Henry Rollins, photo by Heidi May

Punk rock fans worldwide will now have a new buddy to keep them company during this time of self-isolation: Henry Rollins. The former Black Flag frontman has launched a new radio show called The Cool Quarantine and it’s — get this — four hours long.

Meant as an “aural respite from these stressful times,” The Cool Quarantine promises personal anecdotes, deep cuts, and rarities. The four-hour program also features bootleg recordings and streams of full albums and EPs.



According to the hardcore punk veteran, he’s mulled over the idea of a long-form radio experience for many years, but finally decided to pull the trigger for two reasons. “The first is that I wanted to make a show that felt like those great hangouts you might have done where you and some friends descend on someone’s house, everyone brings some records and the jam session goes and goes,” Rollins said in a press release. “Also, I know that you might be spending some long spells in your dwelling, so I wanted to make a show that conformed to that.”

The first episode of The Cool Quarantine is available to stream now on KCRW. It boasts live bootlegs of The Cramps as recorded by fellow iconic punk Ian MacKaye, as well as bootleg audio of a 1977 Led Zeppelin concert attended by Rollins and MacKaye (along with an accompanying story about that night). There’s also audio from original Joy Division album pressings and flashback accounts from Rollins’ early days in Black Flag.

More episodes will be released in the coming weeks. While you wait, check out Rollins’ other radio show on KCRW; though those episodes are only two hours long, there’s more than 500 (!) to sift through. In other related Rollins news, the musician/actor was recently cast in Kevin Smith’s He-Man reboot.

Read Rollins’ full statement on The Cool Quarantine,

For many years, I’ve had this idea for a long-form show. I mean really long-form. Like hours. To do it terrestrially would be difficult because I would be crowding other shows out. But if it was online, hey. It’s as many songs as I want, language issues are not a factor, and if anyone gets bored, they can just turn it off or mark the time they checked out and resume later. The idea is that you’re in your room and Engineer X and I come over with a bunch of records. We play you songs, I tell you stories, and we do time together. Now that many of us are under some kind of confinement, we might as well get some good listening happening. Let’s go long! It’s kind of like the show we do on Sundays but without time constraints or worrying about FCC compliance. It’s an extra slice of pizza. It will be completely indulgent. Fanatic, of course, and hopefully, as Iggy Pop, the Undisputed Heavyweight Champion Of Rock And Roll says, “a real cool time.”