The announcement that members of Bad Brains, Fishbone and Living Colour, three bands that defined my life as a rock and roll fan in the 1980s, would be performing together in a super-jam at this year’s AFROPUNK Festival, instantly took me back to the days when these groups were staples of the (Black) punk rock scene. This was a big deal. While most commercial Black artists of the time were limiting themselves to soul, funk or rap, these bands set their own courses and battled the naysayers. I was a “weirdo” Harlem kid who’d spent the ‘70s kickin’ out ”white boy” jams (Zeppelin, Queen, Kiss), before being turned-on by the strange (spitting, stage-diving) spectacle of the Sex Pistols via television news. So I was more than ready to see artists of color contribute to the changing musical landscape.

I ventured Downtown to then-popular NYC clubs like The Ritz, CBGB’s and Lone Star Café, where Bad Brains, Fishbone and Living Colour all played early gigs in front of mixed-race audiences more than ready to be enraptured by the emotion, energy, and defiant anger of this music. Each band possessing a charismatic lead vocalist unafraid of rejection, flinging themselves into the crowd, screeching beautifully while fronting his band’s controlled chaos. Amid the electric roar of guitars and the deep pockets of the drum and bass, the audience usually wound up as sweaty as the band.

Later, there’d be reviews in alternative papers or magazines, but nothing compared to the initial word-of-mouth excitement, first-hand tales of what we were witnessing. These shows marked the beginning of what would become the AFROPUNK community, a few hundred likeminded folks attending performances, growing steadily into a movement. It was reclamation. As Living Colour guitarist Vernon Reid told Spin journalist John Leland in 1986, “Rock is everyone’s music, but the origins of the music is Black and there’s no way you can get around that.”

http://www.afropunk.com/p...ory-of-bad

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I saw Living Colour live in my hometown Amsterdam back in 2008; they were already of a ripe age, I was 21 but as a child I had listened to their albums because my mother was a fan.

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I was so excited to see them play. Vernon, Will, and Doug all did amazing solos. It was an awesome experience. I'm not much of a concert goer, but I would not have wanted to miss this.

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Met and saw them all back in the day. Some of the coolest music ever made.

why do they keep teasing with Shade...rlease the f'in thing already...r they waitingfor a RNRhallof Fame induction?