Unity and Resistance: The Message of Bad Brains
By: Aaron Gilbreath
Tags: Revolution, Punk Rock, Reggae, Black, Music

“The punk music of England was informative,” guitarist Dr. Know said in the 2012 documentary Bad Brains: A Band In D.C., “but it was more like, you know, ‘Fuck this, fuck that.’ We wanted to try and give an alternative and unify the people: ‘Yes, we can make a change if we unify people,’ as opposed to just saying, you know, ‘This is screwed up, and that is screwed up, and that’s just the way it is.’ I think that was the difference, initially, in our message: just being positive as opposed to destructive.”

“When we first came out, [punk] was kind of on some vulgar shit,” Jenifer told one interviewer. “We started kicking PMA in our music, and the message was different than the regular punk rock. You know, a punk rocker can write a song about hate — I hate my mom or some shit, you know? We wasn’t on no shit like that. Some kids who wanted to see some regular shit saw us, and every kid’s heart and mind was opened. It’s like you’re just going to see some regular reggae music, and Bob Marley is playing. You might walk away from that and go, ‘Damn, that’s some consciousness in this music.’ When we would play, you’d see, [sings] ‘I got that PMA,’ and there was a whole mode of consciousness that was coming through it.”

PMA comes from Napoleon Hill’s 1937 self-improvement book Think and Grow Rich, which claims “Nothing great was ever achieved without a positive mental attitude.” Hill presented billionaire industrialist and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie as a model for how ordinary Americans could use positive thinking to achieve both financial and personal greatness — not by simply visualizing ones’ own success to make it come true, but actually living with what he called a Positive Mental Attitude. HR’s dad gave him a copy of Hill’s book. “And it made sense,” HR said in Bad Brains: A Band In D.C., “to stay positive, not to worry, and it would show how people who refrain from living violently will get a good response.” Part of the message for HR was the importance of having something to believe in. Decades after first reading that book, HR still had a key quote memorized: “Anything the mind can conceive and believe, the mind can achieve.”

“The philosophy in essence, man,” Earl Hudson said, “was really about God, about the Lord, but it also was a thing where you have to make a plan in life, and you have to visualize this plan. But it was all about keeping a Positive Mental Attitude, you know?”

“What we discovered was PMA was really the Great Spirit,” Jenifer said. (Wax Poetics) “PMA — that was big on us. That would keep us cool in the hood. And then, guess what PMA was? It was Rasta. It’s like an advancement of a concept about making money being pushed into, ‘Okay, now there’s a Black Jesus,’ so to speak — something I can identify with in terms of spirituality.”

When their spirituality and ideology fused with fast music in the early 80s, it became what their live EP called “spirit electricity,” and what Living Colour guitarist Vernon Reid called “a kind of spiritual anarchy” that “was literally a religious experience.”

John Joseph, singer of the New York hardcore band Cro-Mags, personally witnessed HR’s religious devotion in Bad Brains’ early days. “He traveled with such a conviction, spiritually,” Joseph said, “to his beliefs, and lived it. He wasn’t just talkin’ shit. He was livin’ it. He was getting up every day and meditating and reading the bible and living the life.” (Finding Joseph I)

Singer Israel Joseph, HR’s brief replacement in Bad Brains, said, “Now what is HR? A prophet, a man who leads people spiritually. He is a shaman.” (Finding Joseph I)

“Just like what Bob [Marley] shows us,” HR said in a 1989 interview, “music is gonna teach the people a lesson.”

Classic Bad Brains song titles like “Rock for Light,” “Coptic Times,” and “Right Brigade” convey a clear sense of cosmic purpose. Many songs like “The Big Takeover” position the band against oppression and fascism, and challenge everything that is so fundamental and flawed about America: racism, classism, materialism, and spiritual vacancy.

On recording of a 1985 show in San Diego, a voice that sounds like Darryl Jenifer’s tells the crowd: “We’re mad because there are still slaves on the planet, so …Just know that if you want.” They tear into “The Big Takeover.”

All throughout this so called nation Prepare yourself for that final quest The world is doomed with its own segregation Just another Nazi test, yeah. The big takeover

In addition to the actual enslavement, possession, and subjugation of Black people, too many of us so-called “free” people remain slaves to our ideas, our wealth, greed, hatred, complacency, and possessions. That capitalistic, materialistic life is a fantasy that HR compared to “living in a movie.” Many lyrics were calls to action, like “At the Movies,” which encouraged listeners to dismantle the fantasies Americans hid themselves inside: “Doesn’t matter what they say, never give in, never give in.”

At Pitchfork Eric Carr described the 1979 song “Pay to Cum” as the band’s “famously anthemic, idealistic tirade against systems of control and the prevention of free expression.”

In “Fearless Vampire Killers,” HR builds his lyrics around Karl Marx’s infamous comparison of capitalism to vampirism. “Capital is dead labor,” Marx wrote, “which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labor, and lives the more, the more labor it sucks.” HR sings:

The bourgeoisie had better watch out for me All throughout this so called nation We don’t want your filthy money We don’t need your innocent bloodshed We just wanna end your world

HR’s indictment of American capitalism and me-me-me culture in “I Against I” still ring too true:

In the quest for the test to fulfill an achievement Everybody’s only in it all for themselves When the fact of the matter is they just don’t care To extend a helping hand to anyone else So tell me why, did you have to lie And try to make me all confused about the U.S.A. When the fact of the matter is you just don’t care To comprehend or understand a single word I say

In addition to being a formidable lyricist, HR was one of the greatest lead singers in the history of rock music. “Nobody sounded like him,” producer Ron St. Germain said in Finding Joseph I. “Nobody moved like him.” Yet his unbelievable stage presence rarely gets mentioned alongside the usual greats like Iggy Pop and Prince. Lithe and aggressive, during the band’s heyday in the 1980s, HR dove off monitors, engaged audiences from the start of the first song, pounded his chest, danced so his head moved at different frequencies than his hips, legs, and hands, as he swung his dreads back and forth. Watch him move at the 7:22-minute mark at this 1987 performance. Or how he ends songs with a backflip. He did that regularly. “HR and Iggy Pop,” said Black Flag’s Henry Rollins, “to me, are the two most charismatic, I-want-to-be-that-dude frontmen I’ve ever seen.”

Along with singing, HR sometimes just spoke his message to the audience between songs, chanting: “Black and white, we come to unite! Black and white, we come to unite!”

Many of us fans received the message. The band tee I’m wearing while typing this has a small PMA patch on it, and I rarely wear band shirts.