By Ibrahim Miraj; edited by Muslim Taseer
02 April 2020, 8:53PM
Early punk bands such as The Ramones, The Stooges and The Sex Pistols pioneered a raw, fast and often aggressive style of rock. Inspired by this sort of sound, the 80s saw the rise of a number of acts that would come to define punk rock as a genre, and influence countless popular artists in the future, including Green Day, The Clash, Fall Out Boy and The Offspring. But punk, by its very nature, is almost never smooth sailing. The ‘first wave’ of hardcore punk from 1980-1985 was a vibrant, diverse and often ridiculously violent time.
2 months ago, a young man was working 60 hours a week at an ice cream shop, Haagen-Dazs. Whilst attending an impromptu show by one of his favorite bands, he requests the band play 'Clocked In', as he had to go to work. The band offers to let him sing it. He leaps up on stage and pours all his frustration into it, blowing away not just the audience, but the band itself.
Tomorrow they will ask him to be their lead singer, and tomorrow he will quit his job.
Tonight is his first gig. He gets up on stage and launches into the opening song with an unhinged ferocity. As if on cue, an audience member emerges from the chaos, scrambles on stage, walks over and breaks the young man’s nose.
“Welcome to San Diego”, says the man.
The date is August 21, 1981. The band is Black Flag, and the young man is Henry Rollins.
The pointless, often abrupt violence that accompanied Rollins’ debut as Black Flag’s front man was by no means an anomaly. Similar altercations occur throughout his time as front man, and he would soon build up an impressive repertoire of scars. Cigarette burns on his thighs, more broken noses and more spilt blood are yet to come.
It’s not as if the violence was one-sided. Bands quickly learned that the best way to stave off violent fans was to give as good as they got. Violence plagued the hardcore punk scene, and prompted several songs criticizing violent fans, with The Dead Kennedys’ Nazi Punks Fuck Off and Minor Threat’s Stand Up being amongst the most well known.
As problematic as it was, this same violence gave punk some of its most iconic moments. Probably the best example of this animosity was the infamous riot at one of Negative FX’s shows, where fans stormed the stage and beat the shit out of the band, only for Jack Kelly, the front man, to resume singing after exclaiming, “We ain’t gonna stop, fuck you!”
It was the same violence that got Bad Brains banned from Washington DC and resulted in there most popular song, Banned In DC that caused Ian MacKaye to leave the scene in 1984.
“For me, the violence was stupid, it just became stupid, and I saw my own role in the stupidity”, says Ian MacKaye. “In 1984, I remember, it was a Minuteman show and the last time I punched somebody. Some guy had punched my brother, and I hit him and thought, that’s the end of that, I’m done”. MacKaye is a childhood friend of Henry Rollins, and front man of Minor Threat.
Minor Threat has always represented the more sober, intellectual side of punk rock. Having seen the effects of drug abuse on close friends and family, MacKaye does not smoke or drink, let alone touch the harder stuff. In 1980, shortly before founding Minor Threat, MacKaye had set up his own independent record label - Dischord Records - and began publishing. Dischord Records exemplifies the DIY punk ethic that Minor Threat brought to first wave punk. It helped formalize the nationwide network of underground bands and over time, the label has put out the work of more than 50 artists.
To this day, it uses no contracts, no lawyers and operates exclusively in the DC area. "From the beginning of this label, people have said that the way we do things is unsustainable, unrealistic, idealistic, and we were just dreaming," MacKaye says. "Well, the dream is now 35 years old, so they can go fuck themselves." Dischord Records was amongst the earliest independent record labels and helped prove that a major record label was not an absolute necessity to make a living as a commercial artist.
MacKaye, although having left the hardcore punk scene behind, still sticks to most of his original beliefs. He’s even refused to do interviews with Rolling Stone magazine due to their advertisement of tobacco and alcohol. His next band after Minor Threat, Fugazi, founded in 1987, famously aimed to charge the bare minimum profitable prices and escorted violent fans out of concerts with envelopes containing a cash refund.
Ian MacKaye might have never entered the punk scene, had it not been for the band Bad Brains. He met them in 1979, aged 17. After watching them play, MacKaye invited the cash-strapped Bad Brains to rehearse in the basement of his parents' house, later saying that watching Bad Brains' work was inspirational. "They were the fastest, greatest band in the world."
Most of the early punk scene consisted of very young musicians, who’d learned to play by listening to music. Musically, the songs were simple and aggressive, mostly because in the early days no one was skilled enough to do much more. Bad Brains did not fit that mold.
Originally started as a jazz fusion ensemble called ‘Mind Power’, Bad Brains switched to punk rock in 1977. Initially, the group attracted attention due to the novelty of an entirely black punk rock band, which had up until then been mainly a white-dominated scene. But that was quickly eclipsed by the attention the complexity of their songs attracted.
Why? To understand this, you’ve got to consider one fact. Punk is played fast. Very, very fast. In the streaming era, major hits tend to be around 80 beats per minute (bpm). Compare this with Black Flag’s album “Damaged”, which clocked in at an average 105bpm, and Minor Threat’s 110bpm. To reliably play these fast tempos, bands often relied on simple but punchy chord progressions and a consistent tempo throughout the songs.
Bad Brains changed all that. Their songs were blisteringly fast, reaching speeds of 160bpm, and more complex than anything that came before. The startling speed and precision were accompanied by frequent tempo shifts, complex rhythms and intricately constructed guitar solos that borrowed from funk, hip hop and soul.
The legendary stage presence of “H.R (Human Rights)” AKA Paul Hudson was also a big factor in getting the band the attention it deserved. Formerly involved in acrobatics, he was a notorious stage diver with a hyperkinetic repertoire of spins, dives, back-flips, splits, and skanks. After being banned from performing in clubs in D.C due to the aforementioned violence, the band moved to New York and kickstarted the development of the punk scene there.
In addition to their performances, Bad Brains played a big role in mentoring the punk bands around them. It was H.R. that implored Ian MacKaye to fully flesh out Minor Threat’s straight-edge philosophy, despite heavily using cannabis himself. Henry Rollins’ earliest involvement in the punk scene was being a roadie for Bad Brains. And when Lyle Preslar, Minor Threat’s guitarist, left to attend college it was on H.R's insistence that he dropped out and rejoined Minor Threat.
But Bad Brains was not without its share of problems. H.R’s behavior was oftentimes counter-intuitive and made sense only to himself. After they were banned from D.C, record labels entered a bidding war to sign them. Though Bad Brains was in desperate need of a record deal, H.R. turned them all down.
His performances were also erratic at times. Sometimes, he would smile beyond the crowds at shows and stand with a blank stare on his face. His behavior frustrated his fans, his management and most importantly, his band. His increasingly delusional behavior and unpredictability made mainstream success out of reach for Bad Brains. Only later was it found out that his worsening behaviour was a result of a brutal combination of SUNCT syndrome, which causes debilitating headaches, and worsening, undiagnosed schizophrenia.
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