Listening Post

We'll close out our 80s theme week with something from the final year of that decade -- and from the most vital musical force to arise out of the 80s: hip-hop.

Here are the undisputed hip-hop heavyweight champions of the world, Public Enemy, with Fight the Power.

Power Player

All musicians have the same dream: the one where they find themselves onstage playing with their idols; the people who most influenced the way they think, play, write songs; the people who first started that fire in their belly and made them have to pick up a guitar, or a microphone, or a pair of drumsticks, or whatever.

Last night, one of my very best friends -- a guy name Kelsey Warren who fronts a band here in New York City called Pillow Theory -- lived that dream by taking the stage with Chuck D at Lincoln Center to perform Public Enemy's classic incendiary anthem, Fight the Power.

The exclusive show was part of the celebration for the 20th anniversary of Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing. It was attended by the cast and crew of the movie and hosted by singer, songwriter, and Broadway star Stew.

In other words, it was pretty much the coolest gig imaginable for a guy who grew up worshipping at the altar of Public Enemy and the black culture renaissance of the late 80s -- the one that looked like the films of Spike Lee and sounded like the beats and rhymes of consciousness hip-hop.

Kelsey, man -- congratulations.

And goddamn am I jealous.

(That's Kelsey, the guy with the white guitar, in the very small picture above.)

Listening Post

Next year, this single -- one of the most powerful protest songs of my or any generation -- will turn 20 years old.

The first time I heard it, the sonic assault was like a kick to the chest -- and two decades later, it's lost none of its righteous fury. The damn song still gives me chills.

Long before hip-hop became little more than a goofy caricature, and long before Flavor Flav allowed himself to become the shameful cliché of undignified minstrelsy his bandmates once stood so strongly against, there was this:

The mighty Public Enemy, with Fight the Power.