It's 1986-1991. Camden, NJ. I am a 20-year-old English major. I live in a flophouse rental building blocks away from a college. I might still have a mullet.

All this might sound familiar to people who lived on campus in college in the 80s. My experience might be a little skewed than others', I'm not sure. Camden, as now, is the country's most dangerous city. The Rutgers-Camden campus is a commuter campus, with one resident building filled mostly with law students. The residential undergrads who roamed the blocks around there were few--around 200--and we were a hearty, insane bunch.

I remember walking under the Ben Franklin Bridge to get beer at a booth-sized liquor store. I remember reading Melville in the shadow of the RCA tower. I remember skateboarding in abandoned Campbell's Soup parking lots on lots of strange substances. I remember running away from muggers, fleets of dealer-mopeds. I remember ever-ringing pay phones. I remember going to Whitman's house and staring inside.

I suppose I'm getting all retrospective here because I found out a friend, a good friend from those days, passed away over the Memorial Day weekend.

It's also coming back because I found a site for band I worshipped, absolutely worshipped, in college. A drummer college buddy, Mike McCann, brought his whole North Jersey band down, called True Detectives, to live in a house nearby to practice with him.

I thought they were on their way to superstardom, and if stars aligned a different way, it would have happened.

I was a metalhead and a rap fan, and so were a lot of my friends. No big deal nowadays, but in 1986, the two genres were highly segregated. And it was still new , even unheard, for a band to play with a live rapper. (Let alone a good one--and I'm looking at you, The Roots!) This is when Red Hot Chili Peppers still played Parliament funk. This is before A Tribe Called Quest and other Native Tongues put jazz together with rap. A year or so before Anthrax put out its landmark "I'm the Man" single.

And it was definitely unheard of for a band to play samples live, mixing it, as it were, live. Few do it today, or with as much accuracy, as True Detectives did almost 20 years ago.

On this song, recorded around 1989, on the website put together by the old bass player, they play live samples of Kiss's "Hotter than Hell," AC/DC's "Back in Black," Led Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song, and Black Sabbath "War Pigs," and a couple others maybe.

Or this song, a rap/death metal song. At least on the surface: name one rap song with a late-era Golden Earring live sample. I've still not heard this on the radio.

OK, and then there's this song, which could be right on the new Stefani album. Or Oak Ridge Boys.

And all this without all the macho punter vibe from the people who hijacked the two genres in the 20 year since. Metal and rap, like all music, is meant to elevate, not make people idiots. And True Detectives music did that for me. I should've gotten college credit from them.

To my ears, it all still sounds fresh. I wish I could see them play live again.

Labels: Riffs