Bad Brains: Bad Brains (transparent red vinyl) [ORG MUSIC]

Why you'll love it

This transparent red reissue comes from the band's own remaster campaign with Org Music, mastered by Dave Gardner at Infrasonic. Beastie Boys' Adam Yauch called it "the best punk/hardcore album of all time."

This edition

• Transparent red vinyl
• Remastered
• Mastered by Dave Gardner at Infrasonic Mastering

About the album

Before they were Bad Brains, Dr. Know, Darryl Jenifer and the brothers H.R. and Earl Hudson were a jazz fusion band called Mind Power. Then punk arrived, then reggae, and Washington, D.C. never quite recovered. By 1981 they had moved to New York and become a catalyst for its hardcore scene.

Most of this debut was cut at 171-A Studios in Manhattan in the autumn of 1981, with three songs captured live there that May. "Sailin' On" and "Attitude" fly past at full tilt, "Banned in D.C." answers the clubs that had shut them out back home, and "Big Takeover" is pure velocity from first note to last. Then "Jah Calling," "Leaving Babylon" and the six-minute "I Luv I Jah" slow everything down to a roots reggae roll. ROIR first issued it as a cassette in yellow packaging, which is how it got its nickname, and Ira Kaplan wrote the liner notes.

Decibel inducted it into its Hall of Fame in 2007. The cover shows the Capitol Building struck by lightning, which remains the most accurate description of the music anyone has managed.

Also at Kops: more Bad Brains on vinyl · browse Punk

Tracklist

Listen

On Bad Brains Records / Org Music (cat# ORGM-2179), a reissue of the 1982 album.