Reaction issue 12

Reaction #12 out now! Contents of this issue were collected in the second half of 2019. A4 size, 92 pages.
To order: reactionzine@gmail.com / instagram: @xbencex_reaction_zine

Omegas interview by Pains fanzine

This interview is originally published in Pains fanzine, issue 6. Omegas photos by Justin Friskie and Lukas Mukas.

RIP, Sid McCray

Sid was the original singer of Bad Brains before HR, and the guy who turned them onto punk music. He wrote the legendary song called “The Regulator”, without him Bad Brains would not sound at all the way we know and love.

The band came together about 1977. The members of the Bad Brains first met each other at Central High School in the lower-income DC suburb of Capitol Heights, Maryland, where Earl and Dr. Know were in the same art and science classes. They were initially influenced by jazz-fusion and were originally called Mind Power. They had been bouncing around playing music since 1977 and doing backyard and basement parties at the house that they lived in on Bay Way in Maryland. But that all changed the day a friend of Darryl Jenifer’s paid a visit: “Sid McCray came over my house. He had safety pins and stuff all over him, and he had records – Ramones, Dead Boys, Generation X – I found to be kind of interesting. The cats couldn’t really play, but they had something to say.” Soon afterwards, Mind Power dropped the fusion and replaced it with punk, and changed their name to Bad Brains. Bad Brains immersed themselves in punk music and culture. In 1979, the Bad Brains did their first New York show at CBGB’s.