styles: hardcore punk, underground rock
others: Fugazi, Circle Jerks, Black Flag, Misfits, Bad Religion

Black Dots
Caroline, 1996
rating:  9.0
reviewer: rather ripped

Like an unsanctified bastard child of archaeology and felonious assault, this stunning piece of aural vandalism stands as a first-hand ear-witness account of a period of rock history that is slowly retreating from living memory.  Those of us who managed to survive the seminal days of punk rock will, loving or hating, for better or worse, recognize the sound emanating from this album like a comatose nightmare or post-traumatic stress disorder flashback. 

In basements of disaffected misfit losers too poor, ugly, uncool or all of the above to get invited to parties, these kinds of primitive sounds were vomited forth as a kind of revenge against a society that literally had no place for us economically, politically, spiritually, or aesthetically.  The vocal mix is powerfully evocative of the kind of cheap microphones and sinister horror movie reverb some of us may remember first hand from our own garage bands.  To those of us who were there, this recording almost sounds like blackmail.  It's cruelly exciting, heartlessly suggesting an impossible time travel to an awful time we wanted to escape, but now can only wish we could escape back to.

Some of the tracks don't necessarily stand out as "great songs", but who cares? The overall atmosphere resurrects the feeling one had at early basement hardcore gigs that is nonexistent now...that few of the children dressing up and affecting a "punk" pose would even recognize.  It seems everywhere you go nowadays you hear  about "punk-pop" this or "punk-influenced" that, mostly from the kind of people who would have got the crap kicked out of them with steel toed boots at a real punk rock  gig...not that this is something relevant to sonic historical accuracy, but it gives one a warm feeling to thing about it.  The evil, cancerous laughter HR emits on "Send you no Flowers" evokes the kind of terror one felt at those shows, where occasionally one felt as if one might not escape with one's life.  "How Low Can a Punk Get?" would later be rendered as a punk rock anthem by the deft ministrations of Rik Ocasek, but in this basement recording it explodes like a home invasion, or a home movie of a homicide. 

The outstanding qualities of Bad Brains as an ensemble are a matter of record--the fact that they single-handedly dismembered the idiotic notion of punk rock as a "white" music form, for example, and their overwhelming influence on everything from jazz to reggae to hip-hop to metal to 90's mainstream fm rock (which has been advertised as "alternative", the most despicable of all double-speak misnomers).  It may be argued that Bad Brains are a necessary musicological precursor to gangsta rap, and it is unlikely that any artists in that field would disagree. 

This recording is a snapshot of that band at the cusp of their utmost aesthetic purity, in the picoseconds between the big bang of its inception and the inescapable compromise waiting outside its creators' heads. Also of great interest is the downplaying of guitar sounds and the amplification of  the element of the bass in the mix, the soaking wet dubwise drums so clearly influenced by Jamaican and British space reggae, and the extremely "live" overdriven quality of the vocals.  The formula understood by rock producers time out of mind has been guitars up front, vocals next, drums next, bass last. Bad Brains did it just about backwards from that, because their musical attack was a soundtrack for breaking and entering, running from the scene of a crime, real home-grown riot music.  These qualities render an almost cinematic, even documentarian quality to the recording, making it the punk rock equivalent of "Don't Look Back".  It is verite in its most arresting and immediate form, in that it completely lacks what are commonly recognized today as "production values", yet also lacks the self-consciousness of a staged "live!" recording.  rehearsal cassettes much like this frequently changed hands in the late '70's and early '80's, radiating an almost toxic "you had to be there" coolness that rendered them little more than white noise to clueless "music industry" parasites that always seemed to be hanging around the bars of the clubs, looking for some phantasmal "next big thing", while the biggest thing of all was screaming right in their ignorant faces.

The liner notes are also of interest, dryly recounting the dismal dead-end existences of the musicians that inspired the songs, every one of which are terse expositions on existential panic that make the current purveyors of contemporary "heavy" music look like pantywaists by comparison. Technology offered  little to ordinary people; there were no home computers or cell phones or even pagers as of yet; the e-commerce and telecommunications boom had not yet given  people the false sense of "connectedness" they enjoy now.  In the concrete cul-de-sac you took your paycheck straight to the rip-off check cashing shack as there was no such thing as "direct deposit" or even ATMs.  People weren't running around in  $200 sneakers and calling themselves rebels.  There were no pocket chains, lip rings or goatees.  Instead there was bad weed, cheap beer, not enough cigarettes, rat infested rehearsal studios, and some of the most glorious music recorded since the goldberg variations. 

Anybody who listens to this album and doesn't immediately feel a connection to authentic, historically and aesthetically accurate punk rock  needs to have someone next to them call 911, as they might be dead.  And anybody who calls themselves a "punk rocker" and can't get in the groove of this album is a fucking
liar.

1. Don't Need It
2. At the Atlantis
3. Pay to Cum
4. Supertouch/Shitfit
5. Regulator
6. You're a Migraine
7. Don't Bother Me
8. Banned in D.C.
9. Why'd You Have to Go?
10. The Man Won't Annoy Ya
11. Redbone in the City
12. Blackdots
13. How Low Can a Punk Get?
14. Just Another Damn Song
15. Attitude
16. Send You No Flowers