Bad Brains will release their long-sought-after first demo tape on November 6. Are You Ready: The First Studio Recording (Inner Ear - March 1979) arrives on vinyl LP, cassette, and digital formats via Trust Records.

Ian MacKaye newly remastered the recordings, which capture the Washington, D.C. punks at Inner Ear Studios in Arlington, Virginia, in March 1979. The tape includes early studio versions of six tracks: "Pay to Cum," "Don't Bother Me," "Black Dots," "Migraine," "Send No Flowers," and "Jamming at the Atlantis." "Pay to Cum" later became the band's debut 7-inch.

In a press statement, Bad Brains bassist Darryl Jenifer traced the origins of that song. "The riff for 'Pay to Cum' started as a stream of punk rock vibes fueled by the Ramones, The Damned, and Return to Forever," Jenifer said. "It was a gift that served as a springboard into our sound - sheer, straight-ahead three-chord mayhem with a few breaks and a stop. The title actually meant nothing to us; it was just a fun-loving play on words."

The release marks a rare new chapter for a band whose recent history has been shadowed by illness and loss. Bad Brains released their last album, Into the Future, in 2012. Since then, guitarist Dr. Know was hospitalized for cardiac arrest, and singer Paul "H.R." Hudson underwent brain surgery. In 2020, the band's original singer, Sid McCray, died.

Trust Records will precede the release with two Washington events. Jenifer and MacKaye will hold a conversation at D.C.'s Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library on November 5. The following day, November 6, an archival Bad Brains exhibition opens at the city's Lost Origins Gallery.

The demo predates the band's 1982 self-titled debut, which landed at No. 41 on a recent ranking of the 200 best albums of the 1980s. Are You Ready now gives listeners the earliest documented studio evidence of the band that would help define Washington's hardcore scene — and, with MacKaye at the mastering desk, the tape returns with a stamp from one of the scene's founding figures.