I Against I

I remember abuot twenty years ago realising that I didn't want to attempt to collect Bad Brains records. Someone on HYE had a huge long list of Bad Brains records, which made me appreciate how many versions of all the records there were, and it felt like something only a madman would get involved with. So it's kinda funny that here I am in 2026 and I have just bought my third Bad Brains record in as many months.

A few weeks ago I picked up a copy of 'Rock For Light' on gold vinyl and then not long after chanced upon a copy of the live LP on green on eBay for cheap. Last week I went to eBay and searched for Bad Brains and spotted a green vinyl copy of 'I Against I' with no bids and three hours to go. Three hours later and I sneaked in a last second bid and I won it as the only bidder.

I got this for what felt like a really good price. I think this was a case of a bad listing, where the lead photo of the record was the front cover only, and the item title misspelled 'vinyl' as 'vynil'. Probably these two factors together meant that fewer people spotted this than otherwise may have. So not a great result for the seller, but it made me very happy. You can't beat a bargain.

I listened to this thinking 'I think this might be my favourite Bad Brains record' and then, around halfway thruogh, I decided that I must have dreamt this, and that it is probably is my least favourite. It starts out really strong, with that awesome intro (helpfully titled 'intro'), but after the third song ('House Of Suffering') it just kinda plods along a bit. It doesn't have anywhere near the energy of the previous records, nor the ones that followed it. Ironically though, its one of the more collectible records with a few different colour vinyl options (see Ralf's post). And whilst I still don't really intend to collect Bad Brains records, I feel that I could make an exception for this one if any other cheap copies fall in front of me.