Bad Brains to Be Embalmed Once More On Film

Given that, pace Obama, we're already in a rearguard fight against the insanely ubiquitous culture of our elders--the Rolling Stones, marijuana, VW buses--it's more than a bit demoralizing to see our cultural heroes aspire to the same plinth status. Above is a trailer for Bad Brains: The Movie, which, if you're counting, follows Afro-Punk and American Hardcore as the third major documentary to shoot reverent sperm in the direction of the Bad Brains, America's first and best hardcore band. While certain pundits named Rollins (or, say, Moby) have clearly long aspired to Boomer-type legitimacy, it doesn't get any easier to hear Ian MacKaye or Jon Joseph or Jimmy Gestapo or Lil' John talk endlessly about the "importance" of a band that once emphatically deflated notions of importance and legacy and posterity.

Keep in mind this is the man being worshiped here:

Now let's not dance on HR's grave (although his lithium-hippy space-proclamations in this trailer are now par for the course, and although he appeared to do his American Hardcore interview in the middle of crashing someone's wedding, and although I haven't seen anything convincing about him remaining anything less than a virulent homophobe, Build a Nation, etc). But what could possibly be the logic of getting the class of '81 back together again and again to talk about old times? Are there really people out there who need whatever putative virgin audiences may or may not even exist to know that there still exists a band called Bad Brains, who were maybe the best band a man named Henry Rollins ever saw? [Via Daily Swarm]