Run-DMC, “Slow and Low (Demo)” (1985)

[listen up!]

I was today years old (as people say) when I realized the Beastie Boys included a cover of this workup on their 1986 album Licensed to Ill. The Beasties found out Run-DMC were leaving it off their second album and went for it. Indeed, the Run-DMC version did not really come to light until the 2005 deluxe edition of King of Rock. Forward another 20 years or so and there I am sitting with the very self-same LP. You know those cheapie “Original Album Classics” packages? Five albums from the same artist, usually their first five, in rudimentary slipcase envelopes. I discovered that some of them, such as the Run-DMC set, include the deluxe versions with all the extras. So anyway, I’m sitting there listening, having myself a Run-DMC renaissance, and this comes up. And I can’t quite get over it. It is ridiculously stripped down to the rhythms. There’s big muffled thumping that is counterpointed with separate strains of lighter, higher-pitched clinking. It is quietly irresistible. The raps are the usual Run-DMC bellowing back and forth, but the recurring words of the chorus go directly to the point: “Let it flow, let yourself go / Slow and low, that is the tempo.” They could have sexualized it but they didn’t. They could have brought in electric guitar—King of Rock continues the experiment that would culminate in the Aerosmith collaboration—but they don’t do that either. Maybe they would have if they’d put it on the original album. But they didn’t, and the simplicity has a lot to do with what makes it so great. The verses do offer some taste of their tendency toward unfortunate cliche (“you ain’t seen nothin’ yet,” “on The Gong Show I won’t get gonged,” etc.) but I could not care less about that. The point is the thumping and the clinking and the intricate interplay, with just the right sentiment: “Slow and low, that is the tempo.” It’s a kind of master class in its own right.

Run-D.M.C. (1984)

I owned a copy of Run-DMC’s debut when it was new—blind squirrel finds a nut, OK sure, but I must admit it baffled me. It was so stripped down it seemed unfinished, and primitive, appealing to that side of my taste perhaps, a semi-mystifying pleasure when it played. But it didn’t play for long before I put it away. More than 40 years later it hits different. The groove is obviously in the beats and the beats are the hooks as the brain locks into them. It’s a blast to play. They were already on to the project of making room for a rock guitar, famously and influentially on the second track here, “Rock Box,” with Eddie Martinez playing the butt-simple but evocative electric guitar. What once puzzled me now thrills me. Time comes to all folks. The guitar is hard but the beats are harder and therein lies the greatness. That’s arguably the chief feature here—certainly it is already pointing the way to the Aerosmith collaboration—but there are other points of interest and pleasure as well, such as the fiercely swapping vocals. I try to pick one or the other and chant with it. It’s not easy. It’s nimble and surprising and would only get better (see “It’s Tricky” on their third album). The high-profile themes are hard life: “Hard Times” and “It’s Like That” were the first two singles, where their bitter poverty gibes are somewhat overplayed, viz., “Won’t you tell me the last time that love bought you clothes?” My riposte would be most (not all) of people’s childhoods, where providing clothes to children is considered at least a parental duty, more often than not performed out of love. Run-DMC would often traffic in less than inspired or muddled language, especially when trying to be sincere. I much prefer the playful braggadocio of “Jam-Master Jay,” “Jay’s Game,” and the Krush-Grooves, “Hollis Crew” and “Sucker M.C.’s” (note that I do not know any applicable backstories but may look into it). “Wake Up” and “30 Days” have interesting and fun (respectively) narrative conceits. But “Rock Box” along with the B-Boy Mix in the extras count as the continuing stars of this show, with a slow-but-sure deep synthesizer line counterpointing a wind-chime same in the upper registers plus the soaring, screaming guitar, fully under control, like a panther in a cage. But stick around for the whole album. It’s good stuff, and lately a reliable raver around here.