The Rockologist: Run-DMC - Live At Montreux 2001

It may surprise some people who read this space fairly regularly to learn that "The Rockologist" is actually a pretty big rap music fan. In particular, I'm quite partial to the so-called "old school" of rap (which is perhaps somewhat less surprising).

But in truth, it actually goes much deeper than that. You see, for a time during the eighties and nineties, I was basically known as something like "THE rap guy" (along with my partner Nasty Nes), here in Seattle. I wrote about rap exclusively for Seattle's music rag The Rocket, and as "The Shockmaster" I played it, along with my boy Nes, on "Seattle's only rap show in FM stereo," KCMU's Rap Attack.

The thing is though, I got into rap basically by accident. In the early eighties, I managed this record store in Tacoma, Washington called Penny Lane Records which had a very large clientele of blacks in the military. So out of necessity, I made a point of bringing in 12" singles of the then largely "underground" rap music phenomenon, mostly imported from the East Coast (where many of my customers at the time came from). These were by largely unknown artists at the time like Afrika Bambaata and The Soul Sonic Force, The Funky Four Plus One More, and Kurtis Blow.

And for the longest time, I really didn't "get" rap. For me though, probably the two most important turning points were seeing what DJ's like the late Tommy Boy Recording Artist Whiz Kid could do on two turntables (We actually became close friends while his wife Betty was stationed at a nearby military base.) and then getting hooked on the rock and rap sort of polyfusion pioneered by Run-DMC. From there everything was pretty much academic, and I was equally pretty much hooked. Eventually, I would play a key role in discovering, and developing the career of Seattle's lone rap superstar, Sir Mix-A-Lot.

But back to Run-DMC.

The first thing I noticed about this concert recorded at the Montreux Jazz Festival, shortly before the unfortunate murder of DJ Jam Master Jay, was how little Run-DMC's live performance has changed in something like twenty years. So let's get the nit-picking out of the way first.

Article Author: Glen Boyd

You'll find Blogcritics assistant music editor Glen Boyd sharing his Thoughtmares on his personal blogs The World Wide Glen, and The Rockologist. In a previous life, Glen was a music professional and journalist whose work has appeared in The Rocket, SPIN, Pulse!, and The Source. …

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