BB Shot (excerpt)

....Most young Black kids did not go down to the basement and start Punk bands in large numbers. The lure of the thrashing guitar was not as strong as the booming call of the drum for most of us. However, R&B and Disco didn’t provide much of a platform for expressing the ideals of resistance and rebellion that many of us felt within. The agenda in “Hardcore Nation” would continue to be set mostly by bands of young White kids and populated by their peers. However there was an active minority of Black Punks.

Like all of the American musical forms that Black people created, it just so happens that the band that is considered the best, most talented and most influential band of the American Hardcore Punk Rock Music scene that started in California by skateboarding kids, is a band that originated in the "Chocolate City" of Washington, D.C. This highly influential band featured an entirely Black lineup of accomplished musicians. The group was called Bad Brains.

The Bad Brains were formed in 1979, out of the remnants of a Jazz-fusion band named Mind Power. Their roots in Jazz provided them with skills that enabled them to explore territory that their peers {who typically were not skilled musicians} could not venture into. Despite the fact that they chose to play a style of music that was “alien” to their cultural roots, the Brains wore “dreadlocks” and were practicing Rastafarians. The band itself was all Punk though and regarded by their peers as the band you never wanted to follow behind in a concert lineup....