All Black rock band The Paradox being called the saviors of Punk rock.

[seabreeze80]

It's pop rock, but good luck to them.

 

[HarlemHottie]

Na but the industry may try to steal their style and market it towards a white demographic.

The Black ‘Godmother of Grunge’ Who Inspired Your Fav Bands​

Seattle’s Tina Bell is forgotten no more​

Stephanie Siek

Tina Bell. Photos courtesy of Scotty Ledgerwood.

When you think of grunge, do you picture a bunch of long-haired White guys in plaid shirts, singing about teenage angst and self-loathing? Time to expand that viewpoint. Standing above them all should be Tina Bell, a tiny Black woman with an outsized stage presence, and her band, Bam Bam. It’s only recently that the 1980s phenom has begun to be recognized as a godmother of grunge.

This modern genre’s sound was, in many ways, molded by a Black woman. The reason she is mostly unknown has everything to do with racism and misogyny. Looking back at the beginnings of grunge, with the preconception that “everybody involved” was White and/or male, means ignoring the Black woman who was standing at the front of the line.

Bam Bam was formed as a punk band in 1983 in Seattle. Bell, a petite brown-skinned spitfire with more hairstyle changes than David Bowie, sang lead vocals and wrote most of the lyrics. Her then-husband Tommy Martin was on guitars (the band’s name is an acronym of their last names: Bell And Martin), Scotty “Buttocks” Ledgerwood played bass, and Matt…

“For some reason a couple of skinheads are up front, calling her [the N-word] And all of the sudden, Bell grabs a microphone stand and she starts swirling it around her head like a lasso… She swung that fukkin’ thing around her head and about the fourth time, she smashed that son of a bytch.”

Bam Bam’s sound straddled the line between punk and something so new that it didn’t have a name yet. Their music combined a driving, thrumming bass line; downtuned, sludgy guitars…

Among those attending their shows: Future members of grunge bands like Nirvana (Kurt Cobain did a stint as a Bam Bam roadie), Soundgarden, Alice in Chains...