A Band Called Death Page #4

to put a release on us.

David just stood there and calmly asked

them, he says, "Can I have the masters?"

(LAUGHS)

"Why not just give us our music

and let us walk?"

And Brian said, "Hey, no problem."

SPEARS:
And I was able to

arrange to get the masters

turned back over to the group.

So we took those master

tapes that he gave us

and we printed up 50045s.

BOBBY:
And the reason

we pressed those 500,

'cause we wanted to get radio airplay.

And it was frustrating, because the rock

stations that we loved, they would play it,

but very sporadically.

We never could get them to play it enough

to really make a difference.

And it would happen every time

we'd tell somebody.

They'd say,

"Well, what's the name of the band?"

And, you know, we'd kind of...

(SIGHS HEAVILY)

Do one of those and then we'd tell them

the name of the band.

And we'd get the same old reaction

that we were expecting to get.

You know, rejection.

BOBBY:
We ended up having to just kind

of get rid of all of our equipment,

'cause we needed money at the time.

We gotta bail ourselves

out of a number of things.

And what happened was,

our distant relative,

his name was Donald Knight,

he says, "Well, you know, why don't

you guys just come up to New England

"for a couple of weeks,

just clear your head?"

We didn't even know

what he was talking about.

We thought he was talking

about flying across the Atlantic.

We're like, "New England?

What'd you do with the old one?"

We took him up on that offer,

because basically there was nothing else

left to do in Detroit.

DANNIS:
So we came up here

on a two-week vacation,

and we just never went back.

We found apartments,

and then we eventually

bought even musical gear.

DANNIS:
When we first got to Burlington,

David, he wanted to introduce

the town to the band.

Well, David went down the street.

On each pole,

he put a Death poster.

So I think he had

about 500 of them printed up.

DANNIS:
I mean, the cops must've just went

by every pole he was at

and just grabbed them off,

'cause when the cop came to the door,

he said, "This is a peaceful town,

"and we don't have gangs here."

That's when I said,

"Dave, you better come to the door, man.

"They think you're about

to start a street gang."

You know, he says,

"No, man, this is a musical group.

"This is all about music."

He says, "Well, if you wanna get anywhere

around here, you'll change that name."

You know, after he left, I just closed the door and

I said "That's it, man. I'm just tired of it."

I'm tired of the rejection,

I'm tired of the snide comments.

I'm done With it.

BOBBY:
We just understood

that we tried our best with Death.

We hung in there from '73 to 1980,

dealing with rejection for our name,

rejection for our music,

rejection for the fact that

we were black and playing rock 'n' roll,

rejection for the fact

that our music was too fast,

rejection for... So many rejections.

DANNIS:
David, he felt the rejection

as well as we did. I mean, he knew.

I think it was David who came up

with the name 4th Movement.

We didn't even listen to the concept

or why he came up with the name.

It wasn't Death, so me and Bob

was just like, "Yeah, okay.

"That's a good name."

(SONG PLAYING)

We just decided to take

our rock 'n' roll sound

and give it a spiritual concept.

(SONG PLAYING)

(LAUGHS)

DANMS:
There was a campus newspaper

and the name of the article was,

"Rock 'n' Roll, Hold The Religion, Please."

And they were saying

how good the music was,

but how they didn't like the religious

aspects that went along with it.

BOBBY:
After all the rejection that

we'd been through with Death,

there's this big old article

in The Cynic saying,

"Nice music, hold the religion,"

with our picture by it.

DANNIS:
Dave took it really personally,

and I think he had just got fed up

with the rejection, too.

That's when the homesick

for Detroit thing started to brewing up.

He wanted to go back to Detroit.

He really, literally,

wanted to bottle up everything

and take it with him, including us.

He wanted us to fold up.

But at the time, I mean,

I had brought my wife, Tammy.

And she had just had a little baby,

little Bobby.

We just didn't wanna pack up

and go back to Detroit, you know?

So David went back to Detroit.

Well, lam Heidi Simpson,

and David Hackney was my late husband.

Well, let me see.

Well, we moved from

Vermont to Detroit in 1982.

He wasn't working at that time.

I know that.

He was staying at home

and playing his music to himself

and trying to figure out

what he wanted to do himself.

He just wasn't no typical working person that,

like, out there, doing the 9:00 to 5:00.

And he was a dreamer.

(CLEARS THROAT) He liked, uh...

He would sit out on the porch

and just look in the...

In the clouds in the sky

and make pictures out of the clouds.

(INDISTINCT)

BOBBY:
We went for about two or three years

without a guitar player.

Yeah, we would practice the same way

every day that we always did.

DANNIS:
'Cause we was always on the idea

that David would come back.

As time went on, we finally realized,

"Well, maybe Dave's not coming back."

So me and Bob stayed here

and that's how Lambsbread was born.

(REGGAE PLAYING)

BOBBY:
We looked at each other and said,

"Man, this is a no-brainer."

People love this music.

It's ruled by the bass and drums

and that's all we got right now.

So it was a no-brainer.

That's how we gravitated to reggae.

(REGGAE PLAYING)

DANNIS:
We was able to find ourselves

a booking agent

and get on the road as Lambsbread.

(REGGAE PLAYING)

We love you people!

So somebody say

you wanna fire up some ganja!

Fire the ganja?

(SINGING)

DANNIS:
And we was actually glad that we

had put down the name Death

because we thought, okay,

now that we got rid of that, you know,

things are beginning to open up for us.

Let them know it's true. Come on!

DANNIS:
That might've rubbed David

the wrong way,

'cause at first he didn't

really take to the news

that me and Bob was forming a reggae band.

It was like, "Oh, well,

those cats done abandoned rock 'n' roll."

No, man, we were sitting back

waiting for you to come,

but you didn't come,

so we had to busy ourselves with something.

BOBBY:
I don't think he was comfortable

with the fact that

we traded in our rock 'n'

roll shoes for reggae.

You know, in his eyes, we were still Death.

BOBBY JR.:
When I was young, my father,

he was a reggae musician.

As a kid, that's all I knew...

I just knew them as reggae musicians.

And I just knew them as Lambsbread.

We did the same thing that our mom

and dad did for us.

We just made music available to them.

My Uncle Dannie taught me

all the basics of drumming,

which was really awesome.

DANNIS:
And I used to bring him

behind the drum set,

and I would put a stick in each of his

hands and kind of move his hands for him.

And then when Bob had his other sons...

When they saw how Bobby played the drums,

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