Concert Stories, Vol. 1: Old-School Hip-Hop

I was what you might call an “early adopter” when it came to hip-hop. Which is kind of odd, considering that I was a scrawny white kid growing up in sleepy Stockton, California–about as far from the mean streets of the South Bronx as could be. I had a couple of things going for me, though. First, my friend and neighbor Grayland had an older sister who was clearly hipper than most and started listening to rap as soon as the first records hit the west coast. I’m almost positive that the first time I ever heard a rap tune was listening to her 12-inch single of Kurtis Blow’s “Christmas Rappin'” on Grayland’s old turntable, around 1980 or so. I would have been 11 or 12 years old, I guess.

Secondly, Stockton’s local college radio station, KUOP, had some super-cool kid working there who started a weekly rap show way back at the dawn of the 80s. Once Grayland had spun a few of these otherworldly tunes for me, KUOP’s Saturday evening rap show was pretty much a must-listen. In those pre-digital days, I would hold my mom’s flat cassette recorder next to the radio speaker and try and quickly hit Play and Record when a song I liked came on. I then played those tapes into the ground.

The arrival of hip-hop as a musical force neatly coincided with me getting old enough to go to concerts. So, a couple weeks ago when a friend of mine made the off-hand comment, “You must have seen some pretty cool rap shows back then,” she really jogged some memories. As these events slip further into the mists of time, I figured now was an opportune time to commit some of my fondest hip-hop concert memories to paper. Or ones and zeroes or something. Anyway, here are the lucky seven old-school rap shows that I remember most fondly. All dates are approximate…

1. Afrika Bambaataa & SoulSonic Force/Kurtis Blow/One Way – Stockton Civic Auditorium, 1982. The first concert I ever went to. I won two free tickets to the show on KSTN, the local AM station that was the first in the area to play hip-hop. Of course, I gave the other one to Grayland, since he was pretty much solely responsible for me even knowing about things like this. Technically, One Way (featuring Al Hudson) were the headliners, riding high on the popularity of their single “Cutie Pie.” Grayland and I were there to see Kurtis Blow and SoulSonic Force, though. We managed to weasel our way relatively close to the stage, and my main memory of the event is the insane Zulu Nation costumes that Bambaataa’s guys wore. Why and how did Afrika Bambaataa and Kurtis Blow find their way to a small venue in Stockton in 1982? I have no answers, but I’m darn glad they did.
This concert marked another important first for me. At one point, I was pretty sure that something was burning near the stage and wondered aloud what was going on. Grayland laughed and said, “You never smelled weed before? Somebody’s smoking a joint in here!” I would end up smelling that same odor quite a few times over the next few decades. Anyway, we called my mom for a ride home halfway through One Way’s set.

2. Run DMC/Whodini/Kurtis Blow/Newcleus – Spanos Center, Stockton, 1985. In the early days of hip-hop, there used to be a lot of these revue-style line-ups where several of the biggest acts would perform on the same bill. This particular one was called the Northern California Fresh Fest, if I remember correctly. It was held at the then-new UOP basketball arena and headlined by Run DMC, right around the time that their second album, King of Rock, came out. My main recollection of this night is that we all were pretty disappointed that Newcleus pulled a no-show, because “Jam On It” was one of the bonafide cornerstones of rap at the time. Run DMC rocked the house, while Whodini had a stop-start kind of set because the sound system kept cutting out. I seem to recall that Whodini walked off the stage early because of the problems, but don’t hold me to that.

3. Run DMC/Beastie Boys – Shoreline Amphitheatre, Mountain View, CA, 1987. By the time I saw Run DMC again, they’d become world-conquering stars thanks to their multi-platinum Raising Hell album. They headlined the “Together Forever” tour with the Beasties as their opening act. My friends and I were most excited about seeing the Beasties, since Licensed To Ill was in ultra-heavy rotation at every party at the time. They lived up to their crazy reputation, with go-go dancers in cages and an on-stage cooler full of beer that they sprayed on each other as much as they drank. For some reason, someone had shown up at the concert in a full gorilla costume and white lab coat. The Beasties stopped the show to point him out, then invited him to come up and dance with the girls in one of the cages. He danced there for the rest of the gig, even as a very drunk MCA laid down or passed out on stage and a series of crowd members were called upon to do his verses for him. Run DMC were great and had a cool laser show, but anything would have been an anticlimax after the Beasties’ lunacy.

4. Public Enemy/N.W.A. – Henry J. Kaiser Auditorium, Oakland, CA, 1988. I believe this was billed as another “Fresh Fest,” since it was really another giant revue show with some of the biggest names in hip-hop. Unfortunately, I got caught up waiting for a friend of a friend to drive his motorcycle up from Santa Barbara to meet us. And waiting. By the time we finally got to the venue, we had missed (wait for it) Eric B. & Rakim, EPMD and Stetsasonic. I’m still kinda pissed to this day about missing Rakim. Anyway, the show was also notable for being a general admission concert held on what seemed to be a gymnasium floor. I mostly remember waves of people running, screaming and bumping into one another throughout N.W.A.’s set, as gang fights were breaking out all over the place. N.W.A. shows attracted a rough element, you might say. The main thing I remember about Public Enemy’s set was that Chuck D kept stopping the show to try and keep people from fighting, and encouraging people to throw a peace sign in the air. There was a weird, rough vibe in the air that night. And I missed Eric B. and Rakim. Like I said, I’m still kinda pissed.

5. LL Cool J – Ventura City College Gym, Ventura, CA – 1987. Well before he was a household name, I caught LL in a kinda goofy show held on the Ventura City College basketball court. I rolled up from Santa Barbara with a few college friends, and I remember it took us quite some time to even find the place. Once we got there, there was a dinky stage set up on one side of the gym, with folding chairs on the floor. We sat up in the bleachers and watched LL cavort around the little stage. I want to say that they kept the house lights up the whole time, probably because it was a basketball gym and not a performance space. Although, at that time, rap fans had to suffer lots of little indignities like that because promoters tended to think that we were likely to destroy the place or something. The first time I walked through a metal detector was at a rap show, for instance.

6. LL Cool J/N.W.A./Too $hort/Slick Rick/De La Soul – Oakland Coliseum Arena, Oakland, CA, 1989. Speaking of tearing the place up, this show was the epitome of what promoters feared rap gigs would turn into. It was another big multi-headliner festival, held at the Warriors’ arena in Oakland. Unfortunately, Bill Graham Promotions decided to put seating on the floor. As in unsecured folding chairs. This was during the height of the late 80s gang scene, so needless to say an N.W.A. show was bound to attract gangs in full regalia. There were a bunch of groups of 20+ gangbangers, all dressed exactly the same in Oakland A’s or Raiders gear, roaming the floor looking for fights—and finding them! Throughout Slick Rick’s and De La’s sets, I sat up in the mid-court bleachers and watched as gigantic melees erupted all over the floor. It wasn’t long before the folding chairs were being pulled up and used as weapons, smashing prone victims on the ground or just flying through the air into crowds. Bloodied survivors staggered up the aisles. It was quite a scene.
After Slick Rick took off, hometown hero Too $hort stepped to the mic and said that everyone better quit fighting, or the promoters wouldn’t let “Short Dog turn it out,” in his words. Instantly, all the fighting stopped. I’ve never seen anything like it. Too $hort was so beloved and respected by the Oakland gangsters that they actually stopped brawling and waited for his set. Once he hit the stage, they rapped along with every song, and then the moment his set was over, all the fighting erupted again. N.W.A. hit the stage in the midst of near-complete chaos on the floor. Ice Cube stopped the show a couple times to try and get people to stop fighting, but to no avail. Finally, N.W.A. just cut it short and stormed off the stage, with Ice Cube yelling at the crowd, “Ya’ll are fuckin’ up right now.” Unsurprisingly, this didn’t go over all that well and the fighting picked up steam. It seemed that everyone was there to see N.W.A. and Too $hort, though, because the crowd started thinning and the fights eventually died down. LL Cool J closed the show playing to a half-full arena. By that point, we were just happy we’d made it through alive. Fun show!

7. Public Enemy — The Palace, Hollywood, CA, 1989. I caught P.E. at the Palace during the height of their Professor Griff anti-semitism controversy. There are a few things that stand out about this show. That afternoon, while we were all waiting in line to get in, a limo pulled up to the curb and Flavor Flav climbed out. He offered some Burger King fries to a few people in line, then handed the whole bag to a fan and went inside. The show itself was probably the worst of all the P.E. gigs I went to, largely because Chuck D took time out between just about every song to launch into a diatribe against the media for its unfair portrayal of Griff. Even a mediocre P.E. show was still pretty good, though. My most lasting memory of the show occurred after the whole thing was over. Five of my UCSB buddies and I had piled into some kind of compact car for the ride down, and were all squeezed into the thing, waiting in a long line of cars to get out of the parking lot. I had the passenger seat, and was practically hanging out the window because we barely fit into the car. As our car idled, I noticed Ice Cube standing there about 5 feet away from me. He was looking at our posse of six white college goofballs packed into a car with a look that could have been disgust or wonder. Never one to pass up the chance to say something lame, I waved and blurted out the only thing I could think of: “See ya later, Ice Cube!” Cube just stared at me without changing expression as our car pulled away.

 

 

 

 

 

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Concert Stories, Vol. 2: Fishbone