The day Black Flag & Venom came to New Jersey

City Gardens in Trenton, New Jersey was a pretty fucking awesome venue. Despite the fights, filth, and sometimes sketchy crowd, there weren't too many amazing punk bands that passed up playing here in its heyday.

One of the weirdest, funniest shows I ever attended took place on April 2, 1986. I rode down with my buddy's older brother since I was still a couple months away from getting my license.
Venom was the headliner that night. I wasn't too big a fan of metal at the time, and definitely not much of a Venom fan, but in the quest to find an opener with a good draw, the promoter had booked Black Flag on the bill as well.

During Black Flag's set, Henry spent a good amount of stage time having a little fun with the metalheads, flashing the devil horns and poking fun at Venom, especially their singer Cronos. Actually, it was more than a little fun, it was pretty relentless. He mocked them every chance he got. It actually made the story of Tom Araya from Slayer pissing on Cronos's head a bit tame by comparison.

Black Flag's roadie was a dude named Joe Cole. As the story goes, Joe had Black Flag's sound guy recorded the entire show through the soundboard. Joe then passed the tape to his friend Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth. Thurston cracked up laughing at the now-legendary in-between-song banter of Cronos. He cut out all the actual music and spliced together just the banter, then pressed it onto a 7-inch, and even released it on his label.
For those of you who want to pee your pants with pure metal hilarity, please enjoy...