If I can be transparent for one minute, I’m a bit exhausted by the news lately. While the protests have been encouraging, it has been paralleled by even more tragic news. On Friday I learned about the lynching of Robert Fuller (it is “alleged,” but come on) only to discover that there was another one in Southern California. Given that there’s also a racist white lady running around my city yelling at innocent bystanders, I’m at a loss for words right now. One atrocity is replaced with another. Many are mad that statues symbolizing oppression and hate are being taken down, but unfortunately they don’t need to look at the Jim Crow South to see why we’re doing this. When innocent people are being lynched and murdered for being Black in today’s given age, it’s sometimes hard to believe that anything’s changed.
There are millions who are likely madder than me, willing to put their lives at risk to get the message out there. However, I say this because I hope you’re aware and don’t forget the awfulness, the need to question the structures that made the deaths of George Floyd and Breona Taylor something more than bad action movie fiction. I keep hoping for change, and there’s small ways where the conversation feels like it’s shifting. However, I’m still ashamed that Southern California could ever have lynchings, let alone in 2020.
So if you don’t mind, I’m going to explore an angry album. It’s not like last week where its protest message was loud and clear (at least the clear part). To listen to the self-titled Bad Brains album is to feel the protest in the spirit of every note. It is largely considered to be one of the most influential albums in the hardcore punk genre, and for good reason. Over the course of 16 songs and a little over a half hour, we’re presented with a band whose energy is just as snotty and aggressive as their peers, and yet there’s something that feels different.
The simple way of looking at it is that Bad Brains were Black musicians in a genre populated with white people. It’s not a generalization. If you go down the list of influential punk bands from the era, the faces will largely be white. It can be argued that the many bands they influenced (The Beastie Boys and Minor Threat) were just as white. Even their involvement with Dead Kennedys (who rereleased their album on their record label Alternative Tentacles) showed their tokenism. Their place in history could just be that they were an “other,” but thankfully they were so much more.
When getting started, the band was introduced to a handful of bands that interested them: Black Sabbath, The Dead Boys, and The Sex Pistols. They were originally a jazz fusion band called Mind Power (after a James Brown song) before transitioning. Their style was also influenced from seeing Bob Marley in concert and falling in love with the Rastafarian imagery.
One of the most important things to note about their sound is that they originally played some of these records at 78 rpm, which was well over the suggested total. Because of this, everything was louder, angrier, and moved at a faster pace. Along with developing a washed out sound that they acquired live, Bad Brains weren’t trying to be the fasted band in the Washington D.C. area, they just so happened to do it because of a few misconceptions.
With that said, it’s amusing to label the record solely as hardcore punk. While it’s true that so much of the album finds Dr. Know’s lead guitar crunching through the atmosphere like a cloud of smoke, there are songs like “Jah Calling” and “I Luv I Jah” that are directly reggae songs. There’s nothing punk about them other than the fact that no other band of the time was doing this. While it would be later popularized again by bands like Sublime in their dub-rock style, the early 1980s had no counterpart for a band whose sound was that radically diverse.
Though it’s important to note that among all of their rapid-fire songs, there was something to their message. This was especially true of “Banned in D.C.,” which was a proudly defiant number that suggested that no matter what happened, they would find someplace to play.
The reference in particular goes to something that’s fairly frequent in most punk rock bands’ history. Because of their aggressive sound, it was said that their music could incite violence. This was especially true on one notorious night where the audience ended up doing a significant amount of property damage.
Because of instances like this, most bands would adopt home shows where they either played in the backyard or basement, free of the jurisdictions of club etiquette. While it’s said that the club in reference would eventually forgive the band, it was enough for them to create a defiant song that played well into their image. Who didn’t want to love Bad Brains? They were so dangerous that they were banned in D.C.! While it’s arguably an overstatement, the teenage rebellion was definitely strong in the sentiment.
Among the more striking details of their debut album was the cover, which was layered with anarchic imagery. Judged solely on the image, it’s a lightning bolt crashing down on The White House, as if it was an electric pole. You can imagine it symbolizing destruction or even some “Frankenstein”-style vision of bringing the dead to life. However, that’s only half of the image’s perfect vision of chaos. The color scheme of red, yellow, and green are Rastafarian colors, which itself shows how the punk ethos was blending with reggae culture in ways not often seen in their respective genres.
The album, also called “The Yellow Tape” or “Attitude: The ROIR Sessions,” was originally released on cassette before being repackaged on Alternative Tentacles. The former references the packaging, which was an almost entirely yellow wrapping (it’s also a nod to The Beatles’ “White Album,” which had a similar aesthetic).
The album has an incredible and familiar immediacy for the genre. Of the 16 songs, seven are under two minutes and only two are over three minutes (“I Luv I Jah” is the longest at 6:22). It was a hallmark of the genre, and one that proved to never outstay its welcome as the band declared their place with such triumphant force that it could give you palpitations.
While this is the feeling you get listening to them, Bad Brains was seeking to have a more optimistic world view than their peers. They were going to have a positive attitude in their sound, and that could be seen in moments such as the third song “Attitude”:
Don't care what you may doWe got that attitude!I Don't care what you may sayWe got that attitude!
The statement is familiar for the rebellious types, but when paired with “P.M.A.” (or positive mental attitude), it becomes clear what this song is all about. It’s about pushing aside the negativity and trying to live by your own credos. At no point are they inciting violence, instead encouraging people to follow their own vision. Even if most of their songs aren’t direct in their optimism, it’s also not rich in negativity either. Songs like “Sailin’ On” focus more on the feeling of leaving negative aspects of your life behind.
The fact that these could also be construed as more straightforward punk songs is a heralding achievement, and one that is undeniably fun. As they put in their opening song:
Tried to see if I'll give upBut there wasn't any luckIt's a fact, a fact of lifeThat's the game, game of strife everything is all in stride
While they do have songs like “Fearless Vampire Killers,” the album manages to stick to its optimism by never embracing a destructive mentality. Even then, the thing that makes the record so enjoyable is how much it sounds like a wrecking ball swinging through conventions and reforming them into some battered shelter. It’s clearly not the same, but the band has enough interest in their own self-image that they are making something that can clearly only be described as a Bad Brains record. Basically, if you hear it anywhere else, somebody needs to pay royalties.
A lot of credit should go to Dr. Know’s whirling guitar solos that are a lot of fun in the conventional rock way. Much like The Dead Kennedys’ East Bay Ray, however, the solos had this strange way of being both catchy and gave an underlying mockery of rock music. It’s all technically efficient, but there feels like a joke’s hidden in the notes. Considering how fast it’s going and how indecipherable the lyrics are at points, it doesn’t matter anyway. It’s an emotion, a feeling of youthful abandon that’s impossible to not enjoy.
Then there’s the singer. H.R., short for Human Rights, had this weird ability to conjure moments of Johnny Rotten and Bob Marley in equal measure. You can hear the snot falling out of his nose throughout the songs, though there were wails and cries authentic to reggae that were thrown in as these melodic curveballs. It could just be that his voice sounds barely breathing above the instruments, but he really does have the punk feel in an authentic way. At no point does it fall into ridicule, instead having this incredible confidence that you’re in awe of. I’ve listened to hundreds of hours of punk songs, and I still think that H.R. is singular. He’s clearly not trying to be a kid from D.C. He’s just trying to be himself.
Given that H.R. was a military brat for most of his life, the feeling of traveling and not being able to have close friends is abundantly clear in his identity. It explains how he’s able to tap into those emotions so clearly. It also explains why everything seems to interest him as a vocalist, as he jumps from state to state, even having a stint in Hawaii. When you don’t really have a home until you’re a teenager, it’s easy to have a displaced view of the world.
What’s especially radical is six songs in. Having gone through five songs presented at breakneck speed, the album grinds to a halt. Depending on your view of reggae, that’s not a bad thing. If anything, it’s staggering because there’s little that ties it to everything around it. It’s a competent, well-made break from the mad energy that shows a side of them that is crucial yet feels discordant on this record. Even “I Love I Jah” towards the end is a nice touch, but only in that it shows potential for whatever other sound they could hope to develop. Even if H.R. was playing vocally with technique, it still felt like reggae and hardcore punk were separate identities within himself.
But oh boy, if you thought that Bad Brains wasn’t going to lean into the displacement imagery, prepare for “Big Takeover”:
So understand me when I sayThere's no love for this USAThis world is doomed with its own segregationJust another Nazi test
Considering that the song also references Holocaust imagery, there’s reason to believe that this song could fit as an anthem of protest. That is if it wasn’t so ramshackle, needing to be played so fast that the lyrics blur together. Still, the anger was there, and the idea of comparing the U.S.A. to Nazism isn’t as far fetched anymore. It definitely is a line meant to get attention, and one can hope they see it as more than provocation. In a time where Robert Fuller can be lynched while being innocent, it’s easy to understand their frustration with hate crimes.
Then again, that explains why reggae is needed on this album. It’s why songs like “I Luv I Jah” are important to this tapestry. It’s a moment to reflect on a duality that Black culture has to face: the whiteness of hardcore punk, and the roots of reggae. While this is a broad generalization, it’s easy to argue that Bad Brains was dealing with identity in their own way as they explored their anger while parsing it through peaceful, self-assuring songs like “I Love I Jah.”
To be honest, Bad Brains was one of those bands that escaped me in high school, when these records would’ve been most prominent in my life. While I was never too in love with anarchic bands like Black Flag, I find something charming about the sound here. I love how it just goes for the jugular and expects you to keep up. In a time where nothing feels certain, having this record grappling with so many struggles, including your own future, it’s exciting to hear a record like this and find the youthful spirit captured on tape (literally). It’s important to have a fire inside of yourself, to keep striving for something better. I don’t know much about Bad Brains other than the song “I and I,’ but after this song, I’m kind of curious to see what else they have to say.
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