Black Flag 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. The result is a Bob Raiteri design, printed by Danny McHenry — a foundational pair in the Dischord-orbit poster lineage — surviving in mint 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.