Bobby Sullivan is a musician and activist. He grew up in the

Washington, DC ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan ...

punk Punk or punks may refer to: Genres, subculture, and related aspects * Punk rock, a music genre originating in the 1970s associated with various subgenres * Punk subculture, a subculture associated with punk rock, or aspects of the subculture s ...

scene. Forming

Soulside Soulside, also spelled Soul Side, was an American post-hardcore band from the greater Washington, D.C. area. The original name of the band was Lunchmeat which was formed by high school students Bobby Sullivan, Chris Thomson, Scott McCloud and A ...

in 1983, their first release under the name Lunch Meat was a split 7" with

Dave Grohl David Eric Grohl (born January 14, 1969) is an American musician. He is the founder of the rock band Foo Fighters, in which he is the lead singer, guitarist, and principal songwriter. Prior to forming Foo Fighters, he was the drummer of gru ...

's first band, Mission Impossible. After the first 7", all their work (three albums and another 7") was produced by

Ian MacKaye Ian Thomas Garner MacKaye (; born April 16, 1962) is an American musician. Active since 1979, he is best known as the co-founder and owner of Dischord Records, a Washington, D.C.-based independent record label and the frontman of hardcore punk ...

and released on

Dischord Records Dischord Records is a Washington, D.C.-based independent record label specializing in punk rock. The label is co-owned by Ian MacKaye and Jeff Nelson, who founded Dischord in 1980 to release ''Minor Disturbance'' by their band The Teen Idle ...

. Soulside toured extensively in the US, Canada, and Mexico, and toured Europe in 1989, including Eastern Europe. Soulside were the only American band to play at one of the illegal punk shows held in East Berlin in the 1980s, shows put on in tolerant Lutheran churches against the wishes of the dictatorship and its security organs such as the Stasi. The shows normally featured banned East German groups, and only rarely did international bands appear, traveling into East Berlin on tourist visas and playing in borrowed gear. After Soulside's split, Sullivan formed 7 League Boots in Boston, a band which blended reggae and rock. After releasing two 7"s and one album on Constant Change/Cargo Records, they broke up and Sullivan joined Rain Like The Sound Of Trains in DC, before forming Sevens with his brother Mark Sullivan. Both bands released albums produced by

Tim Kerr Timothy E. Kerr (born January 5, 1960) is a Canadian former professional ice hockey right winger who played 13 seasons in the National Hockey League (NHL) for the Philadelphia Flyers, New York Rangers and Hartford Whalers. Known for his goal-sco ...

. In his later years, Sullivan became an activist. Mentored by Eric Weinberger, a

Civil Rights Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from infringement by governments, social organizations, and private individuals. They ensure one's entitlement to participate in the civil and political life of ...

activist who had been on the

Freedom Rides Freedom Riders were civil rights activists who rode interstate buses into the segregated Southern United States in 1961 and subsequent years to challenge the non-enforcement of the United States Supreme Court decisions '' Morgan v. Virginia ...

, he worked with

Food Not Bombs Food Not Bombs (FNB) is a loose-knit group of independent collectives, sharing free vegan and vegetarian food with others. The group believes that corporate and government priorities are skewed to allow hunger to persist in the midst of abundance ...

(soup kitchens for the homeless) for five years in DC and Boston. He also helped form the DC chapter of the

Anarchist Black Cross The Anarchist Black Cross (ABC), formerly the Anarchist Red Cross, is an anarchist support organization. The group is notable for its efforts at providing prisoners with political literature, but it also organizes material and legal support for c ...

, a political prisoner support network, giving him close relationships with Ramona Africa from the

MOVE Move may refer to: People *Daniil Move (born 1985), a Russian auto racing driver Brands and enterprises * Move (company), an online real estate company * Move (electronics store), a defunct Australian electronics retailer * Daihatsu Move Gov ...

Organization and various former

Black Panthers The Black Panther Party (BPP), originally the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, was a Marxism-Leninism, Marxist-Leninist and Black Power movement, black power political organization founded by college students Bobby Seale and Huey P. New ...

and

Weather Underground The Weather Underground was a Far-left politics, far-left militant organization first active in 1969, founded on the Ann Arbor, Michigan, Ann Arbor campus of the University of Michigan. Originally known as the Weathermen, the group was organiz ...

members. Today Bobby still makes music with Soulside and recently put out a book calle
Revolutionary Threads: Rastafari, Social Justice and Cooperative Economics
2018).

References

Washington Post interview about Soulside reunion - Dec. 2014Bandwidth coverage of 2nd album's reissue on vinyl - 2014Interview on 24 Hours blog about the Prison Ministry - 2013
* ''Dance of Days'' by Mark Andersen & Mark Jenkins pages 169, 188, 211, 217-218, 232, 284-85, 275, 357, 383, 425, Akashic Books 2009. * ''Banned In DC'' by Cynthia Connoly, Leslie Clague & Sharron Cheslow, Sun Dog Propaganda, 1998. Lest. * '' American Hardcore: A Tribal History'' by

Steven Blush Steven Blush is an American author, journalist, record collector and film maker who is best known for his book ''American Hardcore'' and the movie of the same name. Blush has written five books, is the founder of ''Seconds'' magazine and has w ...

pages 52, 175,

Feral House Feral House is an American book publisher founded in 1989 by Adam Parfrey and based in Port Townsend, Washington. Early history The company's first book was '' The Satanic Witch'' (1989; originally published in 1971 by Dodd, Mead & Company) by A ...

2010. * ''The Dave Grohl Story: Nirvana, Foo Fighters'' by Jeff Apter. * ''Visual Vitriol'' by David Ensminger page 110, University Press of Mississippi, 2011. * ''This is a Call: The Life & Times of Dave Grohl'' by Paul Brannigan, Da Capo Press. * ''The Philosophy of Punk'' by Craig O'Hara page 60, AK Press 1999. {{DEFAULTSORT:Sullivan, Bobby Living people American punk rock musicians Year of birth missing (living people)