Grandmaster Flash: Reinventing the Wheels

Jump-cutting like 10 crates of vinyl tickled by a Chic bass line, Grandmaster Flash's 1981 single "The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel" wrote the laws of turntable physics for everyone from Jazzy Jeff to Cut Chemist. Flash has been untouchably cool ever since, even though he hasn't made a real record since 1988's best-forgotten On the Strength. Aside from a recent collaboration with Japanese ambient composer Yann Tomita, his last CD credit was an old-school compilation for Thump Records, home of the "Low Rider" series. But that hasn't kept him from manning the turntables every now and again, as he did last Thursday at Club Karma.

His set didn't break any new ground. But Flash kept the anthems coming -- from A Tribe Called Quest's "Award Tour" and Redman's "I'll Bee Dat" to enough Biggie Smalls to put a tear in anybody's eye -- until resistance was useless. I have to dock him a couple points for describing House of Pain as "some funky, funky, funky, funky, funky white boys" -- come on, five funkys? And if the 41-year-old Grandmaster can still "cut fast-ah," the way his band, the Furious Five, used to tell him to, he didn't seem eager to show it. When the lights came up at 2 a.m., he hadn't gotten to the scratch-heavy "Wheels of Steel" routine yet -- which is a little like Skynyrd looking up at closing time and realizing they forgot to do "Freebird."

Still, I'm always going to cherish the image of a calm, bobbing, Fubu-and-Kangol-clad Flash tenderly cleaning a record with a chamois cloth while KRS-1's "Sound of da Police" pounded away and the dance floor erupted in sweaty house-party chaos and enthusiastic stabs at breakin'. The fact that he can still inspire a moment like that is what makes Flash an alive-and-kickin'-it piece of history rather than a thing of the past. Besides, you haven't lived until you've seen a silver-bikini'd Karma go-go dancer do the freak to Eric B. and Rakim's "I Know You Got Soul." Talk about a Flash dance.

-- Alex Pappademas