Black Flag, Wasted Youth, Circle One - Cuckoo's Nest, Costa Mesa, CA, Aug. 1981

The first show Henry Rollins ever played in the Los Angeles area as a member of Black Flag took place at the Cuckoo’s Nest in Costa Mesa, on Friday, August 21, 1981. Black Flag were the headliners, with Wasted Youth and Circle One, two hardcore bands serving as openers. The Cuckoo’s Nest was open from 1976 through 1981. Every L.A. punk band of note played there, as well as a large number of notable acts passing through (The Ramones, Bad Brains, Violent Femmes, et al.). An important aspect of the Cuckoo’s Nest was its hatred-fueled relationship with the bar next door, named Zubie’s, which catered to suburban cowboy-wannabes, the place actually had an electric bull! The intense fights between the Zubie’s shitkicker crowd and the punks at the Cuckoo’s Nest became the stuff of legend. According to Stevie Chick’s Spray Paint the Walls: The Story of Black Flag, when Rollins made his debut “Everyone was like, ‘Black Flag’s coming, they got a new singer, some kid from D.C.’ Henry had gotten the Black Flag tattoos the day of that show, and when you looked at his arm, you could see how fresh the ink was.”