Old School

dave-kool-moe-dee

Here is one of the things about being a packrat who never throws things away. When you lose a lot of weight, you can fit in your old clothes because unlike normal people you never got rid of the things that didn’t fit. That means in some cases you may have some really old concert shirts that are still hanging around.

What I am wearing here is not some ironic hipster artifact. I bought this at a concert at the Omni in Atlanta in what must have been spring of 1988. “Wild Wild West” was still a big hit at the time of the show, so it couldn’t have been much after that. This was right around the height of my attending rap shows. I saw Public Enemy multiple times, Run DMC, DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince, Eric B and Rakim, Stetsasonic, Doug E. Fresh, Whodini, BDP. My one big regret is never seeing the Fat Boys. To this day, every time I am in Myrtle Beach and see a restaurant sign that says “All You Can Eat”, I hear the song in my head and picture the video.

My rap going fell off a lot into the 90s. Basically, I was anti-correlated with white people interest in hip-hop. As that grew, I faded. I am proud of going to all of these shows (all of them at the Omni) with 10,000 or more people and being one of 100 white guys in the crowd. One of the upsides of attending T.W. Josey High School in Augusta GA for one year is that it let me be comfortable with being the only white person in a crowded room. It can be pretty fun. A large part of why I knew anything about the rap of that time is that the black kids at school treated me and my brother as projects and brought us up to speed. That was an era when disagreements were solved by the guys going into a break dance off. It was hilarious and much more entertaining than fist fights.

Although in the late 80s I was also attending punk and metal shows at the Metroplex a few blocks away, you can make a case that I have as much street cred for early hip-hop. If anyone questions that, I will note that I saw Krush Groove in the theater with my brother. It was packed and we were the only two white kids in the place. That predated by years the first time I attended a punk show. When I did start going, I might have worn this shirt to see The Jody Foster Army or The Circle Jerks and I probably wore an Anthrax shirt to this show. That’s how I rolled.