were playing it, I was like, ‘Fuck that! If these dudes sound like this, I’m going to sound like a monster!’ ” From the get-go, Bad Brains was never your average punk-rock ensemble. The dreaded quartet stood out from their contemporaries, not just because of their race or the reggae tracks that peppered their albums and live shows, but also because of the virtuosity of their playing. “To this day, I have never seen anything that was better than the Bad Brains at peak performance,” recalled D.C. native and former Black Flag front man Henry Rollins. “We saw them open for the Damned, summer of ’79, right before they recorded their demo. People didn’t know what to do, and only a few people would come up to the front of the stage. Ian [MacKaye] and I walked right on up and felt like our ship had come in! As far as impact, it was incredibly motivational. Ian and I are still in awe of those guys.” 2 Ian MacKaye, front man for fellow hardcore pioneers Minor Threat and, later, Fugazi, has concurred, praising the group for giv- ing his own influential ensembles early musical momentum: “They were charismatic, they were incredible, they wrote great songs, they were nice to us, they had good ideas, they had good energy, and they made things happen. They made us feel like anything was possible.” Along with MacKaye’s Minor Threat, Bad Brains is largely re- sponsible for punk rock’s evolution into hardcore, a genre that to- day is almost unrecognizable by ’80s standards. Still, as MacKaye explained, it was crucial to the movement for positive visionaries like Bad Brains to separate music’s fashion from function: “Punk rock, mostly in the media, was portrayed by Sid Vicious and was nihilism and self-destructiveness. New wave was like the B-52’s and ‘Rock Lobster . ’ So we wanted to distinguish ourselves from those two worlds. So we said we were ‘ hard-core punk rock,’ meaning we didn’t need to look tough. We were more committed. It wasn’t a dress up thing; we were going to actually live it.” 3 For Bad Brains, their twofold musical mission was coming to fruition. Not only was their music making waves up and down the East Coast, but their PMA was also infiltrating the local punk scene, which up until that point, had been one of violence and intolerance. “When we first came out, [punk] was kind of on some vulgar shit,” recalls Jenifer. “We started kicking PMA in our music, and the message was different than the regular punk rock. You know, a punk rocker can write a song about hate—I hate my mom or some shit, you know? We wasn’t on no shit like that. Some kids who wanted to see some regular shit saw us, and every kid’s heart and mind was opened. It’s like you’re just going to see some regular reggae music, and Bob Marley is playing. You might walk away from that and go, ‘Damn, that’s some consciousness in this music.’ When we would play, you’d see, [ sings ] ‘I got that PMA,’ and there was a whole mode of consciousness that was coming through it.” Bad Brains’ live show is perhaps still one of the most definitive characteristics of their musical identity. The lightning-fast riffs and machine-gun percussion that Bad Brains was able to harness on re- cord ran wild onstage. Lead singer H.R., often donning a cape and motorcycle helmet, both alienated and engaged audiences, encour- aging unified sing-alongs one minute and horizontally catapulting himself into the crowd the next. John Joseph, of the seminal New York hardcore band the Cro-Mags, first encountered Bad Brains en route to a D.C.-area tavern. “Doug, the owner, comes running out,
hat we discovered was PMA was really the Great Spirit,” says bassist and Bad Brains founding member Darryl Jenifer. “The [ideas in the]
book Think and Grow Rich worked for Andrew Carnegie back in the Industrial Age, helped him make money out of these concepts of positive thinking.” Napoleon Hill championed the merits of Positive Mental Attitude in his 1937 book, which outlined Carnegie’s mon- eymaking formula in an effort to inspire greatness in ordinary people. Coming from Washington D.C.’s inner city, a band rose above the ordinary by latching onto that PMA, which led them down the spiritual path of Rastafarianism. As a result, Bad Brains propelled to greatness, though not quantifiable in dollar figures or record sales. Bad Brains formed in southeastern D.C. in the late ’70s. The members of the Black ensemble, originally called Mind Power, first bonded over a mutual admiration for the aggressive jazz of Billy Cobham and Mahavishnu Orchestra. The group was comprised of bassist H.R., who would become Bad Brains’ unpredictable lead singer, younger brother and drummer Earl Hudson, vocalist Sid McCray, and, later, Darryl Jenifer, who would appropriate bass du- ties after H.R.’s promotion and Sid’s departure. Guitarist Dr. Know, whose blinding guitar leads would help define Bad Brains’ sound, joined the group by way of a local funk outfit, Stress. Despite their rich soul backgrounds, Bad Brains immersed themselves in punk music and culture, abandoning, for the most part, the more defini- tive D.C. genres. Jenifer explains, “It’s the Great Spirit making us go, ‘You could play go-go or funk, but then you could play whatever the hell you want!’ ” 1 It was as a result of this spiritual realization that Bad Brains began playing punk music and not the jazz fusion that they are often wrongly acknowledged for crafting in their early career. “We were into electric jazz, but it was all for the riffs,” insists Jenifer. “People get it all twisted. It’s an interesting story to say to your kids, ‘fusion- ists turned punkers.’ Really, it was a concept. [Mind Power] never played a show, and we only had one song, called ‘How Many Years of Love.’ We adopted these Black hippie names; I was called Sun Light. It was sort of like Mandrill but with a PMA concept.” It was the group’s original singer, Sid McCray, who would intro- duce the inner-city combo to the brash, yet inviting, sounds of punk rock. “I used to listen to rock before punk,” recalls Jenifer. “Sid was a wild dude. He came through the crib [wearing] safety pins, and he had these records with him. He put on some Ramones, and I thought it was kind of funny. He had the No New York compilation. It was a noise thing with James Chance, Lydia Lunch, and DNA. I liked that because I liked Sun Ra, and I liked music that pushed the threshold of people’s sensibilities. I was like, ‘If the Ramones think they are playing fast, I’ll play it like this and put some Stevie at the end of it!’ “It was what the Great Spirit had in the wind for us to do,” con- tinues Jenifer. “We didn’t sit around and conceive it. We just had the essential albums of punk: the Sex Pistols, the Damned, and the Dead Boys, and we took it from there. H.R. really liked it, and we jumped into being punks—leather pants and all that. I really liked punk because I was shy, but once I saw people who couldn’t play
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