Something I learned today: Run-D.M.C performed You Be Illin’ and It’s Tricky on the BBC’s Old Grey Whistle Test in 1987. Rap music and Adidas is how I was raised, Run-D.M.C and the Beasties were the guys that I praised – thus, seeing this as a kid in 1987 woulda blown my mind almost as hard as seeing King Of Rock on Live Aid did.
Turns out Run-D.M.C were also interviewed on Old Grey Whistle Test a couple of years earlier during the King Of Rock era. Andy Kershaw is lucky he didn’t get sparked out on TV for some of those questions – the epitome of a stereotypical clueless white host demanding black artists make ‘protest music’. Maybe if Kershaw had spent less time harassing his ex-wife and more time researching the artists he was interviewing then he’d know that Run-D.M.C had already released Hard Times and Wake Up by that point.
