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He's been called "the angriest man in Los Angeles," but Henry Rollins is a good deal more than that. Although best known as a singer-songwriter with seminal punk rockers Black Flag and later his own Rollins Band, he is actually something of a Renaissance man, with experience as a film actor (The Chase, Heat, and others), published author and poet, and, as this two-disc set evidences, spoken-word artist. Each disc contains a single performance, both of them essentially unscripted monologues; the hourlong Talking from the Box comes from a 1992 gig at the Henry Fonda Theater in L.A., while the nearly two-hour Goes to London was filmed in that city the following year. There's no music here, and precious little in the way of artifice--no special effects (notwithstanding some subtle editing and the use of both color and black and white), no production numbers, no props--just Rollins and his audience, which listens raptly as he rants, reads a little verse, tells some stories, and reminisces about his childhood, his life on the road, and so on. Sure, the anger is there, and the profanity flows freely. But Rollins also reveals himself to be surprisingly smart and literate, amusingly self-deprecating, generous, even vulnerable--especially during the "Two Boys" portion of Talking from the Box, when he recounts the horrific but riveting tale of the death of his best friend. Powerful stuff. --Sam Graham
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