How Bad Brains pushed punk to breakneck speeds on their 1980 debut single

Bad Brains will release their first-ever recordings this November through Trust Records.

The studio sessions were captured in 1979 at Inner Ear, a recording facility synonymous with the Washington, DC hardcore scene, and were only available on the tape-trading circuit. Now, following a remix by their longtime friend, Ian MacKaye, they’re about to get an official release on all formats.

“In 1979-80, not only did we have this great local band, we actually had the greatest band in the world playing in Washington,” MacKaye told WTOP News in 2016, following the news that Bad Brains had been nominated for a place in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. “I don’t know who the nominators are, and frankly don’t care, but the person who put Bad Brains’ name in the hat is either a visionary, or they’re savvy and trying to bring some legitimacy to their brand.

“The Bad Brains obviously connected with a lot of people in the 1980s,” he added. “Maybe some of those kids swam upstream to where they now want to bring Bad Brains along. If this is something they want, I’m happy for them. I know the impact they had on my life, and that of other people.”

While the Washington quartet did not make the Hall of Fame cut the following year, their impact on punk is immeasurable. The intensity of their early live performances can be felt in this archival six-song collection, which includes an early version of their 1980 debut single, Pay to Cum.

This, then, is the story behind the song.

If punk lit a fire under metal, Bad Brains strapped a rocket to it and shot it into the sun. Four Black youths from the South West side of Washington D.C., they started out as a jazz-fusion outfit named Mind Power before they discovered punk rock.

“I was a fan of [jazz fusion bass pioneer] Stanley Clarke and now I was getting into punk,” bassist Darryl Jenifer recalls of the band’s turning point. “Most kids were just into punk, but here I was loving fusion. So I was like, ‘Punk rock? Shiiit, I’ll kill this.’ I can remember turning to Sid [McCray, original Bad Brains vocalist] and saying, ‘If the Ramones think they can play fast, watch this!’”

Clocking in at less than two minutes, their 1980 debut single, Pay To Cum, was a blast of hyperactive lightning, pushing the genre to almost absurd speeds. In Bad Brains’ own way, it was just paying forward the impact punk had on them. Darryl remembers that the band’s early songwriting was “stream of consciousness,” ideas put together in a jam with “tricky bits” that helped differentiate the likes of Don’t Need It, Supertouch/Shitfit and Pay To Cum.

“The Bad Brains sound was a combination of plain old D.C. soul, [jazz fusion group] Return To Forever technical shit, and The Damned mixed with the Ramones with a little nudge from The Dickies on the speed,” he explains.

The song’s immense speed didn’t happen overnight, though.

“I created Pay To Cum as a takeoff of the Ramones’ approach – it was actually a lot slower at first,” he says. “It got faster as we went on. There’s a cowbell in that original version, and you realise as it gets faster there’s no way you can turbo-bang a cowbell – it’ll only go so fast!”

With less cowbell and more speed, Pay To Cum helped plant the roots of hardcore punk, and with it thrash metal. Bad Brains bridged those worlds, inspiring everyone from Minor Threat to Metallica, Killswitch Engage and Dave Grohl among countless others, occasionally popping up on bills with the likes of Slayer to remind everyone who did it first.

“All the metal dudes could play and had pretty girlfriends,” Darryl concedes. “But they started coming to our shows and saw how energised little bald punk kids were, and realised they had to get up and get on it!”

Originally published in Metal Hammer issue 388 (July 2024)

(LouderSound)