I don't know if this next story is indicative of the cycle of life model but what transpired in this tale appears to be neverending. It's a story you've probably heard about or witnessed many times over. A person (or persons) of color attempts to fight the cultural box or expectation that has been ascribed to him. The overseeing corporate or social order denies him (or her) the chance to create a new box. The person of color's box is ultimately discarded, never to be seen again. What exactly am I talking about? While listening to Howard 100 (Howard Stern's channel on Sirius-XM) this morning, Stern sidekick Artie Lange alluded to a Black punk rock band that he found out about while reading yesterday's NY Times. Take a gander at this excerpt from the Times as it truly is another example of a dream deferred. It's time for a Black Rock station/channel folks.....more history uncovered:
Courtesy of the NY Times:
ON an evening in late February at a club here called the Monkey House, there was a family reunion of sorts. As the band Rough Francis roared through a set of anthemic punk rock, Bobby Hackney leaned against the bar and beamed. Three of his sons — Bobby Jr., Julian and Urian — are in Rough Francis, but his smile wasn’t just about parental pride. It was about authorship too. Most of the songs Rough Francis played were written by Bobby Sr. and his brothers David and Dannis during their days in the mid-1970s as a Detroit power trio called Death.
The group’s music has been almost completely unheard since the band stopped performing more than three decades ago. But after all the years of silence, Death’s moment has finally arrived. It comes, however, nearly a decade too late for its founder and leader, David Hackney, who died of lung cancer in 2000. “David was convinced more than any of us that we were doing something totally revolutionary,” said Bobby Sr., 52.
Forgotten except by the most fervent punk rock record collectors — the band’s self-released 1976 single recently traded hands for the equivalent of $800 — Death would likely have remained lost in obscurity if not for the discovery last year of a 1974 demo tape in Bobby Sr.’s attic. Released last month by Drag City Records as “... For the Whole World to See,” Death’s newly unearthed recordings reveal a remarkable missing link between the high-energy hard rock of Detroit bands like the Stooges and MC5 from the late 1960s and early ’70s and the high-velocity assault of punk from its breakthrough years of 1976 and ’77. Death’s songs “Politicians in My Eyes,” “Keep On Knocking” and “Freakin Out” are scorching blasts of feral ur-punk, making the brothers unwitting artistic kin to their punk-pioneer contemporaries the Ramones, in New York; Rocket From the Tombs, in Cleveland; and the Saints, in Brisbane, Australia. They also preceded Bad Brains, the most celebrated African-American punk band, by almost five years.
And for more Death, click on the links below:
This Band Was Punk Before Punk Was Punk
Death's Myspace page
And as corny as this pun may seem, you just can't escape Death. Check out their progenies, Rough Francis:
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