Bad Brains - Music to pogo and cry to

Bad Brains' (Washington, 1977-1995) historical importance is twofold: they essentially refounded two rock subgenres. The first (between 1979 and 1984) was hardcore; the second (between 1985 and 1988) was hard rock, especially its "arena-rock" side.

We're at the turn of the 70s into the 80s. Hardcore had been born in Los Angeles a couple of seasons earlier. As the movement spread across the US, Washington was among the first and most important cities to embrace it. On one side GG Allin, on the other Ian MacKaye (with Minor Threat and what followed) are the names worth citing. On a third side, Bad Brains. Technically speaking, while Allin brought the movement back into the fold of rock'n'roll - the former - or consolidated its roots - the latter did this before moving on to post-hardcore - Bad Brains renewed the genre. And not, as is often the case with apparent novelties, from the outside (perhaps through contaminations), but from within. That's what makes Bad Brains' work radical, profound and essential.

The second founding of hardcore consisted of pushing to the extreme the speed and power of a genre that was already fast and powerful, as well as insisting on the brevity of the songs. The Texan band DRI, the other great group who accompanied Bad Brains in this undertaking, boasted performances lasting 20-30 seconds each. From this second hardcore would spring hardcore-metal, which from Suicidal Tendencies onward would run through the entire '80s, until being swallowed up by grindcore. But this second hardcore didn't only play that role for the future of metal - a metal that, in its speed version - or Metallica - it had already helped bring into being. This second hardcore is also hardcore par excellence, the point from which the post-hardcore bands of the mid-80s would branch off and diverge. One could diverge from this hardcore through sonic excess (metal) or through sonic restraint (alternative-rock). That's how Bad Brains can be credited, in large part, with justifying two pivotal styles in popular music: speed-metal and alternative-rock.

That covers the first phase of their work. As for the second phase, criminally overlooked by critics, it must be said that Red Hot Chili Peppers, Faith No More, Jane's Addiction and many others owe no small debt to the hard rock turn Bad Brains took in the second half of the '80s, when they played a hard-rock foreign to both blues and rock'n'roll, instead drawing close to typically crossover genres such as reggae, ska and funk - genres that, in their most remarkable results, were nonetheless sublimated into a communicative power of meaning (and melody) never sterile or self-referential. All of this, moreover, built on the solid framework and structures of hard-rock.

An almost unique case in the history of "rock" (and I'm not talking about rock'n'roll, or jazz, or electronic music, or rap, or soul, or blues, etc.), Bad Brains were also a case of racial significance. They can be considered the only non-white musicians (they were all African-American) capable of recording and doing so in such a decisive way in the history of rock. Hendrix (who, incidentally, had no African ancestry, but Native American) didn't play "rock" in the most classic sense of the term. Bad Brains embodied four young outcasts of the urban underclass, a notch or so below the average life expectations of the typical hardcorer (often a kid from a good family dealing with existential rather than social struggles). Although they never indulged in revolutionary posturing, their weight - unlike that of the hardcore genre itself, which in turn differs from punk - was not confined to the existential side of things (a side that does represent much of its value, especially for the listener) but extended to the social sphere as well. Social and economic equality, the end of abuse and racism, are themes that directly or indirectly involve Bad Brains; on another level they were nihilists, iconoclasts, immoral and self-destructive; and on yet another, adherents of the Rastafarian faith. Bad Brains' Africa is the Arab one; and their blackness can also be said to be the Jamaican kind.

Sex Pistols and Bob Marley (an oddity, given the context) were, at least in embryo, the respective guiding lights for those young men gathered around guitarist Dr Know (who started out playing funk; his innovative style effectively blends boogie, blues, rock'n'roll, metal, hard rock and punk): Darryl Jenifer (jazz and hard-rock bassist), H.R. (the singer, raised on reggae: one of the 3-4 most essential voices in rock, always extreme, always delivered entirely from the throat, always gripping, who takes on, with a Black and punk tone, Prince, Iggy Stooge, Mick Jagger, Robert Plant), Earl Hudson (drummer, the singer's brother: at the start he had no musical training whatsoever, which he would turn into the height of expression).

As one can see, the very fact that the four came from such disparate genres, ultimately alien to the non-African American tradition, represents a unique case in itself; all the more so considering that they went on to interpret, so convincingly, a genre entirely American and white/Western in origin, such as hardcore (and even more so hard rock: has anyone ever seen Black musicians playing hard-rock?). The fact that these four Black kids played genres of African descent also shows that they weren't simply Westernized Black musicians (and thus essentially identical to so-called white Westerners). Furthermore, the shift from soft genres (funk, reggae) to the hardest and most extreme genre par excellence marks an exceptional case within an already exceptional case (usually bands start out loud and end up tame). All this without Bad Brains' rock being programmatically avant-garde in the way that Minutemen, DRI or Melvins were.

Bad Brains began recording and releasing music when, around '79, they moved from Washington to New York.

Bad Brains' music is a "power hardcore" bordering on speed-metal (a genre they also helped found). It's neither the beach-hardcore of Descendents (and originally of Germs: the first hardcore), nor the miniaturized power-core of Bad Religion (the third hardcore). Dizzying tempo changes, vocals that are hysterical, sublimating, furious, now singing now chanting (almost rap-metal), tank-like riffs, acrobatic, thrash-metal, hard rock: these are the coordinates of a whole as articulate as it is effective in its immediacy (all justified by the communication of reflection on existence). This immediacy is capable of taking shape both in thirty-second proto-grind-core lashes (Bad Brains are forerunners here too), and in melodic contemplations that in patches illuminate an unstoppable flow of agitation and supersonic speed, a tunnel that's everywhere yet still well-framed and three-dimensional, able to grab and involve you, never banal or colorless. A special ovation is owed to the voice of Bad Brains (H.R.) as well as the superfine technique of the whole ensemble (an ensemble recognizable among anyone who might be compared to it).

In 1996 the compilation Black Dots would gather part of the material (scattered across singles, EPs and cassettes) from the late Seventies and early Eighties. Several great classics stand out that would later fill out the first album, namely: "Pay To Cum", "Banned In D.C.", "Attitude". The performance, though — explosive and very garage — is still raw and muddled.

The first album, Bad Brains (ROIR, 1982 – ROIR, 1996), was revised, remixed and reissued as Rock For Light (PVS, 1983 – Caroline, 1991). Rock For Light — which, more than a concept, is a collection born of several years of hard work and apprenticeship — is one of the greatest rock albums of all time, and perhaps the greatest hardcore album ever. Of its 20 tracks (lasting 40 minutes), all are ferocious and highly evocative hardcore, hardcore as had never been heard before (hence the refounding of the genre); 4 tracks, instead, are reggae. But Bad Brains, these particular Bad Brains — and herein lies their greatness — don't do mediocre tracks, they don't do — as has sometimes been suggested — "reggae-core". They keep the two modes strictly separate. Hardcore is pure hardcore; the same goes for the reggae. Their reggae is as simple as it is immediate and never off-putting: it's charged with a communicative and emotional urgency capable of transcending the genre itself. That's why, if nothing else, the soul-tinged trills of "Rally Round Jah Throne" [- 3:58], the melancholic, captivating pace of "I and I Survive" [- 5:13] and the mystical chorus of "The Meek" [- 3:37] must be noted as superlative works (and unusual for the rock milieu).

Of the other 16 tracks — all of extremely high quality and with an approach that is, to say the least, distinctive and inimitable — at least half must be described as absolute masterpieces (credit should then go to Dr. Know, the main composer of the music). The crowning jewels, in any case, come together in six petals (constituting 11 minutes of music but worth a lifetime). "Big Takeover" [- 2:29], though it races along (and boasts masterful riffs and restarts), stays within the boundaries of an architecture aimed at mourning an entire dimension of life. "Attitude" [- 1:09] pushes things to the extreme, headlong (the voice keeps going an octave higher and overall is more powerful and extreme than anyone else's, while the rhythm section holds ultrasonic percussive levels). "Right Brigade" [2:07] and "Banned in D.C." [- 1:57] stand as the masterpiece within the masterpiece: after an initial skirmish, there emerges (true of both tracks) a guitar-voice union capable of exploding into the highest spheres of the celestial order only to then plunge into the most scattered depths of the underground (and a voice, never vulgar, always between falsetto and growl, plays no small part in this); a tear-jerking synthesis of the two-tone nature intrinsic to the album as to Bad Brains themselves, meaning not just the coexistence of evil and good, sin and redemption, but — it seems — one single principle that by nature either has or allows itself to be read now through light, now through darkness. "I" [- 1:55] is a splendid (and extreme) confirmation; never had such articulation and expressive effectiveness been heard — and with such ferocity — in just two minutes (the ever-present, detonating falsetto and screams of H.R. are nothing short of extraordinary). "Sailin' On" [- 1:45] is avant-garde through and through: a snake with neither head nor tail, that could go on forever; and it's colored with the most ineffable tones (rendered with a falsetto now in recitative, now in chorus). This is music for the pogo and for weeping; for pogoing while crying: hard to find anything else like it.

After a couple of years caught between drugs and prison (always in his naive and very un-American, un-rockstar way) H.R. returns to work with Bad Brains. I Against I (1986, 10 tracks – 31:53) is the album of another band. Or rather, of the same, stratospheric band, which however plays a different genre. Rather than merging the then-separate hardcore and reggae (into a hypothetical reggae-core that can still occasionally be found here: and from there to today's hardcore-rap it's a short step), Bad Brains opt instead for a highly idiosyncratic arena hard rock; idiosyncratic, that is, more in terms of volume than anything else (whether in form or content). Not only the evolution that Bad Brains embodied, but unusual works like this one, cannot but reinforce that too-little-held opinion according to which the 1980s were rock's golden decade.

If "I Against I" [- 2:50], however bitterly, plays at being hardcore; "House of Suffering" [- 2:28] is the sublime (and searing) link between the turmoil of early Bad Brains and the almost priestly composure of their maturity. The other tracks are an outpouring of technique and inspiration of the highest order, as original as they are versatile. Riff-metal, a rhythm section moving between soul, funky and reggae (the influence of the non-punk Clash is only episodic and incidental), a voice now at its most oppressive yet exquisite evolutions, one that always purifies itself into melodies of anguish. This is "Re-Ignition" [- 4:18]; and the discourse continues with the masterpieces "Let Me Help" [- 2:15] and "Secret 77" [- 4:03], without which many of the devices used by the far less compelling Faith No More would have been impossible (just consider the synthesized effects of the rhythm section: Bad Religion too would draw on these for their masterpiece "Anesthesia"). Finally, it all culminates in one of those memorable (and underrated) rock tracks, "Sacred Love" [- 3:40]: a composed, desperate, fatalistic hymn to love, human or divine love, or love of life, love that nonetheless — with a good dose of fetishism — is the dominant theme of the whole album, which it thus justifies as well as grounds and enriches with meaning. Legend has it that H.R. phoned in the song's melody from prison, and that this phone call is what we hear when we listen to that extreme psalm (as well as extreme vocal invention by H.R.) that is "Sacred Love".

Quickness (1989, 12 tracks, 33'52") adds further beads to the rosary begun with I Against I.

Rise (1993) and God Of Love (1995) are the last albums, as usual unnecessary.

Into The Future is notable above all for one thing: it's dedicated to the memory of the late Adam Yauch, one of the members of Beastie Boys who died in 2012 of cancer. Yauch had in some way been the architect behind Bad Brains' comeback, producing their second-to-last album, Build a Nation (Megaforce 2007), which generated some interest since it brought (at least in spirit) the Washington DC punk quartet back to the glories of their golden years.

Into The Future tries to continue along that path, conceding little to easy commercial mainstream appeal, although certain crossover episodes ("Popcorn", "We Belong Together", "Jah Love") would have been better avoided. Certain Massive Attack-style experiments in a hard rock vein also sound a bit "off", as in "Rub a Dub Love" or the digital reggae of "Jah Love" and "Make a Joyful Noise". This new record shows Bad Brains still in excellent instrumental shape, despite no longer being spring chickens, but sometimes, reviving one's own past is a very arduous undertaking, even for giants.

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