I naively believed reading another voice would enlarge my impression of Black Flag’s last, longest, and ill-fated nationwide tour. I read Get in the Van by Rollins earlier this year, and was struck by the narrow focus of Rollins’ diaries. Rollins published these diaries as Planet Joe after Cole was killed during a botched robbery in 1991. Joe Cole kept a journal of his stint as a roadie for Black Flag’s last tour in 1986 and the Rollins Band’s first tour in 1987. It’s been a long time since I read a book that made me depressed, but Planet Joe did the trick. I naively believed reading another voice would enlarge my impression Maybe it would if you knew him personally, which many did and apparently were better for it.more Cole’s end is tragic, but even that kicker doesn’t resonate emotionally. What saves the book is that it’s short and, for me, a glimpse (albeit quick) of a period in music I hold nostalgically. There’s little insight considering how much LSD he takes, just a typical young man’s claustrophobic meanderings, swaying between feelings of grandeur and insecurity. He also repeatedly tells us about “scamming” girls, most of whom he comes too quickly to satisfy. This tour diary of being in the road with Black Flag and then the Rollins band is repetitive and myopic, but then the author repeatedly tells us he’s not a good writer.