359: DAMAGED | BLACK FLAG
Wiki: Damaged is the debut studio album by the American hardcore punk band Black Flag. SST Records released it on December 5, 1981.
The album was largely ignored by critics and the public at the time of its release but has since been recognized as a classic and one of the most influential punk rock records ever made, appearing on a number of "best of" lists by fans and critics alike. The album was ranked number 340 on Rolling Stone's list of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. Pitchfork also ranked it number 25 on its list of the Top 100 Albums of the 1980s.
Black Flag had made at least two cancelled attempts to record a full-length album since the release of its first extended play Nervous Breakdown, with singers Keith Morris, Ron Reyes, and Dez Cadena; some of the Reyes sessions became the Jealous Again EP, while selections from two of many Cadena sessions became the Six Pack EP and the "Louie Louie"/"Damaged I" single; other session outtakes later comprised the Everything Went Black double album. At the time of the recording, Cadena had moved to rhythm guitar (a position he had initially intended to take when Reyes was still in the band) and 20-year-old Washington, DC expatriate Henry Rollins had become the band's new lead singer weeks before the sessions occurred.Unlike Reyes, who had never sung in a studio before and Cadena, who had not even sung at all before joining the band, Rollins already had one recording credit to his name with the short-lived DC hardcore punk band State of Alert, who recorded No Policy, an EP released earlier that year on Dischord Records.
The band recorded their backing tracks without Rollins, who overdubbed vocals with band members Greg Ginn (guitar) and Chuck Dukowski (bass) coaching him afterward. The most complicated vocal tracks ended up being Dukowski's "What I See", which was supposed to have an improvised speech in the song's bridge but ended up having one written out by Dukowski when Rollins could not come up with anything that he was satisfied with, and "T.V. Party", which featured backing vocals from the entire band.
The album was recorded at Unicorn Studios, on Santa Monica Blvd in West Hollywood. The band was living and rehearsing in another part of the building that housed Unicorn Studios prior to the sessions