Amazing What A Difference 20 Years Makes...

General General Discussion
1

So I’m going through all my old VHS tapes (roughly 250 of them), which are a combination of home movies and crap I recorded from TV, and burning the stuff I’m going to keep to DVD so I can toss the tapes and they can quit taking up space.

I did this with my movie collection years ago as most films were released on DVD and I could toss or give away my VHS copy. So now I am down to my personal recordings and I’m going through “Stuff that used to interest me 1978-2001” memory lane with the bulk of the recordings being from about 1989-1991.

Suffice to say this includes a lot of pop culture and music videos from that era and my tastes definitely trended towards urban. I was listening to Run DMC in 1983 a year before Mtv ever heard of them and 5 years before the debut of Yo Mtv Raps. I was also well aware of Kraftwerk, Jonzun Crew and Afrika Bambaataa before that.

But in addition to some truly enjoyable stuff I am amazed as the giant volume of crap I recorded. Apparently I was trying to archive every hip hop music video ever released and any news story related to Madonna and other pop/r&b artists. I would also record anything even remotely related to the martial arts.

The good news is only about 25% of this crap needs to be transferred to DVD. It is rather amazing to watch the quality transformation that occurred between 1989-1991 when rap/hip hop became so commercially successful that you could sell a rap/hip hop record simply by releasing it to the market and the quality of the content almost didn’t matter.

With two main commercial themes of “bitches, hoes, gangstas & money” and the elusive search for the “new rap style” hip hop mired itself in a self replicating parody of what was once new and unique in a manner similar to “hair metal” of the 1980s that still persists to this day. Of course even then, when I was recording the “new stuff” something inside me knew it wasn’t very good. But I always gave music a chance, I didn’t quite get Kraftwerk the first time I heard it.

But after 20 years the verdict is official, rap/hip hop (with rare exceptions) really started to suck around 1990. At least some of it is so ridiculous it is still entertaining for unintended reasons.

2

After the first paragraph, I was expecting to see you talking about the poor quality of soft core cable porn or what type of porn interested you in the VHS piggy back recordings from the video store.

BTW, I was born in 1986 and I only vaguely remember VHS tapes.

3

That would be a different discussion. Suffice to say I yearn for the days when porn featured mostly attractive females who were generally tattoo free and the guys didn’t look like scumbag bikers.

Thank god I have my old school porn as well.

4

I was going to do just what you are got a new elgato box to start and music wise realized just how much is on youtube ! for early music stuff

I have to get some stuff transferred when I was in Micronesia in Chuuk that was pretty cool stuff diving on the sunken Japanese fleet that I took :slight_smile: and some of my other diving related stuff along with old hi-8 movies I took of family etc…

but the music stuff do a search on youtube :slight_smile:

5

And pubic hair. Raise your hand if you remember pubic hair. :laugh:

As for the music, I just dropped out and quit trying to keep up somewhere in the mid-1980s. If I tried to date the music on my iPod today, I’d be surprised if 10% of the music was newer than 1990. The bulk of it is 60s and 70s with some 80s stuff of the early MTV years.

I just never connected with rap music. For one thing, in Montana, it didn’t get any airplay and there probably weren’t three bars or clubs in the state where you were going to hear it. No exposure, no familiarity, no connection. It just kind of went by the boards.

6

Nah. Can’t agree.

1993: Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers); generally regarded as the best hop hop album ever made, and I agree.

1994: Ready to Die by Notorious BIG, probably the best all around rap artist to ever have lived.

1996: The Score by the Fugees

1998: It’s Dark and Hell Is Hot by DMX

The 90’s had some great rap and hip-hop, some of the best, but at the time too much airplay and press was given to the “California sound” which gave us gangsta rap, and bitches and hoes rap.

Edit: FWIW, great rap/hip-hop is still being made today. I’m thoroughly enjoying Lupe Fiasco these days. Very talented young man.

7

Now I don’t feel so bad for buying that Insane Clown Posse CD ten years ago :cool:

8

For stuff I like I like to have my own copy. Besides youtube can be pretty grainy sometimes.

9

Well I did say “with rare exceptions” but from your list I really don’t see any.

While Wu Tang, The Fugees and BIG might not have sucked as hard as Das EFX and crap like that, compared to Rakim, Public Enemy, Mantronix and too many others to list they are simply sub par. Perhaps some of this is generational, but DMX is the same old “bitches, hoes, money and gangstas” nonsense that everyone else was doing.

10

:lol:

Dude, this puts you into perspective more than any of your posts I’ve ever read. You’re a hipster!!! The being “in before it was cool” Run DMC reference, listening/viewing things you didn’t really enjoy because they were what the cool/trendy kids liked ref: Kraftwerk, or might “be in” ala Madonna, and ditching an entire genre wholesale because of “commercial themes” all point to you having the pop culture predilections of a hipster. I finally, sorta, figured you out! Haha, cool.

You aren’t wearing skinny jeans and riding a fixie between viewings of Arrested Development and Portlandia, are you? :stuck_out_tongue:

ETA: BTW, I love Kraftwerk and have most of their albums (circa '70s) on LP as well as on my iPod. Autobahn and Trans-Europe Express continue to be among my all-time favorite albums.

11

Sorta kinda, but the reality is I never really fit in with any crowd. I seemed to be the lone white kid listening to Planet Rock and Pack Jam in 1982 while most of the kids I went to school with were listening to Butthole Surfers and shit that simply made no sense to me.

As luck would have it, as soon as my particular music selection became “cool” in the late 80s it began to suck hard. Nothing like mainstream popularity to bring in the retards and posers.

I’ve never been much of a fashion victim, I did look like a DMC clone for much of the early 80s but that was mostly because Adidas track suits were comfortable and it was easy to layer sweats in the winter and keep really warm. Thankfully I mostly avoided parachute pants and members only jackets.

And I didn’t listen to the subpar stuff to “fit in”, I just learned early on that some music can be ahead of it’s time and you have to allow yourself to catch up in some cases. I hated nearly everything by Prince when it first came out, all of it needed time to grow on me.

I guess the truth is I probably enjoy things most people don’t even know about. That is probably why I like Kraftwerk so much, you need to really be involved in music to know about them.

12

It’s also something of a false comparison. I was living in Jamaica queens at the time of Run DMC and LL Cool J so yeah, I like those guys, but directly comparing them to Wu Tang doesn’t work. It makes about as much sense as comparing Green Day to The Ramons.

Also, Rakim is akin to Hip-Hop’s Elvis, but Wu Tang still made the best hip hop album of all time.

13

I think we may just have different tastes. Wu Tang never moved me, I’d hardly consider theirs the best album ever. I would probably give that to Public Enemy.

A lot of this also probably has to do with the fact that I was a DJ for most of those years so whatever most people liked I tended to hate already.

LL Cool J is a good example of what I’m talking about. I loved Radio and the single released prior to it, but with the exception of “Jack the Ripper” pretty much hated everything he did after that. To me it was all the same nonsense released over and over, most of his songs were virtually interchangeable.

14

I caught an episode of “Modern Marvels” on one of the History Channels a day or so ago. It was about how the Library of Congress preserves the material they have. I was amazed that a lot of CD’s manufactured in the 1980’s could very well eventually disintegrate depending on which manufacturer was using what method at the time. Some of the early CD’s in the Library of Congress evidently have deteriorated. Other CD’s from the same era were holding up fine.

It seems some CD’s were made with cellulose (or something), which decays, and others were made with acrylic, which is GTG.

In the late '80’s I fell on hard times and had to sell a collection of nearly 200 CD’s of underground and indie bands. I always regretted having to do that, and many of them are irreplaceable. It sounds like a lot of them might eventually disintegrate anyway.

Luckily a lot of these CD’s have been reissued lately on discs made of more up-to-date materials, so here’s keeping my fingers crossed that my collection won’t fall apart over time.

15

One time!

16

God I hated Lauryn Hill.

17

Right about the time Ice Ice baby took over the scene and made “rap”
into a sideshow and that one song
showed the money that could be made no matter how lame the song.

Sir Mix-a-lot went from posse on broadway and “rap” to baby’s got back and made for radio hits.

Appetite for Destruction had pretty much ran it’s course (but cemented itself in history forever) For us in the NorthWest we were
hitting local clubs with new bands like pearl jam and nirvana showing up
and you could see Alice In Chains for a cover charge of $8 @ the “Starry Night Club”.

I moved into this place a little over a year ago and my VHS player is still packed in it’s box in the garage somewhere. (I had my important vhs tapes transferred to DVDs many years ago but i still have a box of VHS movies and tapes still packed away also).

18

“Fear of a Black Planet” was an awesome album. P.E’s best. I was just listening to “Brothers Gonna Work it Out” a few days ago.

New York was pretty hostile place at that point, and that album seemed to capture the mood all too well. David Dinkins, Yusef Hawkins, Gavin Cato, Central Park Jogger. It was just high profile crime upon high profile crime. I don’t miss those days at all.

19

It’s still around, it’s just considered a fetish and usually has a hippie attached to it. :slight_smile:

I really like No Holds Barred. Probably because of the pro-gun theme. I love when he says: “So when you vote
You better think about what I just wrote
And FUCK writin a note to yo’ Congressman!
You got the fool hired
Now help get the fool fired”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHtSSSLn9E8

“The police, urge people, to keep their guns locked up and unloaded”
“Congress today, seems on the verge of approving gun control”

[Verse One: Sir Mix-A-Lot]
It’s, time to fight back cause the new jack black macks
ain’t did SHIT about that, whack, jackin
And I’m packin
Cause I’m down for the bank I’m stackin
And in a straight up brawl I’ll mall alla y’all
Ya try to crawl for Tylenol and I install
big fists in your face, the blow is well placed
Spray 'em with mace in case mace is his taste
Throw up the dogs, the competition is fogged
Cause he was smokin the yang, iced and drink the 8-ball
Drunk, stumblin, threw him with the lean
I sweep him, then attack the spleen
Play the congas on his backbone
He’s funk baritone until I twisted his dome
Creep up on my house and try to roll me up?
And got STUCK IN THE GUT with a black, glock
And he starts to wobble
Self-defense is what I’m claimin, let’s squabble
I pick up a pipe to take plenty of quick swipes
One grazed his dome and sliced his eye whites
I don’t give a DAMN bout a stupid ass burgular
It’s all circular
The dope dealer sells dope to the dope smoker
The smoker breaks in and tries to choke ya
But I ain’t the one to run from ya son
This is MY HOUSE, and it’s FULLA GUNS!
I’m down for mine and my choke is nice and hard
When you jack the boss there ain’t no holds barred!

No holds barred
No holds barred
No holds barred

[Verse Two: Sir Mix-A-Lot]
I’m crushin most hoods like Katie-dids(?)
I’m pleadin guilty for the damage I did
This ain’t about random violence
The (?) crept into my house, FUCK SILENCE
Now most punks wanna run for the stun gun
Fuck a stun gun, I got the big one
Forty-four mag, automatic, CHROME
Mercury-tipped bullets, melt the dome
It’s the 1990’s, and crack is
talkin to the criminals, ever so subliminal
Some crackhead wants Mix-A-Lot dead
A jack move instead, another fool bled
I can’t cry cause my tears are nearly froze
My interior’s cold, it posess my soul
I’m on the paranoid tip
And each of my socks got a clip!
When my house got robbed, a top notch job
Cops laughed while my mom just sobbed
9-1-1 only works for the rich ones
So I collect GUNS!
So step right through if you’re down for the wrong move
Most crews are moved by my twelve gauge BOOM!
How can I love when I gotta
protect my neck from a punk suspect?
Gun control - I ain’t wit it
They banned the AK and any fool can STILL get it
The innocent have been beaten, bruised and scarred
But for this citizen, there ain’t no holds barred

“It is an absolute infringement on my second amendment rights”
No holds barred
“When is this attack on gun owners going to end?”
No holds barred
“Education, versus restriction”

[Verse Three: Sir Mix-A-Lot]
Hypothetical situation
Gun control starts sweepin the nation
Now you got a bunch of unarmed innocent victims
Gettin FUCKED by the system
Sittin at home with a butter knife, huh
Any fool could rape your wife
So what’s up when the criminals can’t be stopped?
The only one with guns are the COPS
But it’s hard for a brother to trust police
Huh, so the shit don’t cease
So I go downtown to buy a hot gun
I hated criminals, and now I’m one
Because I bought a gat to protect my house
The cops wanna bust me out?
So it’s illegal to protect yourself?
Hell, you either get killed, or you in jail
So when you vote
You better think about what I just wrote
And FUCK writin a note to yo’ Congressman!
You got the fool hired
Now help get the fool fired
A scary scenario
And I put it in your stereo
So when a fool tries to run up on my car
R.I.P., no holds barred

No holds barred

No holds barred

“They take aim, at the law abiding citizen, instead of the criminal”
{applause]

20

I actually have an interview on tape where he is showing off his HK91 (among other things) and when they are in the garage looking at cars, there is what looks to be very much like a pallet of ammo in the background.