Keith Morris Reignites the Spirit of Black Flag With Off!

Posted on Aug 20th 2010 12:00PM by Dan Reilly
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Lindsey Byrnes

In the aftermath of the media circus surrounding JetBlue flight attendant Steven Slater and his infamous on-the-job meltdown, many people lived vicariously through his act of defiance. Punk icon Keith Morris, of Black Flag and Circle Jerks fame, is tapping into the same emotion with his new back-to-basics punk band, Off!

Like the first Black Flag EP 'Nervous Breakdown' -- Morris' only release as the band's frontman -- Off!'s debut features in-your-face vocals, lo-fi intensity and songs that last no more than 80 seconds. As Morris tells Spinner, the decision to call the band Off! has is based both on the band that made him famous and a confrontational attitude.

"That's the $64,000 question," he says. "Dimitri [Coats, guitarist] and a lot of other people are thinking this too: 'Gee, Black Flag was a bug spray. Black Flag kills ants on contact. Off! Oh, it's a bug spray!' Black Flag might have been a very popular insect killer but the band had absolutely nothing to do with killing ants. Black Flag was the flag of anarchy. What color is a pirate flag? Black, like 'Here we come. Don't mess with us.' In that mentality, thinking of Black Flag as a bug spray, it only made perfect sense for Off! Like, 'You know what? I'm gonna go off! Enough of this. Get off of me! Get off my back!"

Even without hearing the music, the 54-year-old singer wants that association to be made by seeing the name alone. "I'm glad if that's your first assumption, if that was a gut feeling and your first reaction to seeing that. Don't we all have a bit of that in us?" he says. "It's like 'OK, I've done everything I'm supposed to do today and now you want me to do 12 more things. Could you just get off my back? Could you just get out of my head? Don't you have something else you could be doing? Don't we all have that?"

Joining Morris in Off! is an elite cast of punk musicians: guitarist Dimitri Coats (Burning Brides), bassist Steven Shane McDonald (Redd Kross) and drummer Mario Rubalcaba (Hot Snakes, Rocket From the Crypt). Their first EP -- the plainly titled '1st EP' -- clocks in at four minutes and 15 seconds and will be released by Vice as a limited-edition 7" vinyl with a Raymond Pettibon poster on Oct. 12. Their first full-length, out Nov. 23, will be a box set consisting of four 7" records.

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