About That Henry Rollins Video

By any measure, Henry Rollins has had more success in music and acting than 99% of the people who try to 'break in' to those industries. He quit an ice cream job in DC to join the already established hardcore punk institution known as Black Flag. Disaffected, 'damaged' teenagers countrywide still don their hoodies in respect. Lately his film career has been built on playing 'crazy roughs' like the prison guard in Lost Highway, and the neoNazi who raped Peggy Bundy in Sons of Anarchy. You would think that his ability to carve a career in things that are very competitive would give him a sense of calm confidence in middle age. No, in fact he's incredibly insecure and lashes out angrily towards things he has trouble understanding.

In the video, Henry is in an East Village record store sarcastically commenting on the "hip, switched-on, intellectually intense" quality of its selection. Often at these stores, CDs from the 80's and early 90's like Black Flag are relegated to an 'old-school' section of sorts (but are still stocked). When some inebriated fans call out his name, he becomes as angrily condescending as possible. Obviously, violating the sanctity of Henry flipping through some CDs at a record store is the most unpunk, bourgeois action one could take, ever.

He groans that young people consider him a dinosaur that needs to 'get out of the way'. Meanwhile, everyone in the store is actually a genuine fan of his music, and music by the Wipers, a punk group started in 1977, plays on the soundsystem. So much for that theory.

Henry is also visibly disturbed that someone would give him their band's CD. Moments later, Henry vows to give his own Grammy-award winning book to the video's costar, whose pants he is trying to get into. Out of everyone in the store, Shirin Neshat probably came from the most upperclass upbringing, as the daughter of a physician who currently makes a living as a 'visual artist'.

After excoriating every other person in the store for being a 'trust-fund poser', Henry steps into a limousine, lamenting the fact that he knew a confrontation was inevitable the moment he walked into the "elitist, very young" store. Henry, confrontations are always inevitable if you start them! Henry, the only way record stores can stay in business is by catering to very select audiences!

Henry's real problem with young folk, we believe, is his firm hatred of irony. In Black Flag, the most ironic they ever got was making fun of mindless television consumption, and cheap empty-minded drunks. The kind of opaquely-intentioned blend of detachment and appreciation in the irony sported by today's Youngs may seem foreign and irritating to someone as genuinely direct as Henry Rollins. But goddamn it, just deal with it, you hypocritical, successful sell-out!