In 2004 Don Letts compiled a various artists compilation for Heavenly, Social Classics 3 Dread Meets B- Boys Downtown. It was a hugely listenable sixteen track compilation recreating the summer of 1981 when Don accompanied The Clash and they took over New York with a residency at Bond's Casino in Times Square. The stories are legendary- the promoters oversold the shows, the fire department shut it down, The Clash promised to honour all sold tickets and ended up playing seventeen nights, an exhausting experience. While that was going on and Don filmed them, the band immersed themselves into New York's street and club culture, Mick Jones especially, and the nascent hip hop scene. Support acts for the group at Bond's included Grandmaster Flash, The Fall, Dead Kennedys, Lee 'Scratch' Perry, The Slits, ESG and The Treacherous Three.
Don's has various slices of old school hip hop (Grandmaster Flash, Grand Wizzard Theodore, The Fearless Four, Fab Five Freddy, the Wild Style OST), some classic New York dance tracks (Babe Ruth's The Mexican and Michael Viner's Incredible Bongo Band's version of Apache), some cutting edge early 80s electro (Al- Naafiysh by Hashim), along with Malcolm McLaren, Kraftwerk and The Clash. It's wall to wall early 80s bangers and cutting edge too.
Grand Wizzard Theodore is from The Bronx, NYC, and is the DJ who is largely credited with inventing scratching.
Babe Ruth were an early 70s funk rock band from Hatfield, Hertfordshire. The Mexican was recorded at Abbey Road in 1972, a hugely influential song later on in the decade when the New York hip hop DJs picked up on it and played it, mixed it and sampled it to pieces.
The Clash were inspired by New York , it sent them into a spin they never really pulled out of. This Is Radio Clash was a standalone single and 12", fired up by New York. the city's sounds and radio stations. Outside Broadcast was a remix version of the main track, seven and a half minutes of dub sound effects, samples, traffic sounds, rapping and studio experimentation.
Malcolm McLaren's Buffalo Girls is an essential early 80s record, 1982 hip hop produced by Trevor Horn, after Malcolm saw what was happening in New York. He'd been in the city looking for a support act for Bow Wow Wow and went to a block party where he heard hip hop and scratching for the first time.
Fab Five Freddy is a New York hip hop legend, graffiti artist, film maker and face. In 1983 the film Wild Style was released,a document of New York's nascent hip hop scene in 1981 and the track Down By Law comes from the soundtrack. Chris Stein of Blondie worked on the soundtrack and the score too and Freddy would famously later on turn up in the lyrics to Rapture.
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