Back In The Day
Remembering The Back To School Boogie
By Richard O'Connor (Go-Go Rich)
 
 

It’s back to school time again as area youngsters turn their attention from hanging out and summers jobs to homework and cutting classes.  Back in the early eighties, summer was never officially over until the end of the biggest concert event of the summer – The Back to School Boogie.

Before Go-Go was banned from all of the major venues, the Capital Center (now U.S. Airways Arena) hosted the years phattest Hip-Hop and Go-Go show.  The 1982 show starring Grand Master Flash & the Furious Five, Trouble Funk, EU, The Sugarhill Gang, and Cameo was particularly memorable.
Peep the style.  Looking like a thug and a ho’ was not in.  Everybody was into the preppie look.  For guys this meant Polo or Izod shirts, khaki walking shorts, polo sox – white sox if you were a bama, docksiders if you were from the suburbs, and Pro Keds High Tops if you were from the city.  For the ladies (no one dared call them bi**hes) this meant tight designer jeans by Jordache, Bonjour, Sergio Valente, or Calvin Klein, and tube tops that tastefully revealed some young cleavage and small waistlines.  Back then fat girls knew that they were fat and never wore outfits that were five sizes too small.

Remember the shag haircut?  Well it was losing popularity thanks to a new haircut that came to us by way of Philadelphia.  Appropriately, it was called a Philie.  For those of you who don’t know this was the original fade.  The Jherri Curl was never popular in D.C., but it was not uncommon to see a bama or two walking around with the drip drip wet look.  I am embarrassed to say that at the time I was one of them.
Before that awful looking asymmetric came into style in the mid eighties, one of the more typical hairstyles to see among the young ladies was the flip.  You know, the one where you ladies had to either keep a curling iron handy or sleep with big rollers so that you could have that continuous curl encircling your head.  It was sho’ nuff cute.

From the end of July through the entire month of August you would hear non stop advertisements for the Back to School Boogie on WKYS, WOL and OK 100.  WPGC was a Rock station.  No one played Go-Go on the radio.  It would be another year before WOL’s Doc Arnold made Go-Go a regular part of his show at 4 o’clock in the afternoon.

Peep the vibe.  Go-Go and Hip-Hop shows back then were all General Admission.  Go where you want.  Sit where you want.  Stand where you want.  Party where you want.  No one had to worry about getting shot.  That was “punk shit”.  But don’t be mis-lead.  Youngins’ knew how to rumble.  There still existed a sense of honor in being able to defend yourself one on one.  As a result there was much less tension in the air.  People came to party.

The show begin with Grand Master Flash & the Furious Five.  This was the summer in which they escaped the shadows of the Sugarhill Gang who, up until this point, were the leaders of the young rap scene.  The Message was the #1 song of the summer and further changed Rap music and Hip-Hop culture for years to come.

Don’t be fooled by today’s MC’s who can’t put on a good live show.  Back in the day The Furious Five ruled the stage with pure raw energy.  Their choreography was the tightest I have seen to this day.  A spectacular light show, early B-boy steps, and tight sound combined to create a thoroughly captivating set.

No where in there  transition from songs such as The Birthday Party – “Beep Beep, You and the Crew, Hold it!!!”  To jams such as Flash to the Beat did they once lose the crowd.  By the time they hit the Message, Melle Mel had the audience of 12,000 in the palm of his hand.  Even young Go-Go heads who doubted that a New York City rap act could move them were partying in the aisles.  I don’t know what happened to the rappers of the nineties but they don’t put on shows like that.
EU was up next.  Throughout the eighties Trouble Funk, EU, and Rare Essence were the indisputable leaders of Go-Go.  For some reason you could never get all of them to play at the same show, but you could always get Trouble and EU together.  EU was the funky rock band of Go-Go.  They had a high end sound thanks to electric guitar of Valentino Jackson, and the Larry Graham inspired electric bass of Greg “Sugarbear” Elliot.

They were also the most musical band.  Often “Sugarbear” would shut up and just let the band groove.  There were few pockets and sockets as we currently know them.  Percussion, back in the day, laid behind the music, and with three main horn sections there was lots of music being offered.  There were no roto-tom grooves.  Instead, roto-toms and timbales were used primarily for climactic drum rolls which came often and hit you hard.  I liked EU, but they always seemed to rush through their set.  After Bear hit a few bars of Ooh La La La, Roll Call, Somebody’s Ringing That Doorbell, and Don’t Blame It On The 8-0-0 the set was over.

Trouble Funk was releasing new 12 inch records on a monthly basis.  Their hits quickly attracted the attention of producers and record industry people in New York and led to a deal with Sugarhill Records.  Some considered them to be the best Go-Go Band.  Rare Essence fans, however, begged to differ.  RE just suffered from a lack of publicity outside of the city.  Trouble, on the other hand, reached into New York, Europe, and Asia with their numerous releases.  Although they played third on this five act card, they were the band that people really came to see.  Hits at this time included, Hey Fellas, Let’s Get Small, and So Early In The Morning.

Led by the front line duo of “Big” Tony Fisher and Robert “Dyke” Reid, Trouble Funk were the geniuses of crowd participation.  The highlight of their set was when they had a contest between the Ladies and Fellas to see who was the loudest.  Dyke had all the young ladies yelling “Owe,” while Big Tony had the fellas yelling “Freak-a-Deak.”  This was typical Go-Go eighties style.  If you weren’t participating then you had no business at the show.

The mood of the show went downhill after Trouble’s set.  Some already started heading for the doors, but most waited around for the Sugarhill Gang.  But by this time in their brief career, hits such as Apache, and 8th Wonder were behind them, and the trio was on the decline.

Showdown, their most current hit, was a friendly battle rhyme between them and The Furious Five.  In the end, the single launched the Furious Five to stardom but did little for the Sugarhill Gang.  Many argued that the Furious Five won the showdown although the collaboration was done in a way that there was no winner.  After all, they shared the same record label.  But times were changing and The Furious Five, fresh off the success of The Message, were viewed as the more “hardcore” rappers of the time.  To that early Hip-Hop generation they were Wu Tang Clan, DMX, and Master P all wrapped up in one package.  Oh you didn’t know?  Go ask somebody.

Still, most of us stuck around hoping that the Sugarhill Gang still knew how to rock a crowd.  Despite coming out with a live band, they just couldn’t follow Trouble’s energy level.  Most in the crowd took a seat and comtemplated leaving or sticking around for Cameo.  Many, including myself, rolled out.
What stands out about the Back to School Boogie was the innocence of the times compared with today.  To us “Love Boat” was the drug that was tearing up the streets and herpes was the incurable disease that no one wanted to catch.  Who could have imagined that a new drug would come along that would make “Love Boat” look like baby aspirin?  Who could have imagined that a sexually transmitted disease would enter our culture that would make you relieved if you only caught herpes?

Thanks to the violence that became everyday in the late eighties, Go-Go shows were banned from the Capital Center.  The Back to School Boogie and its winter counterpart, The New Years Eve Party with the stars Jam, became memories of an earlier Go-Go generation.  Efforts to promote similar shows in local clubs like the Icebox and Taj Mahael just don’t create the same hype.  Nothing compares to seeing your favorite band on the same stage graced by Michael Jackson, Prince, James Brown and Parliament.