Bring Back The Word "Looptid"

It was inevitable that 2010 would start stirrin' up memories of twenty years ago this month, since I like to think of February 1990 as the start of The Very Beginning... when the life I would come to know now would open its doors for me, in a sense where I would finally start to meet and get to know people in my hometown who shared the same musical interests that I had, and how many of those people are still my friends today. Although I had been going to dance clubs as early as 19 years old due to Joe DJing at oldies bars around Hampton Roads, the week that I turned 21 in February of 1990 was the week where I could enter legally, even drink if I wanted to (though I never did, never being a drinker). But it was this hotel night club called Adam's that used to host an "alternative night" on Monday nights and I was eager to get in once I was old enough. And keep in mind that this was before Nirvana's Nevermind, before Nine Inch Nails was played on pop radio, where The Smiths were only heard on the soundtracks of John Hughes films. It was still fairly underground back then, and the people at Adam's that night where the people committed to that sound. And I was surrounded by kindred spirits. And it was the beginning of Everything That Came After.

But first, the weeks before my birthday were filled with Digital Underground.

A month or so before I turned 21 I was working as a dishwasher at the Court House Cafe in my home town, and the little boom-box in the loud, steamy kitchen area was always kept at the R&B station, where I was bombarded with the ear-bleeding late-80's sludge of Bell Biv Devoe's "Poison" and MC Hammer's "Can't Touch This". But when the "The Humpty Dance" came on over the scratchy airwaves the kitchen staff would shout "HEY MELISSA, GIT IN HERE YER FAVORITE SONG IS ON!" and I would tear through the dining hall and burst through the swinging kitchen doors, doing my little "humpty dance" at the sink while my arms were stinging from the great steaming tubs of bleach. The song reminded me of Parliament-Funkadelic in its old school style funk groove and cartoonish sense of humor -- the character of Humpty Hump was such an obvious throwback to Parliament's Sir Nose D'Voidoffunk (I used to have this very same poster hanging on my bedroom wall back then) -- and once I bought the Digital Underground album I played that thing as religiously as I used played The Motor Booty Affair back in college. Turning 21 was a marvelous transition at the time. Because as much as I wanted to go to Adam's and listen to punk, I was still that 18-year-old college girl, a slave to the funk.



Anyway, 20 years ago this week, this song was da BOMB. Here's Humpty Hump singing his theme song, the one that got me groovin' in the back kitchen at the Court House Cafe. And yes, that is Tupac Shakur on stage in the background. Digital Underground was his group before he went solo.