I’ve been in an oldschool mood these last days, mainly due to the fact that I’ve got started on a pretty good book called The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem. The book tells the story of a boy who grows up in Brooklyn in the early 70s when graffiti and block parties are becoming popular. I can recommend the book even though I’m only about halfway through, but over the holidays it had me get up in the middle of the night to go and sit on the can and spend a good hour reading on. I might post a slightly more elaborate review once I’m done with it.

But anyway, I’m telling you this to introduce you to a little piece of semi-oldschool footage. The film was made by a Dutch called Bram van Splunteren and he did this documentary on the mid-80s New York scene, before hip-hop had become the mass phenomenon it is now, when the scene was still relatively small, but just about to explode into everybody’s face.

The commentator’s explanations are in Dutch, but it doesn’t really matter cos in the interviews, they speak English and you get to see some interesting pictures of NY and young cats like Flash, Dougie Fresh, Run DMC, LL, Schoolly D etc. To top it off, Bram’s tacked on some footage of him visiting Ice-T in Beverly Hills, back in 1993, for some pre-MTV Cribs house show-off. All in all well worth watching.

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Peace, 9@home