There is perhaps nothing less rock’n’roll than being nominated for a major music award.
After all, the idea of receiving an accolade from the very system bands often find themselves directly opposed to seems almost oxymoronic: “Here’s your prize for not caring about things like prizes!” is what a MTV statuette or honorary induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame seems to say.
And yet if there’s any band that deserves the latter plaudit, it’s D.C.’s own Bad Brains, the rag tag collective headed by musical savant Paul ‘H.R.’ Hudson. For the first time in its three-decade plus career, the band is up for the esteemed nod, one that would come as an important stamp of approval branded across a genre-changing legacy.
Of course, even a passing glance at a record like Rock For Light, Bad Brain’s magnum opus, makes it clear that the demented collective isn’t in the business of yearning after prizes, nor are they even particularly interested in shifting units. A song titled ‘Pay To Cum’ is only going to get so far in terms of radio distribution anyway, and the deliberately subversive nature of the group’s discography gives off a kind of prickly heat not suited for those who squirm easily.
But that’s exactly what makes them the perfect choice for the Hall of Fame; exactly why the bandmembers should take their place there alongside other legends like Nirvana and Al Green. Bad Brains should be inducted into the Hall precisely because they’re the kind of band that do not give a fuck about being inducted; because it won’t affect them in the slightest if they aren’t.
After all, rock’n’roll in its purest form isn’t about trimmings, or the toot and trifle that comes along with having your face splashed across the front cover of so many freshly minted copies of NME. Rock’n’roll – particularly punk rock, and particularly particularly the brand of snarling, subversive punk rock churned out by Bad Brains – is first and foremost about the music itself, and has little to nothing to do with the term ad men use to sell shit or the scene that pale imitators cluster around.
In that way, Bad Brains go about making music the way an electrician goes about laying wires or carpenters build doors. Simply put, the band serves an innate purpose, and though its targets might shuffle from record to record, Hudson and co. are always firing off at someone. Or perhaps some thing, or some institution – or even themselves, trying to gouge away at wounds that are internal.
Of course, to that end, their sociopolitical ire is not to be understated, particularly within the confines of the punk scene. Though anarchic rock is often thought of as being inherently left-wing and free from racism and misogyny, towards the beginning of their career Bad Brains had to combat extreme stereotyping and suspicion from within the very scene they hoped to rise to the top of.
“In the early days we faced a lot of racists,” Hudson told a reporter from Spinin 2012. “Sometimes they’d throw beer bottles and do a little spitting … Once we were able to get over that initial shock of being received by the audience that way, then they understood where we were coming from. And we understood where they were coming from, and we all reached a level of communication. Then we let the music do the talking.”
And it does talk, the music of Bad Brains. Sometimes it screams, and sometimes it mumbles, and sometimes its advice seems nonsensical and other times it seems sage. But it never takes a breath, and it never waits to be heard – it just is, constantly, forever needed and supplied. 1986’sI Against I hasn’t become less relevant in the years since its release: it has festered, spilled into blue and grey like a bruise, and its technicolour yuckiness is as much a perfect soundtrack to the trash fire of 2016 than it was to the year in which it was released.
And yet these are all just words. There is a reason Bad Brains write songs and not missives or manifestos – the group’s music, though at once highly intellectualised, is just as interested in socking the gut as it is expanding the mind.
Hudson and his crew make exactly the kind of albums that resist articles such as this one. After all, there is a reason why ever verbose Henry Rollins describes ‘Pay To Cum’ quite simply as the song that changed his life. Such boiled-down, blasted-clean statements are the only accolades that ever really do the band justice.
So, to borrow that language, then: why do Bad Brains deserve to be inducted into the Hall of Fame? Not only because they do what they do without fanfare, but because what they do is good; good the way medicine is good. Good the way change is good. And fucking hell does 2016 need some good, and some change.
You can head over to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame website and vote for your favourite nominee, whoever that (Bad Brains) might (Bad Brains) be.
