{"id":7775,"date":"2026-01-02T14:30:00","date_gmt":"2026-01-02T14:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/deep-cut-friday-at-the-atlantis-by-bad-brains\/"},"modified":"2026-01-02T14:30:00","modified_gmt":"2026-01-02T14:30:00","slug":"deep-cut-friday-at-the-atlantis-by-bad-brains","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/deep-cut-friday-at-the-atlantis-by-bad-brains\/","title":{"rendered":"Deep Cut Friday: \u2018At the Atlantis\u2019 by Bad Brains"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<figure><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static.spin.com\/files\/2025\/11\/GettyImages-1224133746.jpg\" width=\"1200\" height=\"802\" alt=\"Dr. Know and Darryl Jenifer of Bad Brains in 1987. (Credit: David Corio\/Redferns)\"><figcaption>Dr. Know and Darryl Jenifer of Bad Brains in 1987. (Credit: David Corio\/Redferns)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><em>Each week, SPIN digs into the catalogs of great artists and highlights songs you might not know for our Deep Cut Friday series.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>More from Spin:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.spin.com\/2026\/01\/horror-show-blumhouses-new-film-takes-on-the-living-dead\/\">Horror Show: Blumhouse\u2019s New Film Takes on the Living Dead<\/a>\n\t\t<\/li>\n<li>\n\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.spin.com\/2026\/01\/outtakes-rollins\/\">Outtakes: Rollins<\/a>\n\t\t<\/li>\n<li>\n\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.spin.com\/2025\/12\/the-40-best-albums-from-the-last-40-years-that-you-probably-didnt-hear-but-shouldve\/\">THE 40 BEST ALBUMS FROM THE LAST 40 YEARS THAT YOU PROBABLY DIDN\u2019T HEAR (BUT SHOULD\u2019VE)<\/a>\n\t\t<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>In ancient Greek literature, the lost city of Atlantis was a fictional island that sank into the Atlantic Ocean. In late \u201970s Washington, D.C., Atlantis was briefly the namesake of a key venue for the city\u2019s punk scene, which itself was the namesake of a song from one of the scene\u2019s most beloved bands. Appropriately, that song remained lost, or at least unreleased, for over a decade after it was recorded.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-4-3 wp-has-aspect-ratio\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<lite-youtube videoid=\"-UT4CFfHv9I\" style=\"bottom: 0; height: 100%; left: 0; position: absolute; right: 0; top: 0; width: 100%; max-width:100%;\"><\/lite-youtube>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<p>The Atlantis was the name of a club on F Street in downtown Washington, D.C. from 1977 to 1979, and some of the earliest Bad Brains shows took place there. The first time the quartet recorded a demo at Inner Ear Studios, which at the time was just a 4-track in Don Zientara\u2019s basement, their repertoire included \u201cAt the Atlantis.\u201d Every line of the song ends with \u201cat the Atlantis tonight,\u201d although frontman Paul \u201cH.R.\u201d Hudson\u2019s vocal performance is such a blur that it\u2019s hard to discern any other lyrics for sure\u2014the lyric transcription site <a href=\"https:\/\/genius.com\/Bad-brains-at-the-atlantis-lyrics\" target=\"_blank\">Genius<\/a> asserts that he simply repeats \u201cWe\u2019re living at the Atlantis tonight.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>By the end of 1979, the Atlantis had closed for remodeling, and Bad Brains, running out of venues where they were welcome in their hometown, had written the anthem \u201cBanned in D.C.\u201d and relocated to New York City. Remarkable video footage of a Bad Brains show at CBGBs in December \u201979 features H.R. doing a backflip in a suit and tie during a blazing performance of \u201cAt the Atlantis.\u201d<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-4-3 wp-has-aspect-ratio\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<lite-youtube videoid=\"4briQ9beWUs\" style=\"bottom: 0; height: 100%; left: 0; position: absolute; right: 0; top: 0; width: 100%; max-width:100%;\"><\/lite-youtube>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/setlist.fm\/\" target=\"_blank\">Setlist.fm<\/a>\u2019s last recorded instance of Bad Brains performing \u201cAt the Atlantis\u201d was in March 1980. Two months later, the Atlantis reopened as the Nightclub 9:30, eventually relocating to a larger building under the name 9:30 Club. Bad Brains never recorded \u201cAt the Atlantis\u201d for any of the band\u2019s proper studio albums, perhaps simply because the club they wrote the song about was no longer called the Atlantis. So most of the world never heard the song until the 1979 demo was released as <em>Black Dots<\/em> in 1996. In 2023, the owners of the 9:30 Club opened a smaller nearby venue that was named the Atlantis in tribute to the \u201970s club. Bad Brains, who last toured in 2017, have never performed at the new Atlantis.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-three-more-essential-bad-brains-deep-cuts\"><strong>Three more essential Bad Brains deep cuts:<\/strong><\/h2>\n<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-attitude\"><strong>\u201cAttitude\u201d<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>\u201cAttitude\u201d was the first of several Bad Brains songs where H.R. sang about \u2018P.M.A.\u2019\u2014as in \u201cpositive mental attitude,\u201d a concept popularized in the 1930s by self-help author Napoleon Hill.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-re-ignition\"><strong>\u201cRe-Ignition\u201d<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>\u201cRe-Ignition\u201d from 1986\u2019s <em>I Against I<\/em> has become an unlikely hip-hop staple, sampled in songs by Chubb Rock, Lil Jon, and 2 Black 2 Strong.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-until-kingdom-comes\"><strong>\u201cUntil Kingdom Comes\u201d<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>2007\u2019s <em>Build a Nation<\/em> features some of the band\u2019s finest traditional reggae material. \u201cUntil Kingdom Comes\u201d was bolstered by a lush arrangement including a horn section, keyboardist Jamie Saft, and percussionist \u2018Nathaniel Hornblower\u2019 (an alias of the album\u2019s producer, Adam Yauch of the Beastie Boys).<\/p>\n<p>To see our running list of the top 100 greatest rock stars of all time, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.spin.com\/2021\/07\/the-greatest-rock-stars-of-all-time\/?utm_source=yahoo&amp;utm_medium=bottomlink&amp;utm_campaign=yahoolink\">click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div style=\"margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;\" class=\"sharethis-inline-share-buttons\" ><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dr. Know and Darryl Jenifer of Bad Brains in 1987. (Credit: David Corio\/Redferns) Each week, SPIN digs into the catalogs of great artists and highlights songs you might not know&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4568,2152,24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7775","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bad-brains","category-deep-cut-friday","category-pushly"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7775","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7775"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7775\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}