Today we have a 45-minute slice of hip-hop history graciously provided by musician and collector Rob Wortman from his vast self-recorded cassette archive: an early rap event from Richmond, California as taped from the audience one fine night in May of 1984.
Sadly, these are all the details that we have at present, no listing yet of the DJ's and MC's that we will hear in this gig. Also, there seems to have been some problem with the PA sound at the event - numerous 'dropouts' occur, tiny moments of dead air in the mix. These are not artifacts of the recording but were heard live. For added listening convenience, I have broken the tape side into three parts. A thank you goes out to Billy Jam, from whom I borrowed the ticket-stub scan of the July, 1984 Richmond Auditorium show, which was as close as I could fi
nd to an illustration of this May 1984 gig, but does show how simple the graphics were for such things at that time. Fans of this sort of historical record might also enjoy these previous WFMU posts of mine which feature another tape from the Wortman archive that happens to be from the same month and year. Word !
Ahhh, wonderful posting here, Drew. This tape deserves to see the light of day! Thanks.
Posted by: Molly | November 09, 2011 at 12:03 AM
Absolutely amazing. Thank you, thank you.
Posted by: Christopher I | November 22, 2011 at 04:44 PM