#62, "Rise Above," Black Flag (1981)

150 Favorite Songs: #62, "Rise Above," Black Flag (1981)

I didn't get Black Flag when I was supposed to. When I was a teenager, punk rock was off-limits—my high school had a surprisingly strong clique of skinheads who effectively claimed punk rock for themselves, and wanting to have as little in common with them as possible, I drifted over to Nine Inch Nails and stuff like that.

I loved Henry Rollins, though. And when I eventually left Indiana and moved to Texas, the memory of shitty kids who kept me from listening to music I suspected strongly I would like faded, and I bought myself a copy of Damaged, because I'd read Get In The Van a dozen times and I wanted to know what the music that got this dude to jump up onstage, grab a microphone while his favorite band played, and never put it down sounded like*.

I wish that this were the story of how Damaged sounded like everything I'd never been able to express, how it was the defining sound of my new Texas life as an eighteen year old soon-to-be college dropout. It's not, though—I kinda thought that it sounded like shit. I'd read about how important "Police Story" was, but come on. Even at 18, I was too old for that. I wanted to relate to "Depression," but "depression got ahold of me / depression, gotta break free" was not the sort of examination of the feeling that I'd found in Get In The Van.

In short, I kinda missed the point in my life during which I'd really relate to this seminal punk rock album I'd heard so much about.

But then there's "Rise Above," which is perfect. That shoutalong call-and-response that, like—right now, as I am typing this, I am shouting along with? Maybe this sounds silly, but it actually made punk rock, which had been something I felt excluded from as a teenager, seem very accessible. I was invited to shout along—and not just any words, but words that are very much a fuck-you to the shitty punk rock skinheads who I grew up thinking "owned" punk rock. "We are tired of your abuse / try to stop us / it's no use"? Yeah, it's perfect. 

Eventually, it all started to make more sense to me. I appreciated the later period of the band more—stuff like My War and the live recordings like Who's Got The 10 1/2? were my Black Flag companion records, probably because I didn't have the sort of attachment to Damaged that most people who complain about the less punk-y, more metal late-era Black Flag did.

When I think about what it sounded like to go from a teenager in Indiana who felt restricted by the people around him in terms of what he was allowed to like or want or be—which is really something that's common to most teenagers, I know—to being someone who was able to figure those things out for himself somewhere brand new, it really sounded like "Rise Above" to me.

There's a reason "Rise Above" has been used as a statement song by so many other bands, too. Hear Tribe 8 play it and it sounds like a defiant inversion of dude-centric punk rock; hear Sepultura play it and it bridges a gap between punk and metal in Latin America in the pop-punk era; hear the Dirty Projectors do it and it's a comment on punk rock orthodoxy; hear the Afro-French Cuban sisters in Ibeyi sing it and it’s a slinky, soulful call to arms in another vernacular entirely. Ultimately, no matter who you're shouting at, "We are tired of your abuse / try to stop us / it's no use" is a sentiment that resonates against a lot of people. Sometimes, even, the sort of people who it initially belonged to.

*I'm aware of the self-mythologizing that went into Get In The Van, of course, but it's a myth that meant a lot to me as I was figuring out what I was going to do with my life.