Folks, it’s Easter Sunday… and I’ll be danged if we’re not getting out at least one more… LONG-GESTATING episode of the TNB… to wit… a much-delayed… or SERIOUSLY FREAKING EARLY… Black History Month special… dealing with black punk… metal… and other heavier guitar-based music!!

We are pysched to the exact extent that this episode is late out of the gates!! If not more so…

Please check it out below as per your interests! And don’t miss the YT playlist while you’re at it…

Dan’s Notes

More than Bad Brains

Pure Hell

The first band chronologically on my list, Pure Hell predate the “birth” of punk by a couple of years with recordings going back to 1974. They were the wild weirdo underground rockers holding down the fort for stripped down nasty rock and roll in Philadelphia when bands like the New York Dolls were walking the earth elsewhere and were an early influence of the CBGB’s scene as well as bands like Bad Brains. I first heard of Pure Hell through Nancy Barile’s book I’m Not Holding Your Coat about her time booking hardcore shows and managing bands in the City Of Brotherly Love during the early 80’s, where she mentions their vocalist Kenny “Stinker” Gordon as one of the very first people to welcome her into the scene there. While they were based in Philly, Pure Hell ended up becoming friends with a lot of the NY scene during those very early years of Punk, and were friends with The New York Dolls and Sid Vicious (during his ill-fated time in the city). The band took a big trip to London in 1978 to try and break into the scene in that city with some shows with The UK Subs, but would ultimately decide to end the band in 1979 after a falling out with their manager/producer who would also end up refusing to hand over the recordings from the album they were working on during the London trip (which would finally be released in 2010. They would reform the band in the mid 90’s to work on new recordings in LA produced by members of bands like Nine Inch Nail, LA Guns and the one and only Lemmy of Motörhead that would ultimately go unreleased as well (though their duet with Lemmy “The Call” from those sessions is available out there on there on the internet). The band would play their first live show since the 70’s at a festival in Blackpool UK in 2012 alongside Rancid and PiL, and still get back together for festival gigs here and there to this day.

Fishbone

Not punk per so but definitely punk adjacent and one of very few Black bands to really break through the otherwise very white late 80’s/early 90’s alternative scene, Fishbone were a huge part of my early teen years whose work helped introduce me to a ton of other music across genres. Formed in 1979 in Los Angeles and rising to prominence in the mid to late 80’s, Fishbone’s music is a wild mishmash of metal, funk, ska, rock and soul with intense wild live shows full of crowd surfing and huge mosh pits to thrashing covers of Curtis Mayfield songs and hyperkinetic ska singalongs. Fishbone were part of the same end of the SoCal alt rock scene that the Red Hot Chilli Peppers came up in, they signed to Columbia in 1983, and hit wider audiences in 1987 with an appearance in the movie Back To The Beach (where middle-aged Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello fight a gang of evil punk rockers over their old beach hangout)as well as the opening spot on the Beastie Boys’ License To Ill Tour. They rose to prominence on the alt rock scene of the time through the late 80’s and early 90’s, through the killer three album arc of 1988’s Truth and Soul, 1991’s The Reality Of My Surroundings, and 1993’s Give A Monkey A Brain And He Will Think He Is The Center Of The Universe. It was 1993 when things got rocky for the band, with their guitarist Kendal Jones leaving the band for mental health reasons and moving to Northern California, actions which were misinterpreted by their bassist Norwood Fisher as him leaving to join a cult, leading to a failed  “rescue mission” and attempted kidnapping charges against Fisher. The band has still chugged on in various forms with vocalist/saxophonist Angelo Moore at the helm and a variety of members over the years, though in the early 2010s the entire original lineup save for guitarist Jones reunited and you can still see them going wild onstage at a ton of bigger festivals like Punk Rock Bowling annually.

Hirax

Seminal Bay Area thrashers who debuted around the same time as Metallica and 2Exodus and the like,with the band’s frontman Katon De Pena being one of the few Black musicians occupying a relatively prominent place in the nascent speed metal scene. Hirax brought thrashing headbanging riffs, blasting drums rivaling their peers in DRI in thunderous speed mixed and De Pena’s soaring melodic vocals (as he had mentioned wanting to bring a classic R&B vocal influence through his love of Sam Cooke to heavy music. Over the course of their initial three album run on Metal Blade Records in the mid 80’s the band developed a devoted cult following, with Katon somewhat retiring from playing in bands for several years and spending his time working in a Bay Area music store. It was there, a decade after Hirax’s initial run that he became friends with longtime fan of the band Max Ward, of 625 Records and the band SPAZZ (who had written a tribute to De Peña’s old band called “Skatin’ Satan and Katon”), leading to Katon giving Max some unreleased Hirax music for a split 7” with SPAZZ. This ended up leading to a whole new wave of interest in the band leading De Peña to reform the band in the late 90’s followed by a series of reunions every few years throughout the late 90’s, 00’s ans 2010s, leading up to their most recent album in 2014. True thrash originals worth checking out for sure.

Move BHC

One of the newer bands on my list, MOVE are pissed off hardcore with a passion for politics on top of their mosh-heavy riffage. Named for the Philadelphia Black nationalist activist group who were firebombed by that city’s police department during a raid on their homes in the mid-80’s, they have just released their first full-length album Black Radical Love on Triple B Records in late 2023. They are also one of the bands behind the awesome Dark Side Of Da Moon festival (alongside my other newer picks ZULU) in New York annually, which showcases Black punk and hardcore bands from all over the USA. They are young and pissed and passionate and awesome and wear their politics on their sleeves in the best punk rock way over big modern hardcore riffs and their debut album is a wall to wall rager that even takes a little aside from talking about the big issues to pay homage to having fun getting kicked in the face by friends in Ode To The Pit (they *are* a Boston HC band after all, politics or no). They also have guest appearances by Aaron from Jesus Piece, Christine from ZULU, Gjared from Out Of Body, all fellow Black or Black-fronted punk and hardcore bands who’ve taken part in DSODM in the past also. Like I said, they are a newer band with just a couple of EPs and their one full length under their collective belts, but if you like your hardcore angry and political instead of soundtracking fast food commercials, MOVE (with the BHC added to represent their hometown scene as well as making for easier googling) are a band you should check out for sure.

Zulu

I know I’ve talked about this band multiple times. I could just copy and paste my notes from other times I’ve mentioned them but seriously, this LA-based band’s debut full length from 2023 A New Tomorrow was one of my favorites from the year, and they are also a band that very much puts their Blackness front and center in their music. Really, just check them out. Their previous two EPs from when the band was more of a solo studio project with vocalist Anaiah Lei Mohammed playing all of the instruments as well are also worth checking out as well. Heavy passionate blasting hardcore with interludes of jazz, hip hop, spoken word and other genres either played live or woven in via samples, ZULU are an exciting young band for sure. I am just going to cheat here  and say check out more of my thoughts on Zulu during our “Best Of 2023” episode notes, and enjoy the songs linked above.

Missellany

Matt’s Notes

So here we go, yo!! I’ve had the worst, most weird vibes around this topic! Like…

I’ve come to determine that 95% of punk, 90’s hardcore, post-hardcore, alternative rock… is all just lily fucking white…

The stuff that’s rad, fucking slays!! As evidenced in this episode!

And, as I’ve said, my R&B, Soul, Jazz, Blues vinyl collections are all pretty slick… as far as underfunded-but-awesome record collections go… my rap and hip-hop vinyl collection is not as weak as my classical music vinyl collection but almost…

And so… two months late for the first day of Black History Month… I’m sitting here like a tit… listening to A Tribe Called Quest at such a volume that it’s ALMOST disrespectful to the upstairs neighbor… ALMOST…

ANYWAY

I’ll limit my pathetic meanderings for now if only because I’ve promised Dan and myself that this episode will be ready to go in fewer than a couple of days… but, in my experience “a couple of days” can turn into “a week and a half” like nobody’s business!

One is more accomplishable than the other, by a pretty damned wide margin.

God bless us everyone! Or something…

Soul Glo

I mean, holy fuck!!

I really thought for awhile about just doing my entire notes on Soul Glo… and kind of footnoting everything else…

I guess this is the year I expand my top list of bands ever… like all time… to include this fucking behemoth from Philly Rock City…

I’ll leave the wanton salivating for whatever transpired in the video/audio… however… like a goddamned Easter miracle, on Good Friday their FB feed showed up with Soul Glo inciting the FIRST-EVER TINY DESK MOSH PIT!!

That, in a nutshell, is why I love this band… here’s hoping for more in ’24!!

I mean… REALLY… Holy… Fuuuck!!

I mean… FUCK… man…

I just think it’s cool…

Thin Lizzy / Little Richard

OK… so… this is where I go against the specific topic of the show to get to what I consider an important general truth about popular music…

That’s to say that the parts of modern rock… or any rock beyond the fifties, sixties, seventies, and eighties…phew… that I value… is significantly indebted to either and/or both of these artists in ways that run far beyond my feeble abilities to express…

To wit, a band called Motörhead.

To wit, a band called Metallica.

I’m saying Thin Lizzy is a black band. If that’s the wrong approach, I’ll walk it back. Who can deny Phil Lynott? Nobody, that’s who. And Good shrieking Lord my knowledge of most things factual or implied about Little Richard is weak. Except for what any fool with eyeballs and/or eardrums can plainly tell. I don’t need Lemmy or Paul Westerberg to give me an anecdote on that.

And… thanks to Google, I’m now chuffed to know that Thin Lizzy and Motörhead shared a guitarist in one Brian David Robertson… furthermore Lemmy said in at least one widely available video that Little Richard was one of the main reasons he got into music…

Like… when you give yourself to Little Richard you’re giving yourself all the way…

SPOT (SST Records)

We’ve talked about Spot variously on this show… so… in the interests of avoiding stepping too much into what’s already been said…

The sound of seventies and eighties So-Cal garage, punk, and hardcore is hugely to do with SST Records. And Spot is inseparable from SST producer, engineer, and musician…

Let’s go further: no SST… you don’t get those Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr, Screaming Trees, or Soundgarden records…

To wit: nearly the entire basis for 90’s grunge…

To wit: all the Foo Fighters, Pearl Jam, and whatever other 90’s behemoth bands are still out there, playing arenas to the aging Gen X’ers…

We can’t blame Spot for all that! But if you go back to just about anything with Spot’s name on it into the mid-eighties… it’s an astounding body of work!

Living Color

It’s almost embarrassing how little I know about Living Color… except that back in the early 90’s they had a couple of videos that hit hard… that I still remember them at all is pretty impressive, all things considered… I mean… I’ve forgotten way more important stuff over the years…

As Dan referred to the recording… you’d read about them in Guitar Player magazine… not that I did!! Circus Magazine… on the other had… for a little while… and likely Spin and Rolling Stone… I definitely subscribed and also purchased issues of these print publications from uh… Mazzuca’s variety store downtown Fredericton… during the years they were popular…

Anyway… I’m pleased to report these songs still rip! And it’s likely worth diving into their wider discography!

A Band Called Death

As mentioned in the recording, the story behind this band is just so rad.

Do yourself a solid and watch a Band Called Death on whatever streaming service you can…

…For the Whole World to See is an absolutely perfect album title… for an 7-song EP that almost never got heard… that UTTERLY SLAYS… a reminder that we never know that the universe has in store…

OR SOMETHING. HAPPY EASTER AND WHATNOT!!

Well, somehow we’ve gotten two episodes out within 84 hours! Life should always be so rad! Thanks for joining us…

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Filed under: Uncategorized - @ March 31, 2024 2:57 pm