[lbo-talk] AllHipHop.com interviews Bad Brains about being seminal black punk band in mostly-white scene

[wrobert at uci.edu]

Actually, Black Flag's contribution was "White Minority".  "Guilty of
Being White" was Minor Threat's contribution.  Ian (MacKaye)says that the
song wasn't intended as a global commentary, but came out of his
experiences in Wilson High School.  Take that for what you will.  His
politics certainly have improved.  If one is interested in the D.C. scene,
I recommend Dance of Days.....  On a side note, one of the things that
most annoyed me about the film American Hardcore (and there were many
annoying things) was the implication that Bad Brains only started playing
reggae at the tail end of the so-called Hardcore era (which is a bit of a
misnomer in itself... just look at the DC scene), when Bad Brains had been
playing reggae from the start (which was always kinda bad from my
perspective).  The Bad Brains interview is as ignorant in this regard,
ignoring that UK Punk had always had a strong reggae streak in it (aka the
Clash, Ruts, Slits, etc.) even before Bad Brains......

                             robert wood


> It sucks that musical talent/innovation does not have
> to jibe with moral/ethical boundaries, a la Black
> Flag's "Guilty of Being White," and the homophobic
> stuff Fear (gay baiting audiences, Decline of Western
> Civ) and Meatmen, etc., would spew out. That was all
> in the 80s, too. So it wasn't just Bad Brains. Or SSD
> talking about "new wave faggots." The band Nig Heist's
> name itself, and the story behind it, is pretty
> racist. Or how about Agnostic Front's "Public
> Assistance" from the mid to late 80s: " How come it's
> minorities who cry / Things are too tough / On TV with
> their gold chains / Claim they don't have enough" etc.
>
>
> -B.
>
>
>
> Wendy Lyon wrote:
>
> "I haven't been involved in the punk scene for almost
> 20 years, so maybe things have changed, but back in
> those days it was quite the opposite - Bad Brains were
> able to get away with saying stuff that we would never
> have dreamed of tolerating from any other band. Not
> just homophobic comments, but things like explicitly
> justifying violence against women (I distinctly
> remember an interview with a DC fanzine around 1985 in
> which one of their members explains how it's a man's
> responsibility to "administer justice" to a
> disobedient woman "in order to protect her from
> herself"). I don't know if people were hesitant to
> call them on it precisely because they were black, or
> if it was just that they had so much cachet for being
> Bad Brains. Maybe a bit of both."
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