It's Only An Hour Away
“All Go-Go music sound the same”, “That Go-Go stuff is not real music, it sounds like they’re beating on trash cans.” The people of D.C. know that’s bull, but that is what’s being said about Go-Go in other cities up and down the East Coast. A few years ago, I was a student at Morgan State University in Baltimore. Put yourself in my Nikes and imagine this scene: You and your crew are at one of those notorious two-dollar college parties, among various other crews from New York, Baltimore, Jersey, and Philly. The DJ, most likely from the Bronx, has been spinning hip-hop all night. Then, in the middle of your journey in the desert of rap music, he throws your thirsty butt a drink, but just a taste. He plays Flexxx’s “Water Dance”. The hip-hop heads make their way to the sidelines while a few desperate Go-Go fiends fight their way to the floor. Of course “gettin’ in the water” didn’t quite quench your thirst, but that’s when the DJ hits you up with “Ruff It Off”. Anyone in the room from D.C. or P.G. is on the floor, bouncing back and forth off of all the others who have waited all night for this moment. While that out-of-touch DJ plays the other Go-Go records in his collection (only about five or six songs), you and your crew shout with the rest of the home team “AWWW D.C.!!” or “AWWW P.G.!!” You don’t even notice the Puff Daddy fans standing around with their grills all twisted because once again, D.C. represented. College students from D.C. suffer at parties all year and get relief only when bands are allowed to play somewhere near the college campus. What is it that outsiders don’t understand about the Go-Go culture? We party harder than anyone else, only rivaled by the booty-shakers in Miami. The hardest thing to understand is why Go-Go isn’t blowing up in Baltimore which is only an hour away. How can two cities so close to one another develop two totally different worlds or culture? Yeah, we all say that Baltimore is just a bunch of bammas with gold teeth and chicks with wildly colored weaves. Well, they think we are a bunch of country bums who dance funny to odd sounding music. At Morgan, I had a roommate from Baltimore. I showed off my top-notch D.C. area status’ like D.C. was the center of the universe. I introduced her to my cool D.C. friends, flaunted a bunch of DDTP shirts, rocked some gray sweat pants, and of course, played the hell out my Junkyard P.A. tapes. She was not impressed. I even tried to teach her how to dance to Go-Go, but I figured after years of club dancing, she just couldn’t move right. In October of that year, Homecoming was on at Morgan State, and the biggest party was advertised for all New York and D.C. students to get together at the same spot. In one room, there was to be Funk Master Flex on the wheels for hip-hop junkies. In the other room, there was to be none other than Rare Essence cranking for the Go-Go masses. My roommate and I planned to go represent (in different rooms, of course). But at the party, it was whole ‘nother story! There were about ten people in the hip-hop room and a rack of folks from D.C. and New York fighting for space and fresh air in the Essence room. In the midst of those 200 or more bodies was my roommate, dancing and sweating out her hair-do. After that, she started playing my Junkyard tapes for her friends when I wasn’t around. I used to hate club music, which is the
favorite in Baltimore. That is until my cousin and her red hair weave-havin’
friends took me to some of their favorite Baltimore clubs. To keep
from feeling left-out, I danced to that strange club beat. After
a while, I found that I was almost good at it. I enjoyed going to
clubs with those B-More bad girls just as much as when I went out with
the 320 Honies to local Go-Go’s.
Even though I like it all, I still gotta say “Take me out to the GO-GO!”
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