#340: Black Flag's Damaged

It's easy to forget that you can cram three verses and three choruses into just over thirty seconds, or that it was once possible to put fifteen songs onto a single LP... While Damaged doesn't hold up quite as well as some of Black Flag's subsequent releases (My War and In My Head come to mind, though it should be said that "Gimme Gimme Gimme," "Room 13" and "Life of Pain" do give some glimpse into the band's future), it's a classic nonetheless, if only for the fact that it's their debut full-length, and that it marks the beginning of the Rollins era (lest we forget prior singers Keith Morris, of Circle Jerks fame, Ron Reyes and Dez Cadena). The real accomplishment of Damaged, though, was to put the final nail into the coffin of Southern California's musical legacy of carefree innocence... At long last, gone were Don Henley and his God-forsaken Eagles, the Beach Boys and Fleetwood Mac; the road was thus paved for the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Jane's Addiction and No Doubt. Was it a Faustian bargain? Perhaps. You be the judge...

#341, Moby's Play: Genius. An absolute delight of an album. Unfortunately, my dog hates the thing; he's been chasing his tail the whole time I've been playing it, especially during "Porcelain," "Natural Blues" and "Everloving"...

#342, Depeche Mode's Violator: This one sort of passed me by altogether, all those years ago. My favorite Depeche Mode period was A Broken Frame through Some Great Reward. After that, I just sort of lost touch until I noticed, a few years later, that this little cult band I'd listened to were suddenly, like, huge or something. Violator does a nice enough job of bridging the gap between the two eras, but it doesn't quite equal either, and ultimately falls a bit flat.