This was going to read 'Gig of the Week - Die! Die! Die! / Villains Of Wilhelm @ X&Y, Saturday Apr 24' but with Villains of Wilhelm pulling out because of their guitarist Liam 'Shine Bone' Keats' health, ol' Henry Rollins has been bumped up a spot.
In 1980, Henry Rollins was a teenager living in Arlington, Virginia, USA, just over the river from Washington, DC. He worked as the shift manager for a Haagen-Dazs ice cream shop near Georgetown University, and was a huge fan of a Southern California punk rock band called Black Flag. One day, Henry and his friend Ian MacKaye (who later formed Fugazi) drove to New York City to see Black Flag play at the Peppermint Lounge. They played later at a small club down the street, and Henry jumped on stage and took the mike for a song. A few days later, Henry was called back to New York to audition for the band. Henry spent the next six years riding in vans, sleeping in the back of trucks, getting beaten and mauled on stage, and fronting the baddest, most primal rock and roll band in the history of the world.
When Henry talks about traveling the world, he’s not referring to plush resorts and genteel European cities. Henry’s most recent travels include stops in Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Brunei, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, China, and Senegal. These global experiences – like past excursions to such vacation hotspots as Pakistan, Myanmar, and Siberia – not only supply humorous anecdotes for Henry’s talking shows, but they inform his worldview. As the Shepherd Fairey tour poster bills it, “Knowledge without mileage equals bullshit.”
"Since I was last on tour, I have been working in television and radio, traveling all over the world,” says Henry. “And like everyone else, dealing with the changes America – and the world – is going through. I thought America would become a more peaceful place in 2009. I had no idea the country had so many lunatics. There's a lot to remark upon, of course. There always is."
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