Bass Odyssey

Their brief set tonight augurs well for the future; with a new deal, a new single about to hit the shops, and an album well in hand, their upcoming tour is one to look forward to.

Apart from Jam Master Jay’s decks, Run DMC don’t really play instruments, as such, but they have many other claims to fame. They practically invented hip hop, they were the first rap act to appear on MTV, the first to be nominated for a Grammy, and the first to sign to a product endorsement deal.

In all the years I have spent supporting live music, I have never witnessed a band promote a product as shamelessly as RunDMC do tonight. Each – even the roadie who spends nearly as much time on stage as the band do – wears a t-shirt bearing the name and logo of their sartorial corporate master. At the end of the gig, they set up a stall by the exit stairs. There they autograph t-shirts, each festooned with the same corporate name and logo, which they flog for twenty quid a go. To my surprise, there are at least a hundred takers.

But what of the music? The songs, of course, are great. ‘It’s Like That’, ‘King of Rock’ and ‘Walk This Way’ are just some of the highlights of their set, and even the absence of Aerosmith from the proceedings does little to dampen spirits. The audience is not just the largest I have seen at any gig at the Savoy; it is also the most enthusiastic, and the band have little trouble whipping their devotees into a frenzy.

It is many years since Run DMC first came to prominence, and they have weathered some personal storms in the meantime. Both Run and DMC are born-again Christians, which probably explains why their use of street patois never extends beyond the occasional ‘Goddamn!’. At a time when every epithet imaginable has lost all power to shock, it comes as a jolt to realise that hip hop’s pioneers still exercise such constraint over their language. And I really like their hats; which are logoless, of course.