Wednesday, October 3, 2018

Thirty-Five Short Years Ago


In 1983 I had a friend who came to Hollywood from the South Bronx to promote Wild Style a film about hip hop, break dancing, and graffiti artists. Kenny, aka Almighty Kay Gee, was a member of the rap group Cold Crush Brothers featured in the movie. They were in town for a week, performing at clubs.

My roommate Bob and I were living in a little yellow house on Bundy Drive in West LA at the time. Kenny was at our place one afternoon and recorded an outgoing message on the answering machine in our kitchen. Within a few days, the message went low-key-1983 viral. It started with a few random hang ups and built to a fever pitch of people calling just to listen to the message. They would sometimes laugh or applaud or yell out, "I love your message!" before hanging up.

I'm no rapper, but I can still recite it by heart.

You've reached Bob and Lisa's answering machine
I'm Kay Gee from the Cold Crush, if you know what I mean
This machine right here could never ever be the whack
So leave your number and your name and they'll call you right back
And you can't beat that and you know you can't
You know you can't beat that with a baseball bat
Huh huh huh huh





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