from run to rage

so a friend of mine wrote a piece about run dmc and how they affected him and how rap music looked and sounded to him back in the day. in turn, i took a stroll down memory lane myself, conjuring my own thoughts on run dmc and rap.

run dmc crashed onto the scene when i had just signed up for uncle sam's air force. i remember being in the air force firefighting academy, near the university of illinois in champaign, when i first heard it. autumn, 1985.

"cuase it's like that, and that's the way it is!"

that is the single line i really remember. i remember them introducing the world to the beastie boys and their ill communication record. i was in my dorm-style room on an air base in japan when my friend art burst into the room to tell me i needed to go down to his room with him real quick to hear this new rap group. he played brass monkey for me first and we danced around the room mocking a girl we had seen dancing in an aomori disco. despite the energy that came from this record, and the run dmc records and many of the early rap records, i resisted rap.

looking back i remind myself of john oates in that mtv round table discussion where madonna is talking about video adding to the art of music and oates is complaining that it takes away from the musicianship that could have made it to the record. . . (what a maroon.) but i looked at rap similiarly. it bugged me these artists were sampling the works of others to compose their song. i thought there was a low talent requirement as rap consisted of poetry spoken to a beat. yeah, i enjoyed sugar hill bunch's rapper's delight. i can rap most of that song myself, to this day. but i looked at it initially as a novelty song. i enjoyed looking at it that way and at that time, i could not imagine an entire genre springing up as rap. (there is something liberating about discovering the errors of one's own thought.)

later that year i bought the very special christmas release because u2 had it's christmas (baby please come home,) on it and i got a large shot of

"it's christmas time in hollis, queens, mom's cookin' chicken and collared greens!"

i still wasn't buying rap records, not the beasties, not run dmc, but i could enjoy a rap song here or there.

when i wasn't wearing enlisted green, i wore black on the outside 'cause black was how i felt on the inside. at that time, my world was exploding with discontent, the good kind of discontent that reminds you you are alive, the kind that allows you to overcome dominating adult figures of childhood, the kind that exposes the multitude of lies proffered throughout adolesence, the kind of discontent that urges one to question everything. i was listening to the smiths, (and u2 and the cure. . .) i identified more with morrissey crooning,

"i know i'm unloveable, you don't have to tell me,"

than the records i saw as party/good time oriented. and that's why the first rap act i really embraced, (read: "bought their records,") was public enemy. while my little brother got into nwa and hung posters of eazy e in my bedroom, i tried to persuade him to switch, (to no avail.) chuck d is still one of the most down, righteous, badass artists on the planet. and it was the political bend that drew me in.

"elvis, was a hero to most, elvis, was a hero to most, elvis, was a hero to most but he never meant shit to me!"

now that's the kind of rebellion i wanted. the rebellion that went right to the core of the establishment, of white, corporate america. later de la soul caught my fancy, and pm dawn, and then came rage, (or, ratm, if you will.) fuck all the other rappers and rap acts. i get into a 'whose the best rapper ever,' conversation with friends and i always say zack and they always laugh. it's like they don't think him a real rapper. but what rap does, where it has that ability to make you jump out of your seat like your ass is on fire, the way it makes your body contract and coil and flail about involuntarily because the rhythm of the rhyme is rhythm2, pounding beat2, funkify2, well, when the element of real rage, over real important things, is added to the equation, it's just that much more powerful. so when zack raps,

"i'm rollin' down rodeo with a shotgun, these people aint seen a brown-skinned man since their grandparents bought one,"

and tom morello follows on the guitar with those rythmic, scratching sounds, eh-enh, enh-enh-enh-enh-enh-enh-enh-enh-enh, eh-enh, enh-enh-enh-enh-enh-enh-enh-enh-enh. . .it represented the penultimate power of rap for me. and i adore this now defunct band. i love the way tom morello shared his harvard education with zack de la rocha and as a team, they constructed these wild-ass, angry diatribes against injustice. where dj jazzy jeff and the fresh prince made fun saying

"parents just don't understand,"

rage against the machine were a bit more direct and serious about what they had to say:

"fuck you i won't do what you tell me! . ."

when doug e said,

"lahdy dahddy, we love to pahdy,"

it was fun. you couldn't help but chime in about calling up your mother. but when zack said,

"fear is your only god on the radio-turn it off,"

it was a mantra for survival in this fear-stricken, corporate greed marketing overrun, society. it was a rapping, musical manifesto and if you were fortunate enough, as i was, to be in the hollywood palladium, right in front of the stage in the pit, when they kicked out the jams live, you would know the power of all rock and roll, of all music, and certainly of rap. i remember being in this crowd of sweaty bodies. i remember it at coachella, in the dry, hot, night-time desert air. i remember rage against the machine outside, post rain storm, at alpine valley for the tibetan freedom concert. (i remember looking back at a sea of white faces behind me bopping ever so slightly to the beat but seeming bewildered by these angry politicos.) i remember three times one summer seeing them open for u2: in denver the reception was cool but rage was in great form, in san diego they were typically good but in la, 100,000 people at the coliseum seemed more familiar and open to their tirades and for me, it was a love-in. u2 and rage. . . (all props to u2 by the way. thanks to them, [and opening for them over the years,] i have seen: lone justice, the pixies, public enemy, the sugarcubes, and rage against the machine.) still, it was in the parking lot of staples center for the 2000 democratic national convention where it was best, with al gore and a host of cronies inside. it is simply an amazing thing to pulse with a throng of would be combatants, in the pit for rage against the machine, che guevara peering out at us from morello's shirt, generallisimo marcos and the zapatiste rebellion in chiapas on our minds, hammering our weight back to the earth in time to the bass drum, fists pumping in the air in the name of causes, aggressive camaraderie, whispering at first.

"Brotha, did ya forget ya name? Did ya lose it on the wall Playin' tic-tac-toe? "

louder.

"Yo, check the diagonal Three million gone Come on Cause they're counting backwards to zero Environment"

ticking.

"The environment exceeding on the level Of our unconciousness For example What does the billboard say Come and play, come and play Forget about the movement "

screaming.

"Anger is a gift Freedom, Freedom, yeah right"

there never would have been a ratm had their not been a run dmc. i suppose it can be traced back further, to sugar hill bunch or blondie, just like the beatles and stones built on top of the bluesman of old, (and i'm sure they borrowed too.) (it's a bit like bono said, "every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a thief, all kill their inspiration and sing about the grief.") anyway, this conjuring run dmc takes me on a journey of my own, through my own memories of yore, that i so adore.

just before the end of the century i took a trip to wisconsin via chicago to see that tibetan freedom concert. (i think it was year 2?) it was a parade of excellent bands really, but when run dmc showed up on stage, i think the place was more rambunctious than when their protoges cum benefactors, the beastie boys, followed them. it was all right there for me. run dmc, the beastie boys and rage against the machine. i guess it came full circle. and rap is spawning its own genres now. i suppose this is the way of rock and roll. in the absence of new technology, without a discovery of another wavelength for our ears to hear on, there can only be fusions and variations for now. and there will always be cannibals and thieves.

"Killing in the name of. . ."