits - drums
* Mugger - backing vocal on "Slip It In"
* Spot - recording engineer
* Kira Roessler - bass on 1984 Radio Tokyo tracks
* Bill Stevenson - drums on 1984 Radio Tokyo tracks
* Ethan James - recording engineer on 1984 Radio Tokyo tracks