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"My future is getting in the way of my past," why Henry Rollins isn't playing music anymore

Henry Rollins (former frontman of Black Flag) has posted on the L.A. Weekly blog about why he isn't playing music anymore.

Since the first break-up of Black Flag in 1986, Rollins has done everything from performing, writing, activism, publishing and acting to his current job of being a radio host at the KCRW station.

With the reunion of former members of Black Flag under the new name FLAG (Keith Morris, Chuck Dukowksi, Dez Cadena and Bill Stevenson) and also under the original name Black Flag (Greg Ginn, Ron Reyes and Roberto “Robo” Valverde), people have been curious about the former members' absence. Rollins explains: “music has moved on.”

Read an excerpt from the blog, below:

I got asked by someone if I was going to go on tour this summer and play what at this point is old music. I told the person that I wasn't because that currently, my future is getting in the way of my past.

I tell you this because in the summer months, you can count on bands that have been gone for years who will reassemble and go onto stages all over the world playing “vintage music.” Perhaps they are on a Proustian mission to recapture that which has been lost. I read the interviews where the musicians claim that now they can really play this music. I don't doubt them, but therein lies the problem. Musicians should not play Music. Music should play musicians.

Bands that think they have a handle on Music are no longer battling the beast. They think they have mastered Music. They have not.

Music cannot be mastered. What they think is control and mastery is not only hubris but even worse, it is Music's great indifference. Simply put, Music no longer plays them. Music has moved on to more worthy combatants.”