Zev Feldman’s New Label Time Traveler Recordings Kicks Off On Record Store Day Black Friday With Live At The Bayou, A Sizzling Set By Punk’s Influential Bad Brains

Exclusive Two-LP Package Arriving Nov. 28 Presents Ferocious, Previously Unreleased 1981-82 Concerts That Are the Powerful, Pioneering Washington, D.C., Quartet’s Earliest Officially Released Shows

Must-Hear Collection for Punk Aficionados Due on CD Dec. 5

Time Traveler Recordings, a new label founded by the award-winning “Jazz Detective” Zev Feldman as an outlet for music in other genres, blasts off on Record Store Day Black Friday with Live at the Bayou, an exclusive, limited two-LP set of blazing early concerts by Washington, D.C.’s potent, influential punk unit Bad Brains.

The Nov. 28 release — which will be succeeded on Dec. 5 by a CD edition — captures the four-piece unit in ferocious early form during appearances at the titular Georgetown club on July 14, 1980, and March 15, 1981. The 23 tracks comprise the earlier live performances to receive legitimate release, and are being issued with the full cooperation of the band.

The super-heated collection features the feisty, outspoken Black quartet — vocalist H.R. (Paul Hudson), guitarist Dr. Know (Gary Miller), bassist Darryl Jenifer, and drummer Earl Hudson (H.R.’s brother) — ripping through their early repertoire, much of which formed the basis for the group’s classic first two studio albums: the self-titled debut set issued in 1982 by cassette-only label ROIR and Rock for Light, the 1983 sophomore offering produced by Ric Ocasek of the Cars.

Highlights include renditions of Bad Brains’ self-released single “Pay to Cum” and such linchpin tracks as “Big Take Over,” “Attitude,” “Sailin’ On,” “At the Movies,” and a number that defined their status in the local clubs of the era, “Banned in D.C.”

Feldman, who himself resides in the D.C. area, says, “I’m very excited to announce this new Bad Brains release on my new label, Time Traveler Recordings. For me, this is a label that observes no boundaries in terms of genres. It’s all about bringing important music that deserves to be heard to the people. When I first heard about these recordings I knew immediately they were incredibly important. So I connected with Darryl Jenifer of Bad Brains, and he expressed interest in seeing this come out. It’s been an honor to collaborate with one of the most important bands in punk rock history and one that continues to influence generations that have come up since them.”

Jenifer says, “When I first heard Live at the Bayou I was instantly thrown back in time, I could feel every reflex in my playing, I can hear every struggle, and I instantly relived the moments, the breaks, the riffs. I could hear the PMA and dedication of THE BAD BRAINS.”

Originally formed in 1977 as a quintet playing electric jazz fusion in the manner of Mahavishnu Orchestra, Bad Brains soon gravitated to the burgeoning punk sound boiling over in London, New York, and Los Angeles and, after witnessing a live show by Bob Marley and the Wailers, they embraced the spiritual tenets of Jamaican Rastafarianism and the riddims of reggae.

Though the band was from the first lumped in with the explosive sound of hardcore, then developing on the West Coast by such new bands as Black Flag, TSOL, and Dead Kennedys, their excursions into power-chorded, bottom-heavy metal (exemplified on Live at the Bayou by a cranked-up cover of Black Sabbath’s “Paranoid”) and the jazz-tinged outbursts of Dr. Know’s playing (in the manner of John McLaughlin and Pete Cosey of Miles Davis’ ‘70s groups) resisted such easy pigeonholing.

Bad Brains attracted rowdy crowds at their early D.C. shows, which marked the first detonations of local punk, and most of the local venues declined to offer them repeat bookings. But a long-lived local venue offered them the stage for the first time in June of 1979.

Founded in 1953 at 3135 K Street as a showcase for Dixieland jazz, the Bayou over time was the home of rock ’n’ roll show bands, strippers, and, by the mid-‘70s, touring U.S. groups (including the Ramones) and developing acts from the U.K. (like U2, who played their second American show there). D.C. punk bands like the Slickee Boys and the Insect Surfers greased the skids for the arrival of Bad Brains’ high-energy brand of feral punk at the Bayou.

In a 2013 documentary about the venue that aired on the city’s PBS outlet WETA, Ian MacKaye — the founder of D.C. hardcore unit Minor Threat and later the important local independent imprint Dischord Records — recalled the impact of Bad Brain’s debut show there, opening for one of England’s first punk bands.
“In June of ’79,” MacKaye said, “the Damned were going to play the Bayou, and Bad Brains were opening. Now, this is a show that I’d have to be at, we would all have to be there, but the Bayou at the time was 18 and up. We had a neighborhood friend and he was  a bit of a hustler, and he had managed to steal a stack of IDs off his commander’s desk. Using my mother’s Polaroid, we took pictures of ourselves, we cut our heads out, put ‘em on the ID, and then we went to the gig. That show was a life-changer.”

The encyclopedic 2001 volume American Hardcore states definitively, “East Coast hardcore begins with Bad Brains.” Their opening shots can be heard, loudly, in the truly historic shows heard on Live at the Bayou.

For more information please contact:

Matt Hanks / Shore Fire Media

Ph: 718.522.7171 ext. 42 / mhanks@shorefire.com