Black Flag Never-Circulated Poster

The poster for the Wilson Center show that almost happened. Black Flag was billed to headline a stacked D.C. hardcore lineup — The Effigies, Double-O, Iron Cross, Faith — on September 17, 1982, but the band never made it to the venue: Henry Rollins was sick or injured, the precise reason now lost to varying accounts. The show was scratched before doors, and the posters that hadn't already been put up went straight from the print shop into storage, where they stayed — preserved as dead stock and never circulated. The result is a Bob Raiteri design, printed by Danny McHenry — a foundational pair in the Dischord-orbit poster lineage — surviving in mint, never-circulated condition, traceable directly back to the press rather than the street. A piece of D.C. hardcore history that documents not the show that was, but the one that wasn't.