Saturday 25 May 2013

Good For You

Here's a new release that I was quite excited about. GOOD FOR YOU is a new band designed for anyone who is partial to a bit of Black Flag. Featuring Greg Ginn on guitar, and with professional skateboarder Mike Vallely on vocals, I couldn't resist picking up their debut LP 'Life Is Too Short To Not Hold A Grudge', released by SST Records.

This isn't going to win any prizes for album cover of the year other than 'worst', but at least they made a limited colour vinyl version for the nerds. I'm not sure how many were pressed on white vinyl, but I know wasn't all of them. Based on previous SST runs I would guess at no less than 500, but it really is just a guess.

I still don't think I've listened to this enough times to properly make my mind up. I mean, it sounds like later, slower Black Flag. It's not bad by any means, but it's also missing something to get me excited. It'll probably still make my 'best of the year' list though because I'll probably only have 4 new releases to choose from the way 2013 is going.

3 comments:

Doug W said...

I hear that. Almost all my 2013 purchases are metal or doom. Rival Mob, Down to Nothing and Terror make up my hardcore collection for the year. Wow.

Mike said...

I really wanted to like this, but after one listen, I'm tempted to just delete the songs from my ipod. I don't know why this isn't grabbing me. Musically this fits right in with the later day Flag stuff, but lyrically or vocally, it falls flat.

Anonymous said...

After seeing these songs played live (Good For You is the Black Flag guys with Mike Vallely singing instead of Ron Reyes) I enjoyed it a lot more than when I first heard a couple of the tunes on YouTube. This *is* an incarnation of Black Flag, it's the real thing. Mike Vallely gave a strong performance & the words are pretty good, esp "Hanging around"- you can relate, all grown up & having a day job sometimes feeling like going through the motions just to bring home a paycheck, just like I could relate to Black Flag's lyrics when I was 19 or 20. If there's anything I missed from BF it was Stevenson or Robo's drumming - the recorded drums seemed a little too regular - but after seeing Good For You & Black Flag live recently, the drummer won me over, he definitely can play more interestingly than I thought. All in all this is good stuff & how lucky are we to have two (or three if you count that other Flag band on tour) incarnations of Black Flag around right now??