TRACK #431:

House That Rocked by Grandmaster Flash

Speaking of parties with no Monster Rap, we’re gonna switch gears here a bit and lay out a block of Monster Rap for ya, so you don’t have to be one of the wipes having that kinda party. Also, it was the last episode of Shindig Radio and we gotta get to adding some more of those gems to the list.

And the first 2 songs of this run were a bit hard to come by, cause just title scrubbing “Dracula” “Halloween” “Trick or Treat” (or any of the dozen or so keywords I have literally scrolled through thousands of pages online scouring for songs) was never gonna return “The House That Rocked.”

So, I gotta take a second here to thank Shindig fan Ryan Kellner, whom apparently I had been swiping tunes from for some years now. Clif and Marty, Lee Lilly and the wonderful Bill Ervin were all tracks I unwittingly picked up from Ryan’s YouTube page over the years.

Cause Ryan’s a DJ and he has spent just about as long as I have spent making this website making his own killer Halloween Mixes, each year featuring a new and fun theme. He’s even posted several of the more hard to come by tracks on that same YouTube page, which is where I found them.

A couple of seasons back he got in touch and was kind enough to shoot me over those mixes and wouldn’t you know, one year was all Monster Raps!

For the most part he had all the big hitters. He even had a bunch of the more obscure tracks represented like Triple Scoop’s He’s Back. But he had two curious tunes specifically. Two curious and incredibly referential Monster Raps I was not familiar with at all. The Shindig needed them, post haste.

Well, post haste apparently equates to several years later, but we’re here now and that’s all that matters. One of those songs is tomorrow’s addition, but the first one was this awesome tune by Grandmaster Flash, from the insanely Monster Rap filled year of 1987.

You know Grandmaster Flash, right? Well, you should, particularly if you like any music made in the last 40 years that incorporates any kind of turntable.

First and foremost, he’s the Grandmaster Flash of Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, the first ever Rap group inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Ya know, Freedom, The Message, all of that. It‘s like a jungle sometimes it makes me wonder how I kept from goin under. Grandmaster Flash.

Flash also pioneered the art of Backspin or Quick Mix Theory. See Flash figured out how to mathematically identify the drum breaks on the records per rotation, and then he would mark them off visually with a crayon or tape. He then figured, if he just had 2 identical records, he could mathematically time out the drum breaks and manually cue up one deck on the fly while the other was still playing and then hit the cross fader to manually loop the drum break indefinitely. Yeah that trick. Basically the cornerstone of DJing. That was him. And to facilitate that move, Flash invented the first ever slipmat. So there’s that. Dude’s a legend.

And any day we can add an actual legend to The Shindig is a great day. Chuck Berry, Louie Armstrong, Little Anthony; guys not normally associated with this kinda thing just popping off with legitimate monster music is great.

And for Grandmaster Flash, that very legitimate contribution is the hugely monsterous Monster Rap House That Rocked.

A spiritual successor to Whodini’s Haunted House of Rock, Flash’s crew peel off bars about the usual suspects; Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy, Creature from the Black Lagoon, Igor etc. That’s pretty much the run of it, by that’s more than enough. The wildest they get it is by shouting Lurch out, which is just a little pumpkin boy on top.

What sets the tune apart is the technical prowess in front of and behind the mic. The cadence and flow on display from all the MCs is much more reminiscent of the rap that would follow than the rap preceded it. The song is from 1987, but sounds more 1992 than 1982, which for Monster Raps is a big move forward.

Additionally, the beat that Flash cooks up for this monster mash is definitely a cut above. And you know we love it, cause he fashions it all out of the Mysterioso Pizzicato. My man.

If you’re at all a fan of the dual arts of DJing and Rapping, it’s hard to deny this epic Monster Rap. While I wish it had made it onto the playlist years ago, I’m glad that we can still find Monster Songs, particularly Monster Raps, of this caliber.

Let’s welcome the legend Grandmaster Flash, as he join other legends like Run DMC, Doug E. Fresh, The Fat Boys and of course, Whodini, to Halloween Shindig

Now you will enter, the House That Rocked.