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06-22-2012, 05:12 PM
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The Hot List | Music
Visions of the ’80s Storming Back
Jim Wilson/The New York Times
Diana Ross’s 1983 Central Park concert, above, is on DVD.
By JON CARAMANICA
Published: June 21, 2012
Nostalgia for the 1990s supplanted nostalgia for the ’80s a couple of years ago, but lately the tide’s been shifting back: Reagan in political discourse, shimmery dance music on the radio, the crack plotline on “Girls.”
Breaking news about the arts, coverage of live events, critical reviews, multimedia and more.
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A sortable calendar of noteworthy cultural events in the New York region, selected by Times critics.
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5 Day Weekend/Traffic Entertainment Group
MC Shan in “Big Fun in the Big Town,” a 1986 documentary.
As time machines go, the documentary “Big Fun in the Big Town” [[Five Day Weekend) is surefire. A 1986 Dutch television film about New York hip-hop, it’s an unlikely and impressively nonvoyeuristic look at a scene that was flirting with tremendous success but was still intimate.
Directed by Bram van Splunteren and featuring a wry Marcel Vanthilt as host, it’s full of amusing interactions. They find LL Cool J, oozing swagger, at his grandmother’s house in Queens. A patient Doug E. Fresh beatboxes for them on a Harlem street corner. The film is now commercially available for the first time, and it will have a rare screening on July 10 at the Dweck Center for Contemporary Culture at the Brooklyn Central Library, at Grand Army Plaza, as part of the eighth annual Brooklyn Hip-Hop Festival.
Refreshingly, all the issues that pervade hip-hop today were present then: commerce versus message; artist versus record label; and of course, authenticity. Russell Simmons, early hip-hop entrepreneur and social re-engineer, says defensively, “I don’t know that Diana Ross produced or wrote any of her songs.”
Ever the salesman, Mr. Simmons knew a wedge issue when he saw one, but certainly careers like Ms. Ross’s are what he envisioned for the acts on his label, Def Jam. Three years before Mr. van Splunteren and his cameras hit the South Bronx, Ms. Ross brought hundreds of thousands of fans to Central Park for an open-air concert, which was broadcast live on television and has just been released for the first time on DVD as “Diana Ross: Live in Central Park” [[Shout Factory).
Shot from a distance and also alarmingly up close, it captures the major drama in the crowd and the microdramas onstage as Ms. Ross navigated a fierce rainstorm that eventually shut down the show, forcing her to try again the next night, when it went off without a hitch. The second show is the main event on this release, but the last few minutes of the first night are the stuff: Ms. Ross, regal in bearing and bright in voice, soaked to the bone in a sequined jumpsuit, squeezing out “Endless Love” before telling the crowd to come back tomorrow. The water looks oppressive and cruel. Watch it indoors.
A version of this article appeared in print on June 22, 2012, on page C31 of the New York edition with the headline: Visions of the ’80s Storming Back.
Search All NYTimes.com
Music World U.S. N.Y. / Region Business Technology Science Health Sports Opinion Arts
Art & DesignBooksDanceMoviesMusicTelevisionTheaterVideo GamesEventsStyle Travel Jobs Real Estate Autos
The Hot List | Music
Visions of the ’80s Storming Back
Jim Wilson/The New York Times
Diana Ross’s 1983 Central Park concert, above, is on DVD.
By JON CARAMANICA
Published: June 21, 2012
Nostalgia for the 1990s supplanted nostalgia for the ’80s a couple of years ago, but lately the tide’s been shifting back: Reagan in political discourse, shimmery dance music on the radio, the crack plotline on “Girls.”
Breaking news about the arts, coverage of live events, critical reviews, multimedia and more.
Go to Arts Beat »
A sortable calendar of noteworthy cultural events in the New York region, selected by Times critics.
Go to Event Listings »
Enlarge This Image
5 Day Weekend/Traffic Entertainment Group
MC Shan in “Big Fun in the Big Town,” a 1986 documentary.
As time machines go, the documentary “Big Fun in the Big Town” [[Five Day Weekend) is surefire. A 1986 Dutch television film about New York hip-hop, it’s an unlikely and impressively nonvoyeuristic look at a scene that was flirting with tremendous success but was still intimate.
Directed by Bram van Splunteren and featuring a wry Marcel Vanthilt as host, it’s full of amusing interactions. They find LL Cool J, oozing swagger, at his grandmother’s house in Queens. A patient Doug E. Fresh beatboxes for them on a Harlem street corner. The film is now commercially available for the first time, and it will have a rare screening on July 10 at the Dweck Center for Contemporary Culture at the Brooklyn Central Library, at Grand Army Plaza, as part of the eighth annual Brooklyn Hip-Hop Festival.
Refreshingly, all the issues that pervade hip-hop today were present then: commerce versus message; artist versus record label; and of course, authenticity. Russell Simmons, early hip-hop entrepreneur and social re-engineer, says defensively, “I don’t know that Diana Ross produced or wrote any of her songs.”
Ever the salesman, Mr. Simmons knew a wedge issue when he saw one, but certainly careers like Ms. Ross’s are what he envisioned for the acts on his label, Def Jam. Three years before Mr. van Splunteren and his cameras hit the South Bronx, Ms. Ross brought hundreds of thousands of fans to Central Park for an open-air concert, which was broadcast live on television and has just been released for the first time on DVD as “Diana Ross: Live in Central Park” [[Shout Factory).
Shot from a distance and also alarmingly up close, it captures the major drama in the crowd and the microdramas onstage as Ms. Ross navigated a fierce rainstorm that eventually shut down the show, forcing her to try again the next night, when it went off without a hitch. The second show is the main event on this release, but the last few minutes of the first night are the stuff: Ms. Ross, regal in bearing and bright in voice, soaked to the bone in a sequined jumpsuit, squeezing out “Endless Love” before telling the crowd to come back tomorrow. The water looks oppressive and cruel. Watch it indoors.
A version of this article appeared in print on June 22, 2012, on page C31 of the New York edition with the headline: Visions of the ’80s Storming Back.