Aural Robert

Playing an astonishingly original mix of reggae and thrashy punk rock, Bad Brains released their self-titled, cassette-only 1982 debut on ROIR records. Punk rock is notorious for eschewing well-recorded music in favor of lo-fi murk, and that original tape fit the pattern. But the next year, the turbulent foursome—guitarist Dr. Know, bassist Darryl Jenifer, drummer Earl Hudson, and vocalist H.R.—went into Synchro Sound in Boston with Ric Ocasek of The Cars and tracked Rock for Light, a huge step up in the quality of Bad Brains' recorded sound.

"Ric had said he would listen to Bad Brains on his tour bus," Jenifer told me in a recent interview. "One time we were playing in Boston, and he wanted to come down and see us. He gave us an amp. He kinda came in like an uncle. It's funny because I didn't really like The Cars. I was the most punk rock, and I was the youngest, so it was fashionable for me not to like The Cars. I was coming off 'disco sucks.' Then I was like, 'New Wave sucks.' If you got a skinny tie and polka-dot shirt, I didn't want to hear it! I was like Sid Vicious about that shit. But hey, we were like, somebody rich who is famous has interest in us. Let's go."

During the Rock for Light sessions with Ocasek, singer H.R. had some trouble with his vocal takes. Still, the album was released, though not many were sold. H.R. would later go into a studio in the D.C. area with Ocasek and recut the vocals. Then in 1991, Caroline Records reissued a remixed, remastered version of the album. Jenifer and Ocasek (now deceased) were in charge of the remix, but Jenifer doesn't recall the details. He does recall knowing that something wasn't right. "Some funny shit went down with that that I never really appreciated," Jenifer recalls. "It wasn't cool. No one in the band did that. It was like a mysterious blunder."

Flash forward 30 years, and enter ORG Music, which is reissuing the Bad Brains catalog on vinyl, and Dave Gardner, the engineer ORG hired to remaster the recordings.

"The Bad Brains records completely changed my life," Gardner said over the phone from California. "I saw the original band live and bought the records when they were new. I'd listened to The Clash, and I'd listened to The Who, and I really liked Jamaican music, but my entire world opened up around Rock for Light. It's an album I've always been fixated on."

Originally released on PVC Records, the original home to Big Star's Third/Sister Lovers album, the early-'90s Caroline version of Rock for Light, which is the version most fans know, has always been roundly dissed. While few could pinpoint exactly what was wrong, there were striking differences between the original PVC release and the Caroline reissue. Before he began to remaster the album, from PVC's digital safety copy of the original two-track master (recorded at 44.1kHz), Gardner decided to try to solve the mystery of the reissue album's compromised sound.

"There is general a sense that something isn't quite right with the 1991 remixed reissue," Gardner said. "My speculation, after spending 18 months poring over all the notes and paperwork—and there's no way to know for sure—is that there are a bunch of multitracks that were then copied to just a few reels that featured the preferred instrumental takes of each of the songs.

It is my understanding that H.R.'s vocals were then cut to those reels, and not at the Boston studio that The Cars owned. It was not uncommon to slow down or speed up the multitrack while recording to tape in order to allow a performer to nail a take that was escaping them rhythmically. Upon playback, the speed would be adjusted in the opposite direction to compensate.

"We are not talking about a tremendous speed change, but certainly one that could vary greatly depending on tempo, pitch, etc. ... If this did happen during the tracking of H.R.'s vocals, and then perhaps again at mix, without very detailed notes in regard to speed manipulation, you would never be able to get things right. However, there are no mix reels or notes left for the original mixes, which means that piecing together exactly what happened is largely impossible."

After more than a year trying to correct the "mysterious blunder," working from the 1983 mix, Gardner is pleased with his role in returning the album to its original form, albeit with clearer, better-defined sound. The burnt orange 180gm LPs were pressed at Furnace Record Pressing in Alexandria, Virginia.

"Remastering is like a single-lens reflex camera. The artist, producer, and original source is the image, and the mastering engineer is the big hand that comes in and turns the focal ring. I wasn't trying to dramatically alter the material as much as I was trying to narrow the distance between the listener and the band."

Why the 1991 remix proceeded even after they knew they didn't have all the source material is also a mystery lost to history. Jenifer, who says he's always had problems with the final mixes on the album, is cautiously positive about the new reissues. "Bad Brains is rooted in [Black] Sabbath, Return to Forever, The Damned, The Ramones, and early British punk like Generation X. Remastering is like a shoeshine. I listen to the overall luster of the records. I enjoy more about Rock for Light now. The sound, the groove there, is sort of at a classic level."