Bad Brains, the documentary

Via Dangerous Minds: word of a documentary film on the profoundly influential hardcore band Bad Brains, following the band from 1979 to now. The first punk show I ever saw, when I was too young to legally get into clubs. They changed my life. It was exactly like this.

• [Anonymous]

  I’m excited about this. I saw the trailer a while ago, but I echo your comments that Bad Brains are life-changing. It’s just the most raw, intense thing imaginable. Consider that greats like Black Flag and Minor Threat kneeled down before these guys in reverence.

  And WOW at that video you posted. That is the best Bad Brains vid I’ve ever seen.

• [ill lich]

  Hardcore began here.

• [mokey]

  very jealous of seeing BB. love em love em love em. saw soul brains, or whatever they’re called, and they SUCKED. don’t recommend seeing them. i heard they’re not wingnut homophobes anymore, though, which is always nice.

• [mamarox]

  I’m very excited about this! I saw Henry Rollins spoken word performance last month, and he told a couple of Bad Brains stories; both happy and sad.

  I saw BB about a million years ago at the Mabuhay (anyone old enough to remember the Fab Mab?) in S.F. (false ID and all).

  Their influence (along with other punk bands, both old school and post-punk) colored a lot of my life choices … good and bad.

  • [Cowicide]

    I saw Henry Rollins spoken word performance last month, and he told a couple of Bad Brains stories; both happy and sad.

    Do go on, please.

• [lalligood]

  There isn’t a time that goes by while listening to Bad Brains that I don’t kick myself for not skipping school to see them perform in Daytona Beach for Spring Break in ’88.

• [Anonymous]

  Wow! Boing Boing finally talks about ‘Hardcore’, am I dreaming ?

  No more punk snobbery?

  Thanks anyway for that cool topic.

• [adamnvillani]

  OK, serious question here… I’ve heard many people say that watching a band or listening to an album changed their lives. I have listened to many albums in my day and have loved many of them but can’t point to any that changed my life in anything more than an incremental way. So, my question: when you say that a band changed your life, what exactly do you mean by that?

  • [dculberson]

    How’s this .. I was a 15 year old kid, son of a preacher, moved around a lot so I didn’t have enough time in any one place to really feel anchored. Went to Christian schools and was, really, kind of sheltered. Someone gave me a dubbed copy of The Youth Are Getting Restless, and my brains were liquefied and reformed into something completely different. The next year I managed to buy a CD player (ooh!) and the CD Blood Sugar Sex Majick (back before parents realized how naughty some music was …) and my life was irrevocably changed for the better.

    How was it changed? Well, I realized that not everyone was stuck in the straight laced repression that I felt shoved into. I realized that in some circles, oddness can be a good thing, something to be treasured and not mocked.

    It really wasn’t the music alone that did it, but it was a touchstone moment, something I can think back to mixed in with a thousand different things. It was also a helpful push in a direction I was already headed. Like having a friend behind you say, go ahead, I’m right here.

    • [adamnvillani]

      Thanks.

• [The Thompson Five]

  This proves conclusively that no matter how cool the show was, there was always a big meathead in front hogging the pit.

• [Xeni Jardin]

  Wow. Some amazing comments here, guys. Amazing because I am realizing that their music affected others around my same age exactly the same way at exactly the same time. thank you.

• [Anonymous]

  How about them changing and SAVING your life.
  Finding Bad Brains music gave me the hope that art and expression and passion had new and powerful forms yet to be discovered. It refreshed in me something that was hardening into a jaded and cynical world view WAY to early.
  Sure they had messed up politics and said stuff I knew even then was stupid and homophobic, but the form and the energy were just so intense and genuine and new…
  nowadays what is there? damn i sound old.

  • [dculberson]

    There’s still stuff. Just listen for something that rubs you completely wrong and you’ll know that’s the new stuff. Think about what your parents probably thought when they heard Bad Brains.

• [sievetronix]

  My first hardcore show at the revival in Philly. It was one of the last times the entire original line up was together. It wwas everything someones first hardcore show should be, epic, terrifying, exhilarating, intense and fun. I don’t remember much other than I ended up with a cut somehow but who cares.

  And Rock for light is still one of the most ferocious albums ever made.

  OK off to listen to At the Movies