Tina Weymouth and Grandmaster Flash - NYC, 1981 (credit: Laura Levine)

Alright, first off, how great is the above photo? Yeah, that’s right. The other night, while I was programming a DJ set, I was inspired to dig out my copy of the Tom Tom Club’s 1981, self-titled, debut. Not unlike the vibe the Talking Heads were working at the time (see the Remain in Light album), the Tom Tom Club’s material was heavily influenced by the poly-rhythmic funk of world music, but was also buoyed by the urgency of the recent meshing of New York’s downtown art crowd with the, then, emerging hip-hop scene. This being so, it’s almost poetic that the Tom Tom’s debut would end up, two-plus decades later, as heavily sampled as the music it was, in part, emulating, and paying homage to, at the dawn of the eighties.

Download:
MP3: Tom Tom Club :: Genius of Love
MP3: Tom Tom Club :: Wordy Rappinghood
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Amazon: Tom Tom Club - S/T