There is a particular kind of record collector who lives for the moment when an almost forgotten seven inch turns out to be something extraordinary. Not necessarily valuable, though sometimes that is part of it, but important. A record that somehow slipped through the cracks.
“Politicians in My Eyes,” a raw, self released 45 from Detroit, is one of those records. The band was called Death. At the time, almost nobody heard it.
Death were three brothers: Bobby Hackney on bass and vocals, David Hackney on guitar, and Dannis Hackney on drums. They started playing together in Detroit in 1971, initially working in the funk and R&B tradition that surrounded them. Then they discovered the louder, more confrontational side of rock. The Who and Alice Cooper made an impression, and the brothers began moving in a very different direction.
By the mid 1970s, Death sounded unlike much else coming out of Detroit, or anywhere else. The songs were fast and jagged, with David's guitar pushed hard into distortion and Bobby's vocals sitting somewhere between soul, rock and outright fury. They were also three Black musicians making music that, years later, would be described as proto punk.
That label is useful, but only up to a point. Punk had not really been defined yet. Death were not trying to make “punk.” They were simply making the music they wanted to hear.
The name came from something much more personal. The brothers' father died after being struck by a drunk driver while he was on his way to help an injured coworker. David, the oldest of the three, became convinced that the band should be called Death. Bobby and Dannis were not initially comfortable with it, but David would not let the idea go.
In 1975, the brothers recorded seven songs at Detroit's United Sound Systems. The sessions produced the recordings that would eventually become the heart of Death's story. There was interest from Columbia Records, but the label wanted the brothers to change the band's name.
They refused.
It sounds almost too neat in retrospect: a young band given a chance at a major label career and throwing it away over its name. But that is essentially what happened. For David, the name was not a marketing decision. It meant something to him, and he was not willing to compromise on it.
The Columbia deal disappeared.
Death were simply ahead of a musical culture that did not yet have a place for what they were doing.
Death eventually pressed 500 copies of “Politicians in My Eyes” and “Keep on Knocking” themselves, on their own Tryangle Records label. The records were sold, but the band never broke through. By 1977, Death was over. Bobby and Dannis eventually moved to Vermont, where they played reggae in a band called Lambsbread. David remained in Detroit.
The recordings, however, survived.
David died of lung cancer in 2000. He never got to see what would happen to the music he had made with his brothers. But he had continued to believe that people would eventually find it.
They did.
The rediscovery came years later, helped along by the growing interest in obscure punk, garage rock and private press records. Bobby and Dannis' sons were also involved in music, and eventually the family began reconnecting with the recordings their fathers and uncles had made decades earlier.
In 2009, Drag City released the seven United Sound recordings as ...For the Whole World to See. Suddenly, music that had essentially disappeared was available to a new audience.
And people paid attention.
The story became part of a larger reconsideration of where punk came from. New York and London still dominate the conventional history, but Death complicates that story. Here were three Black brothers in Detroit making brutally energetic, stripped down rock years before punk had become a recognisable movement.
Calling them the “first punk band” makes for a great headline, but the more interesting truth is probably less tidy. Death were simply ahead of a musical culture that did not yet have a place for what they were doing.
The brothers eventually began performing again, with Bobby and Dannis carrying the music forward without David. Their story was also documented in the 2012 film A Band Called Death.
But the most remarkable part of the story is still the record itself.
A handful of songs made in Detroit in the mid 1970s. Five hundred copies of a single. A band that disappeared. Decades later, collectors, musicians and listeners finally finding it.
“Politicians in My Eyes” sounds less like a historical artifact than it should. It still feels immediate. Angry, strange, loud, alive.
Sometimes being ahead of your time means being celebrated as a visionary.
Sometimes it just means waiting thirty years for someone to find the record.