How to Forget (and Remember) ‘The Greatest Punk Rock Band in the World’: Bad Brains, Hardcore Punk and Black Popular Culture

Abstract

In this chapter, we examine the memory of the hardcore punk band Bad Brains in relation to its importance to punks of colour. By analysing documentaries, books, zines and interviews, we argue that recent excavations represent George Lipsitz’s understanding of ‘counter-memory’. According to Lipsitz, groups like women and African-Americans have been ignored in dominant narratives of history. In order to defy such universalising forces that obliterate the traces of subordinate groups’ histories, such marginalised groups focus on their localised experiences and engage in a form of remembering that reconstructs history to re-incorporate into collective memory that which was previously obscured. By reassessing common understandings of hardcore punk, new avenues of possibility emerge, especially for punks of colour. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

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