He holds out the two pristine artifacts, both sheathed in thick plastic sleeves. I try to see what else is in there, but he quickly closes it. He pulls the two records out of a steel box to the side of his racks of vinyl.
“I picked up the only two records they had with them at that show,” Bernstein continues. Some say the demo is just a bad copy of their early singles, but no one can explain the extra song that only appears there. Depending on who you ask, the sum of the band’s output is either three or five seven inches, one demo cassette, a rehearsal tape, and two live bootlegs. The records he’s referring to, of which he has two, are a scant series of seven-inch singles the band put out. The best.”īad Flag broke up in December of 1994, so Bernstein saw one of their last shows. “On their way out or not, they’re still easily the best live band I’ve ever seen-and I’ve seen a lot of bands… The records really don’t capture the lightning of their live show.” He trails off. Flush with Nirvana revenue, they were diversifying their roster and had recently signed a wave of successful indie bands, many at the behest of Bernstein. At the time Sub Pop was expanding rapidly. They erased the headliner from my head!” Bernstein worked in publicity at Sub Pop Records from 1991 to 1997. They were on their way out by then I’ve been told, but you certainly couldn’t tell by the way they played. “I saw them open for someone at the Off Ramp in Seattle in 1994,” Nils Bernstein tells me. Though they were once approached by the A&R of a major label, Bad Flag were never in danger of getting too big. When everyone knows about a cultural phenomenon, its allure is lost. Whether or not you agree, there is a certain cachet that is diminished when something gets too big. It’s a mixture of ownership, selfishness, and elitism that says, This is ours, and you can’t have it. The latter fan expresses the prevailing attitude of the underground’s old guard. “It’s really too bad more people don’t know about them.” “They were literally the best,” says one fan with the measured reverence usually reserved for religious worship. In other words, to be right, it has to be a little bit wrong, a tad strange, and thereby, truly real.” - Kharms “A work of art has to exist in a world as an object, as real as the sun, grass, a rock, water, and so on.