These are shots of Bad Brains playing at Valley Green in Washington D.C. in 1979 by the photographer
These are shots of Bad Brains playing at Valley Green in Washington D.C. in 1979 by the photographer Lucian Perkins. “Mostly shot wide, the images on the contact sheet illustrate just how immersive and sweat-drenched Bad Brains’ shows were, almost zero division between audience and band. The image of H.R. arms raised in euphoria between two cymbals is sheer power. Babylon turned on its head with seismic vibrations. At one point, a young African-American kid in the crowd grabs the mic, swept up in the moment. The look of shock and wonder on some of the faces in the audience is priceless. The night, equally formative and subversive, is now the stuff of legend.”…..“Perkins wasn’t a punk rock insider but he trusted his senses when it came to documenting culture. He worked at night at the Washington Post to develop the film, showing the images to Bob Woodward, the storied journalist who broke the Watergate scandal and, at the time, the Metro editor at The Washington Post. Woodward’s response: “Does this really exist in Washington?”It’s important to talk about the significance of this night in context to what was happening in the nation’s capital in the late 70’s/early 80’s. The 1968 riots (which began after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.) ushered in a decade of economic hardship and social division. “Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white—separate and unequal,” was the famous edict of the Kerner Commission. Subsequently, D.C. saw a massive demographic shift that branded DC as the “Chocolate City” in the 1970’s. On the cusp of the Reagan presidency. D.C.’s soul was a spilling out into the streets. Go-Go, D.C.’s answer to hip-hop developed during the mid-1970s but the political and social climate was nothing short of polarizing.Perkins photographed the Bad Brains and the Punk scene on and off from Sep of 1979 to Jan 1980. Valley Green meanwhile was razed in 1991, replaced by single family homes and townhouses—but the legacy of that one single night in Valley Green remains, mythologized on silver gelatin…”Source -- source link
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