Get Up and Go

Lessons in Freedom and the Power to Produce / 9

others with what they were doing. When I was fourteen, I went to the Wichita Public Library with my mother and two siblings, and I checked out a CD by an all-African-American punk band from 1979, called the Bad Brains . My older brother Matthew had gotten me and my sister in the habit of looking for new independent music, and I was struck by the intensity of their music and the power of their message. Bad Brains were four young black men living in poverty in the inner city in Washington D.C., and they have grown to be one of the most outspoken, positive, and influential groups in independent music history. Their album Black Dots was all recorded at one time (to a cassette tape in the bass player’s home, with no budget) and while I sat in my own room listening, their song Attitude addressed specifically one of my strong feelings as a young believer: that our attitudes about who we are and what we do make all the difference in our ability to accomplish our goals: Don’t care what you may say, we’ve got our attitude! Don’t care what you may do, we’ve got our attitude! Hey, we’ve got our PMA! We’ve got our attitude, what in the world are you gonna do? ~ taken from Attitude , off the Black Dots LP