Creativity Quote by Greg Ginn

Fear is a pretty good measure of cultural impact, and Greg Ginn knows it. In this recollection, the “major labels” aren’t just cautious executives; they’re gatekeepers whose authority depends on being able to predict, package, and profit. Black Flag’s gigs were the opposite of that: loud, physical, unruly, and socially unmanageable. Ginn’s point isn’t simply that the shows were intense. It’s that the industry’s unease was the tell - an admission that something real was happening outside their control.

The phrasing is doing a lot of work. “They treated our gigs as something threatening” casts the label world as skittish and suburban, reacting to punk not as music but as risk: bodies colliding, cops hovering, scenes forming with their own codes. Then Ginn swerves: “I’m sure that it probably was.” That’s not a boast so much as a deadpan shrug toward the fact that the threat was both aesthetic and economic. Hardcore challenged the premise that legitimacy comes from corporate endorsement. If a band could build a devoted network through DIY touring, independent releases, and word-of-mouth mythmaking, the majors’ monopoly on access starts to look flimsy.

“Reasons to be scared” lands as dry humor and quiet indictment. Yes, there was violence at shows, moral panic, and genuine volatility. But the deeper fear is reputational contagion: that proximity to Black Flag meant touching a world the industry couldn’t sanitize. Ginn frames that distance as proof of authenticity - not because chaos is inherently noble, but because the refusal to be made safe was the whole point.