Death & Rebirth

For us vintage record collectors, there's always a list of fabled vinyl relics that urges us onward, whether our treasure hunts take us to the garage sales of Boyle Heights or the flea markets of Titan.  Every time we flip through a stack of cardboard sleeves, at least some small part of us is hoping, against all odds, to find one of these Golden Fleeces or Holy Grails.  Some of them are rare editions of well-known masterpieces, like an original track pressing of The Freewheelin'  Bob Dylan or a Butcher Cover edition of The Beatles' Yesterday and Today.  But my personal quest visions have always revolved around more obscure 45s, garage rock rarities like the Hush Puppies' "Hey, Stop Messing Around" or Denise and Company's "Boy, What'll You Do Then," singles on forgotten record labels that only ever printed a few hundred (or dozen) copies to begin with.

For many years, one of my favorite, nearly-impossible-to-find records was a 7-inch called "Politicians in My Eyes" by the band Death.  Death was a visionary protopunk trio from Detroit, made up of the brothers David, Bobby, and Dannis Hackney.  They recorded an album's worth of tracks in the mid-seventies, but their iconoclastic sound (and, according to legend, their refusal to change their decidedly non-commercial name) alienated them to record labels.  In 1976, Death put two songs from its studio sessions on a self-released single ("Politicians" and its B-side, "Keep on Knocking").  500 copies were pressed.

The Hackney brothers moved to Vermont in 1977, switched to a gospel rock sound, and began performing under a new name.  For thirty years, Death disappeared into obscurity.  Their audacious sound, however, could not be suppressed, and gradually their single developed a cult following among record hounds.  Those of us who managed to discover the record were treated to a raucous, hard-driving sound that seemed to defy all established geographic and historical narratives of the birth of punk.

In 2008, Bobby Hackney's son Julian heard "Politicians in My Eyes" at a party in San Francisco.  Though neither his father nor his uncles had ever told him about their original band, he recognized his father's voice on the record and set out to learn more about Death.  When a Google search revealed the single's cult status, he told his father.  Bobby Hackney had no idea that the record had become a sought-after collector's item.

Bobby dug the Death master tapes out of his attic and listened to them for the first time in three decades.  When his son described the tapes' existence on a punk rock message board, a record producer named Robert Manis (who had paid $900 for a copy of "Politicians" just a few months earlier) seized on the opportunity.  Together, Manis and the Hackneys arranged for all of the original Death tracks to be released by Drag City records under the title "... For the Whole World to See."  Thirty-five years after they were recorded, Death's songs finally made it onto an album.

This weekend, Death will be playing Los Angeles for the very first time.  The gifted Bobbie Duncan will be subbing on guitar for David Hackney, who died in 2000.  (Before he passed away, David entrusted his brothers with the Death master tapes, telling them, "The world's going to come looking" for them one day.) You can see Death, along with Sic Alps and RTX, at Echoplex this Saturday, February 26th.

For more on the story of Death, check out:
This Band Was Punk Before Punk Was Punk, The New York Times
Detroit Punk Band Death's First LA Show, Off-Ramp with John Rabe