Formed as Mind Power a year earlier, it wasn't until their early vocalist Sid McCray showed up at Darryl's apartment in SE D.C. with his records and safety pins that the band transformed itself into the progressive punk outfit now known as Bad Brains. They were one dose Dead Boys topped off with a couple of shots of the Damned mixed with the Sex Pistols and the Clash.
	All the material on Black Dots was written while the band lived together in a house on Bayway in Maryland. Doc had acquired the house from the manager of the Rustler Steak House where he had been working. HR and Darryl got jobs there as well, though they didn't last and ended up washing cars at the dealership down the street. Earl was washing clothes at the community hospital. Doc then got a job for himself and HR at Atlantic Research and Development, a bomb factory that manufactured Stinger and MX missiles. Darryl, without a driver's license, would pick them up from there at midnight and take them to rehearsal at the Bayway house.