Black Flag – rip-offs and tweaks (and more)

Ok, just to start off, in case you have your head so far up your ass you don’t already know this – Black Flag was one of the great American hardcore/punk bands of the early California years. Henry Rollins handled the microphone for a while and so did Keith Morris (and if you haven’t already checked out his new band Off! do so now). Their logo is truly iconic (and pictured here to the right.

Now, I’ve recently realized this is a logo people love to play around with. The shirt that alerted me to this fact is the one I also like the most. I’ve mentioned Lager 157 before, the closest thing we have to Primark in Sweden. A friend of mine found this fantastic shirt there. It’s a bit hard to tell but you’ve got the Black Flag font used for “Black” and the Black Sabbath font used for “Sabbath”, the Black Flag bars and the Sabbath purple color. Genious! Unfortunately, it’s not for sale on their website. Damn!

Ok, next up is a lamer version of this, this time it’s the Beach Boys. Not much I can say about this, except I think you can actually buy this one on Etsy or something. Though, why you would want to? I dunno…

Moving on… now things gett REALLY stupid. Ok, I’m old (or disconnected) enough to have only a VERY vague image of who the hell Justin Bieber is or why people get all worked up about him, but if you for some reason want to make some sort of a statement about him in relationship to some guys who would eat him for breakfast – be my guest.

Ok, ok, we’re getting to the end. Since these guys are actually playing fast and pissed-off music, I won’t say anything about them ripping off/lovingly stealing the BF logo. Knock yourselves out.

Ok, that’s it, we’re done. Thanks for bearing with me. Let’s round up with a few nice Black Flag shirts, huh?

These you CAN actually buy, here and here (the last one should be available at Interpunk or something.

Ok, what the hell, let’s do one more. If you haven’t already checked out Black Fag, the gay Black Flag lovers, do so now. There’s no surprise these guys choose to rip off the BF logo, I know. Anyway, apparently Beck’s mum is/was in this band – will the surprises never end?

UPDATE
What the hell, I can’t make a new post every time I find a new one of these, you’d get sick to death, I’ll just keep adding to this post instead. Here’s a pretty nice one actually, from The Seventh Letter. Not only did they manage to make it fun (adding bars so they got 7 and also shifting ‘Black’ and ‘Flag’ around to be able to write Flat Black) but it is also sports a back print and a woven log and it looks like it might be a really nice shirt (the quality of it, I mean). Get it here (unless you’re too slow).