Day 3: Bad Brains and Ahistorical Whiteness

February Third, 2022: Day 3

Bad Brains: Jah moshes at CBGB

Band: Bad Brains 
Media: Big Take Over

Dear Reader,

I'm coming back to punk rock again today [probably not for the last time], because today I want to talk about Bad Brains.

But first, a brief detour:

I'll start my discussion of Bad Brains in 1859 in Harper's Ferry, Virginia. 

Wow, I made until day 3 before I started talking about slavery; cute!

If you don't know the story of John Brown's Raid on Harper's Ferry, I'm not going to tell it to you here. I am vastly unqualified to speak about US Civil War history. What I will tell you, with some moderate degree of authority, is that John Brown has been canonized in American music and culture. 

He is referenced ad nauseam, and his insurrection at Harper's Ferry is often treated as one of the most important moments in moving the United States towards Civil War. 

I'm no fan of the "great man" version of historical interpretation, but I'm also no historian (at this point in my life, I'm barely an economic sociologist... and I get paid to be an economic sociologist!), so take what I say about history with a big old grain of salt:

How is it that John Brown, of all people, arguably the most famous abolitionist in American History? Why is it that John Brown is treated at as this figurehead of catalyzing dissatisfaction for slavery in the United States?

I think, in part, we like to talk about John Brown because he's an "edge lord" of his day. He's controversial, right? Was right? Was he wrong? What's the role of radical violence in overturning unjust institutions? Was John Brown... a terrorist?

John Brown tried to get Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass to join him at Harper's Ferry; Tubman even helping him recruit for his 'insurrection.' Douglass said it was suicidal.

John Brown had Suicidal Tendencies. lol.

There's certain fetishization we have for loud abrupt, violent, action. You need more subtly to talk about meticulous, slow, and well orchestrated action. 

John Brown was undoubtedly Punk-AF, but there's a certain freedom that he had to be that Punk and to be so well remembered for it; a freedom that came from being a white man. 

Only a straight white man could be a hero in America for killing a bunch of people because he was feeling "angry." He's every suburban kid who drove mom's Lexus into Portland to cos-play ANTIFA by throwing bottles at a federal building dressed in their Dad's respirator mask and the black Supreme BOGO hoodie they bought on Grailed.

Thanks for the help, dude, but are you here because you want change or are you here because you like to break shit?

Look at me, shitting all over John Brown and ANTIFA. For all it's worth, I'm glad those kids went to the Portland Autonomous Zone and not to DC on January 6th and I'm glad John Brown killed some slave hunters. I don't feel bad for them.

Sacha Jenkins of The White Mandingos (and our first actual connections to Bad Brains, as Darryl Jenifer is in both bands) described the experience of being Black and Punk in an interview w/ AJ+ a few years ago saying:

When you're Black, you're punk rock all the time. You're a target all the time... and I can't change the color of my skin.  There is a level of privilege that goes with:

"I'm gonna put a safety pin through my nose and paint my hair; dye my hair green for three years, and then I'm gonna clean up and put on a suit and get a corporate Job."

We don't really have that luxury.

His bandmate, Honeychild Coleman continues by saying, "you get cred for punk years..." with the implied next words being: when you're white.

That hit me. Those words.

I am Black, but because I'm also white, I have some [sic] much of that privilege.

I have these tattoos [insert a link here later, Ian] on my left arm of a Panther and Buffalo and as much as I wanted to get them, I felt like I needed to get them; as some sort of 'surrogate melanin.'

But if you give a moment of though, I can only have tattoos of panthers and buffalos because of my whiteness. I'm allowed to have proverbially 'stick a pin through my nose.'

I am light skinned enough to be an "acceptable" brown person. *imitating my Jewish great aunt* "He's such a nice Jewish Negro. He'll be a docta one day. Maybe I should introduce him to my grandson."

Isn't it fucked that I'm able to get away with this shit because of how light I am?

Where were we? Oh yeah, John Brown. Look, if you're still with me, take a minute and listen to these three songs: 'John Brown's Body' as sung by Pete Seeger, 'A More Perfect Union' by Titus Andronicus, and 'John Brown's Gat' by The 1865.

Coleman and Jenkins are two out of three members of the Black Punk Rock outfit The 1865 whose debut project, Don't Tread on We! is a Black Punk   exploration of the Civil War. Apple Music also relentlessly wants to remind me that the album is "Hip Hop," which it is categorically not.

Tangent, it pairs nicely with one of my favorite albums of all time, The Monitor by Titus Andronicus.  Two Punk albums both about the Civil War; one by a white band, the other by a Black band.  I wonder if they'll have a different take on it.

The 1865 is video I placed at the top of this piece.

So here we have different presentations of the Civil War.  Narratives told of aspirational Punk attitudes through John Brown, fictionalized through 2019's Harriet, presented by white creators Titus Andronicus, and presented by Black creators through the 1865.

And, during my upbringing, the United States Civil War was presented through white narratives and sung to me about by white bands. It was only later that I heard Black voices describe the experience. Whiteness was a moderating factor in understanding Black voices; they had to be filtered through the ahistorical, universal, and disinterested position of whiteness.

Hennessy's got my back on this. [Maybe I should try and squeeze him in... to bad it's not a leap year!]

Back to Bad Brains. Catch their self-titled album at the right point and you won't think you're listening to Punk and certainly not DC Hardcore. You'll think you stumbled into some slick LoFi Reggae.

And that's the thing about Bad Brains, their take on Punk is different because it they weren't conceived as a hardcore outfit; they played funk, jazz, experimental shit... but when they felt the call to Hardcore, they well... just took over.  In a lot of ways they did the whole 'innovating without trying thing' that DEATH did.  Except, this time, no one needed to rediscover Bad Brains.

Their self-titled album, which is 36mins long, so you don't have an excuse NOT to listen to the entire thing, turns 40 this year; damn.

It's a frenetic classic and the only words I can use to describe it are ENGERY, FAST, and FUCK!

And while I absolutely love 'Pay To Cum,'and the opener, 'Sailin' On' is a bop, it's 'Big Takeover' that I want to ruminate on today.

Let's hit the big themes of the track first: Nazi's, desegregation, America is fucked. 

It's four Black guys singing about the how the drive for desegregation in the latter half of the 20th century isn't going to change anything; that it's just another "Nazi plot."

You see, the racists aren't the ones making desegregation so damn hard, it's white liberals in large cities. The diet-Nazis are too stupid get anything done, it's you well educated nimbies out there who are the ones ruining our shit.

This was TAILOR MADE for me... and I wish I'd seen Bad Brains first... but I didn't.

My experience of Bad Brains wasn't on their own terms. It was filtered through the Gorilla Biscuits.

I'm going to give you the genealogy because I think you'll find it funny, but it's not relevant to the story:

Queen -> Mika -> Pansy Division -> Gayrilla Biscuits -> Gorilla Biscuits -> that photo -> Bad Brains

Each one of those artists deserves their own whole diatribe, although I'm not sure I actually know enough about the history of the Gayrilla Biscuits to write anything about them; they were here, and then they were gone.

What I'm trying to get at is that long before I had a chance to encounter a Black media that spoke to me (was tailor made for me, even) I had to have it filtered through white media and white narratives.

I found out about Bad Brains because I saw that shirt on Walter Schreifels and looked up the band. If he dug it, I bet I would, too.

Turns out, my instincts were spot on.

That's my read for today. If you pick up one thing from my word vomit today, it's my frustration with having to see Black art and Black music mediated for me through a context that's not Black, through a language that's not Black, trading in currency that's not Black.

I own that shirt, by the way. The one in that picture; not a different version, not a reprint. That photo and I are connected through time with a single object.

I'm wearing it right now, as I write this. It has 'Jah' written on the back... and I moshed in it at an LCD show in December.

There's not a big metaphor here and I'm trying to be profound. It's a bit of melancholia that even the coolest piece of Black history I have, was found by a white guy, memorialized by a white guy, and sold to me by a white guy.

That's all I got. One more musician tomorrow, then on to something different for a little while.

Sincerely,

Ian

PS: here's some homework for y'all, if you're looking for 'next steps'

1. Go Check out Shawna Shawnté and their Black Punk music festival. If I lived in the Bay Area, I'd def be there. [LINKS to their IG]
2. If you've never heard of it there's a festival called AFRO-PUNK. The festival is not... perfect, but they general have great music.  I dunno, I was up and down on whether or not to include them.
3. You can see the entirety of one Bad Brains' 1982 shows at CBGB's on Youtube, because sometimes technology is good, actually.
4. And if hardcore isn't your thing, go watch BLACKALACHIA by Moses Sumney, it's more chill.