Tomorrow I'm going to NYC with 50 students and a handful of other HS teachers.
I'm a different person than the the 25 year old who moved to NYC. NYC is a different city than it was too...but whenever I drive into the city this album (with the title track) still is the sound track to my arrival...danced to it in Portland for a year or so arriving in NYC...but it still is the first sound track, aside from Denise Williams self titled album, that resonated as music of my generation in the city. Patti Smith was just enough older to not feel like mine, although I loved her and she played CBGBs.
But this was the new sound...the sound of the basement clubs where people still actually spun records and made beats on sythensizers. I'd often be one of a handful of white faces. I had many jazz musician friends who invited me to the after hours clubs and parties. They weren't called raves until another 10 years, but they were fun and fresh. Forever Grandmaster will by my #1 rapper. The one I listened to living in Brooklyn while I looked at the Twin Towers and walked to work over the Brooklyn Bridge to Astor Place or while I was looking down Cornelia Street while waiting for my unofficial Godmother, Margie, aka Max.
I must go to sleep, but let this whole album wash over and see what you think of the early rap I hold so dear. Good night, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, G'night! xo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2kpDqMGyzA&list=RDz2kpDqMGyzA#t=23
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