BLACK FLAG
JadedPunk.com greeted the news about this Black Flag (the Greg Ginn/Ron Reyes version) reunion tour thusly: Wow! New Black Flag material and reunion shows at some shitty music fests? Guess who's excited for that? Fucking NO ONE, that's who. And on top of that, there's another Black Flag lineup going by the moniker "The Flag" with Keith Morris, Chuck Dukowski, Bill Stevenson,and Stephen Egerton. We love Black Flag. We love all of those aforementioned people. And we love the fact that (Henry) Rollins was deliberately excluded from BOTH lineups. But we don't need a regurgitated version of the band singing "My War" at some goddamn hippie music festival in Tennessee. So, yeah, skepticism runs high, and no wonder: Cash-grab reunions are the bane of the music world, but nowhere do they sting more than in the punk world, where nostalgia - "No Elvis, Beatles or the Rolling Stones," Joe Strummer sang in 1997 - is worse than kryptonite. Ginn himself has never shied from voicing his disdain for nostalgia of any kind, and now here he is trotting out the oldies and ripping "Fake Flag" for mailing it in. At least there's some new material, though the jury's still out on its worth. But if you grew up in the '80s on a diet of something other than MTV, Black Flag probably played a role in your listening life. For a night, at least, you can relive that, and hope the new stuff doesn't suck. With Good For You. $20-$25. Sept. 4, 8:30 p.m. Chop Shop, 399 E. 35th St. 704-765-2467.