Bondage suits fought pitched battles with drapes in the Kings Road Saturday afternoon civil wars, the Jubilee was denounced, a generation of newly born infants were force-taught nappy knotting due to safety pins becoming a scarce lapel-adorning (or nose-decorating for the really daring – even her majesty's regal nostril did not escape) commodity.

After years of revolting musical sycophancy, anything American was severely ridiculed.

But in that, then peanut vendor ruled territory of the USA, a few things were stirring and new wildly rancid musical forms springing to life. Six thousand miles from the Roxy and unaware of the London new wave explosion guitarist Greg Ginn and bassist Chuck Dukowsky were piecing together the ingredients for their own band of untamed angry energy.

The handle was Black Flag and the place, a suburb of Los Angeles called Hermosa Beach.

Greg: "We were really into the Detroit bands. The Stooges and MC5 and also a Detroit band called the Dogs who were playing in L.A. We liked Black Sabbath and Little Richard too which was the stuff that really inspired us to start playing.

"When the Ramones came out they started a whole new thing with us. A lot of people think we heard the Sex Pistols but we were encouraged by the Ramones really. We didn't hear the U.K. stuff until much later. was really a parallel scene happening in L.A. and England."

Despite this emerging scene in L.A. itself, the Black Flaggers weren't exactly welcomed to the spikey fold. They were considered suburban yokels, hicks from the beach. The L.A. punkers displayed their hipness by intoning the popular phrase 'Fuck Off'.

Having recruited Colombian-born drummer Robo and guitarist but singer-by-necessity, Dez Cadena, the unwelcome quartet retreated back to their home ground and spent two and a half years displaying their raucous wares at parties and in parks.

Chuck: "We rented a deserted bath-house from the twenties by the beach. It had a restaurant and bar area. We made upstairs into living space and converted downstairs into three rehearsal rooms.

"There was a big Hermosa Beach sub-culture then. Anybody passing through L.A. would always spend a couple of days there. People came in from the surrounding suburbs to party this would all bleed into our rehearsals. Eventually the police closed the place down because they didn't like the looks of the people moving in and out."

Greg: "What is now called the 'new' L.A. punk scene burst out of the suburbs. Much of this resulted from us putting up some sixty thousand posters in high schools and spray-painting places. We got sued and threatened but at least it woke a lot of people up."

UNAWARE of the pockets of punkdom slowly building up across the nation, the early L.A. groups released records independently, discharging the five hundred pressings amongst fellow dissidents of the smoggy city.

Black Flag recorded their debut E. P. 'Nervous Breakdown' in January of 78 although due to lack of dollars in the kitty of the tiny label promising its release, the tape remained unvinyled until a, year later when the dark flag four formed their own company, SST.

Follow-up grooves were quickly available in the shape of another value for money multi-tracker called 'Jealous Again'. Due to the vast distances involved, getting Stateswide product distribution is, as Chuck puts it, "a tough nut to crack."

Black Flag were fortunate, to stumble across the services of Unicorn, a holding which has a distribution arrangement with the massive MCA corporation. They duly constructed an LP and all was hunky dory until, very late in the day, an MCA label chief took it upon himself to be the voice of 'morality'.

This was one Al Bergamo, who refused to allow release of the item under the corporate banner. He reportedly spent an entire weekend listening to the offending Sounds and emerged with the conclusion that, as a parent, he considered it an 'Anti-parent' record. The effect of this forty-eight hour listening stint on the relationship between Bergamo and his parents is not known.

Another hard core band, X, suffered a similar fate when the man read some of their lyrics. Believers in freedom and The American Way will be comforted to learn that Bergamo does not believe in the burning of books.

Greg: "Originally they'd okay'ed it and we had twenty five thousand sleeves printed with the MCA logo but then they got scared off. Ironically they spoke to someone from Rolling Stone magazine about it. Rolling Stone have their own territory and don't want anything new coming out. Working in the U. S. is a great challenge to us because it is so conservative."

Chuck: "People leapt in at the end of the sixties and grabbed certain niches. They and made money. They won't accept new sounds because it would put them out of a job. It extends throughout the whole culture. Generally you see it by cops coming to our gigs and beating up the kids."

DESPITE their unjust and hostile treatment Black Flay care not to dwell on the nasty side of American life in their lyrics. Most are about getting drunk, stoned and generally wrecked in as short a time as possible.

There is a new three song splendidly solid blasting available now through the Jello Biafra connected Alternative Tentacles. The main cut is a beer ode entitled 'Six Pack' Dez was still leading voice when this disc was recorded but the group have now availed themselves of the ferocious throat tones of Henry Rawlins.

"Hi, I'm Henry the crooner," he says at our first meeting. He's an old friend of the band and hails from another emerging bastion of hard core punk, Washington DC. Dez has now returned to his first love, guitar.

Grey: "We don't want to get into politics and moaning songs. The basis of our music is very personal. None of our songs have anything political in them except maybe 'Police Story', which is based on our personal experiences.

"The cops have a very direct effect on our lives. We've been run out of three homes. We can't live where we want to. We're in Hollywood at the moment to escape the Hermosa Beach police. The Diks have a great line: 'If you can't find justice, justice will find you' that's very true, we're not even doing anything illegal."

Chuck: "The cops are really big guys, trained like Marines. They carry guns and sticks. They're very fascistic and they kill. They bother us only because we stand for people doing what they want and not what they're told. The police have spent ten thousand dollars surveilling us, figuring they'll get us for something in the end."

MORE horrifying tales follow. Not only concerning the officers of law enforcement (force being the operative word) but the antics of ordinary 'law-abiding' citizens who object to punky looks.

An L.A. girl tells me how she was victimised in highschool and had her locker destroyed at regular intervals because of her 'undesirable' appearance.

After such distressing stories it comes as something of a light relief when the talk turns to the famed 'Black Flag Kills Ants' campaign which first brought the combo to the attention of Sounds readers.

Greg: "We just said as a joke, 'Black Flag Kills Ants' and this guy had a load of stickers printed. It was a spontaneous thing, it just happened."

Chuck. "When Adam came to town it was great. All our friends went down and there was Adam in a record shop, standing on a pedestal shaking hands and signing autographs. Then this big pirate ship came down Sunset Boulevard and ell these people started throwing eggs, pretty much in fun but Adam got really bent out of shape and sent his bouncers chasing them.

"We don't dislike Adam personally, we've never met him but it's the slickness in the music, the same kind of thing that was around in the early seventies."

Greg: "There's nothing there except a guy making a calculated attempt at stardom."

Chuck: "To the people in L.A., a lot of the things Adam did were really disgusting."