• "Suspicion rules my very soul, my knife is sharp, my thoughts are cold. I love you."

I have exactly one tattoo on my body, placed there by a friend called Ben Wah who owns Deluxe Tattoo in Chicago. I've never been a big fan of tattoos, but on the day I turned 30 I felt that I needed something to mark the end of the first half of my life. I lifted my shirt sleeve and told him that I wanted the Black Flag bars in the exact place where a lot of people have them, the forearm. He tried to talk me out of it for a few minutes, but I insisted. In less that 20 minutes he was done and I had what will hopefully be my only tattoo until I die. If there is one thing that got me through the crummy years of being a teenager enduring a step-parent divorce, changing school systems nine times, and being part of a poor, unstable and chemically damaged family system, it was Black Flag. So typical really, slamming my bedroom door after an argument and blasting Everything Went Black on a Soundesign portable tape player. No other band shaped my life more than this one, and I'm sure that's true for many others.

Gary McDaniel is the real name of Black Flag's main bass player. Gary changed his name to Chuck Dukowski after finding a Zippo lighter in 1978 engraved with the name "Chuck The Duke". He happened to be pondering a name change at the time and thought it sounded tough enough, but wanted to add a Polish twist because Poles were frequently picked on at the time. Chuck The Duke became Charles Dukowski and went on to be a very important member of Black Flag, the SST record label and the direction of the thinking person's punk movement. Punk was rife with drunk and drugged out teenage nihilists who were full of energy but were absolutely directionless. Black Flag and the people involved with the SST label adopted an ethos out of the anarchy, making sense of the chaos. The most important thing was their unparalleled work ethic. I have a Black Flag tattoo not only to mark a period of my life, but because it means to me that if you're going to do something, you have no choice but to do it all the way.

Chuck Dukowski wrote some of Black Flag's best songs, including "My War", "No More", "What I See", "I've Heard It Before" & "Spray Paint (The Walls)". At times, he also served as the band's spokesman, spouting a wonderful, dynamic and at times confusing philosophy to straight interviewers who were trying to understand what punk was all about. He seemed to be toying with most of them, knowing they'd never really understand what Black Flag was about anyway. He left the band before the release of the My War LP but stayed with SST to work with some of the most important bands of the 1980s: Husker Du, the Minutemen, Sonic Youth, Meat Puppets, Saint Vitus, Dinosaur Jr, Bad Brains and so many more. According to Henry Rollins, Dukowski was "the great brain trust, attitude man and motivator within that milieu."

Dukowski left SST in 1989 and continues to play music as the Chuck Dukowski Sextet along with his wife Lora & others. He also runs a label called Nice and Friendly Records. Last year he sold a mountain of extra rare SST artifacts on eBay that fetched heaps of money.

I'm hardly scratching the surface of how important Dukowski is. If you're interested in more, check out these great interviews and have a look at the clips below. Happy birthday, Duke.