ALBUM: Party Time (1983)
MVC Rating: 3.5/$$
This is early, early rap, hip hop or whatever you want to call it.
I’d put this on at a party and the white boys would actually get up and dance. Throw in a little Grandmaster Flash and it was hopping around time. Bad dancing. (Except for me, of course.)
I remember once at a small dinner party at our house, I pulled out my rap collection of about three records, feeling kind of impressed with myself that I was on the cutting edge.
I think I put on “New York, New York (Big City of Dreams)” by Grandmaster Flash. This was early 1980s and we were living in Birmingham. This was the very inception of rap as a popular culture sort of thing. (That means white people were discovering it). Flash and Blow were pioneers, with “The Message” by Flash and “The Breaks” by Blow.
Again feeling a little too proud of myself, I asked a black colleague who was at the party how he liked it.
My colleague said he didn’t like rap. He liked hard rock, heavy metal.
Oops, one of those moments. Um, Mike I think it is time to flip the record on your STEREOtype!
Yes man, and we will be serving the fried fowl a little later.
But we were cool. He laughed.
I put on some Led Zeppelin.
Counting down my vinyl records before I die of brain disease.