Cool Proto Punk

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The band is Death, it was the Hackney brothers Bobby,Hackney, and Dannis.

I'm particularly surprised because I saw early punk as a pretty lily white phenomenon, and these guys are black from Detroit.

My Image of Punk is that it came from the UK, California, and New York, as personified by the Sex Pistols, the Dead Kennedys, and the Ramones.

You can get a cliff notes version of their career in this New York Times review of the recent Renaissance that the band has been experiencing.

In their first incarnation, their recption by local crowds was less than enthusiastic:

Death began playing at cabarets and garage parties on Detroit’s predominantly African-American east side, but were met with reactions ranging from confusion to derision. “We were ridiculed because at the time everybody in our community was listening to the Philadelphia sound, Earth, Wind & Fire, the Isley Brothers,” Bobby said. “People thought we were doing some weird stuff. We were pretty aggressive about playing rock ’n’ roll because there were so many voices around us trying to get us to abandon it.”

It's a fascinating bit of musical history.