Bad Brains were a beautiful mess of a band, a crew of black D.C.-area hardcore fanatics with Rastafarian leanings and an astounding gift for taut, aggressive, snarling blasts of punk. Banned in D.C. spans their Eighties work: Early tracks such as "Pay to Cum," "I" and "Banned in D.C." display a band in unrestrained fury — quick, sinister guitar lines, unhinged drumming, lyrics just this side of comprehensible. Even when the group veered toward metal, on later songs such as "Re-Ignition," it never gave in to indulgence, never once aimed to be pretty.

“V.T.T.L.O.T.F.D.G.F.”

Quite a few musicians have utilized initials for song titles -- Michael Jackson's "P.Y.T.," Abba's "S.O.S.," Donald Fagen's "I.G.Y.," etc. But the more curiously initialed tune has to be "V.T.T.L.O.T.F.D.G.F.," short for "Voyage to the Land of the Freeze-Dried Godzilla Farts." Fishbone's original guitarist, Kendall Jones, explained to Rolling Stone, "When Norwood [Fisher] wrote it, he introduced it to the band saying, 'Man, I've been hearing about all these Nazi right-wing groups on the news saying the Holocaust was staged. So what if America said it never dropped two atom bombs on Japan, that it was actually Godzilla popping a couple off?' Only Norwood would come up with something that out." The same year "V.T.T.L.O.T.F.D.G.F." was released, the film Godzilla 1985 appeared in North America.