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*Warning: Impending-Get-A-Damn-Blog,Bomb-Marathon, Get On Board Or Get Gone*
It felt like this album took forever to come out since it was damn near a year since 1989-a-number-another-summer and rap music was growing/moving/changing/flipping at a dog-years clip.
They had suspended Griff, briefly split, got back together seemingly as soon as the prior news hit but Chuck told the crowd at the Philly Spectrum while on the Eazy-Duz-It-Tour (which I at age 12 was blessed enough to be able to see from seats in the top balcony) that this was probably the last time we'd see PE on a stage, then they started pushing thru it but Def Jam kept pushing back the release date, Chuck got in trouble for the 'crucifiction' line in Terrordome (which was in my guestimation one of the first real released-to-radio-months-before-the-album-or-an-A-side 'street single' campaigns in rap up to that point.......or maybe it just felt that way because PE were everything from 88 thru 90.
Had to tape Terrordome off Power 99 and it was only played after 10 PM.
Grabbed the promo poster for the album at least a month before when the 'Fight The Power Live' VHS dropped.
Anticipating this album felt like slow torture, especially since the press had it before us and were analyzing it the way network news would grill/vet a presidential candidate (peep The Village Voice's original review if you can find it for how ridiculous it was.....actually ending by expressing objection to Flav's 'eatin welfare turkey out the can, I can't do nuttin for ya man' from Flav's solo cut previously on House Party soundtrack as if Flav's lyrics were things worthy of study or to be taken seriously).
Anyway, on the personal front after middle school that day me and my man went to go cop it.
But fate intervened in another delay, as we were for the first time in our turnstile-hopping-punkass-kid-lives spotted by a PATCO train conductor with camera confirmation of ditching the fare (shit, I had that Sam Goody tape price calculated down to the 6% sales tax, I wasn't risking being short to pay for a train).
Unwittingly we still waited down on the platform, hopped on the Westbound train headed to The Gallery on 8th & Market.
Train stopped one or two stops later, doors stayed open for a long time, walkie-talkies were heard and then next thing you know a Collingswood cop is telling us to get off the train to come talk to him, then follow him out to his car, then promptly cuffing and stuffing us (we were 13/14 at the time, first time in cuffs and he wandered away once we were in back, to do paperwork or holla at a meter-maid, when he came back to me squirming and expressing discomfort with the arrangement, he started laughing and said 'oh, I didn't tell you that? If you move, they tighten up automatically' as they were now cutting into my wrists/arms.
Cop takes us back to our neck of the woods to have a pow-wow with our parents, electing to take me to my house first but with my parents both working in mid-afternoon and the door locked, he ends up walking me up to the old lady next door's house with my hands still behind my back in bracelets, neighbors across the street looking/whispering and my boy still stuck in the back of the squad car.
Cop then uses that phone to call my father at work at RCA in Camden, he was in a staff meeting, secretary comes in to tell him he's got a phone call, he tells her take a message, she says 'it's a police officer, your son's been arrested' in front of all his co-workers and his boss.....at that point he slinks out to take the call, speaks to the cop, calls my grandmother to come sign off on the paperwork plus open our door so I could stop sitting in the neighbors kitchen.
My buddy (who they bring inside my folks house with me once Nana arrives) makes some kind of wise-crack in the midst of this now two-hour-long-parade-of-scared-straight-cop-talk-bullshit and my grandmother explodes, goes in on him and me with a riot act the intensity of which I only ever heard from her one other time in my life right up to now (as she still exists at the tender age of 96).
And despite all that acrimony, the anxiety of knowing when my mom & pops get home from their respective long days at work I'll likely be hearing it again, all I can think about was 'I'm not going to get the new PE album dropping today'.
That was a punishment far worse than abrasions from tight cuffs or watching my Nana morph into McGruff.
I got so much trouble on my mind but the wheels were already turning as new inspired thoughts came racing, crunching the unofficial numbers, with the realization that my savings was still in my pocket untouched while one more abandonment of 85 cent lunch meant that tomorrow afternoon even if I had to pay for a PATCO pass that I would have enough.
This latest PE-related hiccup would also (like Griff, Kress and assassination-by-press) soon be overcome.
The rest was unimportant and went by in a forgettable haze while soon would be better days *insert-Bomb-Squad-'haze'-Hendrix echo-chamber vocal sample ad-lib here*
At that age of pubescence, with KRS, Ra and especially Chuck teaching me a litany of eye-opening lessons......lectures by figures of authority all just formed one Charlie Brown teacher loop in my brain.
Subordinate terror, kickin off an error, cold deliverin pain.
To the old folks and the lames, there was just no way to explain.
On April 10th, 1990, the only thing I had to fear was not being able to hear 'Fear' itself.
A situation that would be rectified approximately 22 hours later.
So while today officially marks a quarter-century anniversary for the release of this classic LP, it's technically still only 24 & 364 for me.......regardless, just checking in decades later to once again salute P.E.
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The Lesson
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