Bad Brains - Are You Ready: The First Studio Recordings [Clear]

In March 1979, four young musicians from Washington, D.C. walked into Inner Ear Studios in Arlington, Virginia and cut six songs in about an hour. For the next four decades that session lived as a tape-trader legend, passed hand to hand among punk obsessives as proof that Bad Brains had arrived fully formed. Now it gets its first official release, done with the band's full cooperation.

The four are all here at the start: H.R.'s wild, elastic vocals, Dr. Know's blur of a guitar, Darryl Jenifer's nimble bass and Earl Hudson's jazz-trained drumming. You can hear the speed and precision that would help invent hardcore punk. "Pay to Cum," which would become their first single a year later, is here in its earliest form. Jenifer says its riff grew out of the Ramones, the Damned and fusion greats Return to Forever. "Black Dots," "Don't Bother Me," "Migraine" and "Send No Flowers" hit just as hard, and "Jamming at the Atlantis" shows early signs of the reggae side that would set the band apart.

Ian MacKaye, whose own path through Minor Threat and Fugazi was shaped by seeing this band up close, mixed the session for this release. That makes it an official piece of D.C. punk history, handled by one of the people who lived it. For longtime fans it's the missing first chapter. For anyone who found heavy music through its recent revival, this is where much of it started.

This indie retail exclusive on Coke bottle clear vinyl is the first release from Trust Records, mastered by Pete Lyman at Infrasonic. It's the first document of a band that hit like lightning, finally out on wax.