Cobb: Earth, Wind & Gangsta

August 26, 2004

Earth, Wind & Gangsta

The first record I ever bought was 'Getaway' by Earth Wind and Fire. It was a 45 that I bought from Crenshaw Records. I played it over and over on my record player until I memorized the lyrics.

This morning, like every morning, I woke up with a song on my mind. Unlike most mornings, I was unable to immediately crank up the iTunes and find it. And so I started this day shocked to my foundations that I don't have "Let's Groove" somewhere on my hard drive. In fact, I didn' have Arrested Development nor did I have any Red Hot Chili Peppers or Bill Withers. Something is out of joint here. So I am on a mission to correct these deficits as we speak.

Since I can play and rip at the same time, I found myself going back down memory lane to a particular lyric. noting as I do, and have been for a dozen years how lame contemporary music is when it comes to inspired love songs. Be that as it may, the lyric was:

Shining star for you to see
What your life could truly be.

Of course you know that. But did you know that there was once a street gang in LA called the Westside Family? They were originally Family but then got incorporated into the Crips. I know, because I knew a dumbass kid named Dana Andrews, who had the hottest sisters on the planet back in 1973. Dana had a faggy name and he was too lightskinned (with freckles) to get respect. Add to that the fact that he was a Catholic school boy and not very good at football or basketball and you had a formula. Dana did have balls, however and wasn't afraid to fight or shoplift. Typical knucklehead ghetto 7th grader stuff. So I was there at the beginning when Dana and other kids who lived somewhere in the nice looking public housing on Adams just west of Western decided to make something out of the green bomber jackets that they stole from Sears Pico.

He decided to call them the Gangsta Crips and wanted me to join because I had gone to public school, which added to the rep. Since I had gone to public school and knew how to fuckin' cuss, among other Huckleberry skills, I was very quickly becoming one of the most often swatted kids at Holy Name of Jesus School. Nevertheless, I wasn't interested in getting a big dog and making it bite public school kids who were relentlessly picking on us Catholic school kids. I didn't particularly like Dana although I had a huge crush on his sister Danielle and I wasn't about to steal a green bomber jacket, even though it looked hella cool. Besides, where I lived on Wellington & Jefferson, no bangers trolled. Our blocks already had the cohesion and we were deeply into street sports. Aside from all that, the very notion of following Dana Andrews was a joke.

Gangstas would go on to clash with Family. And it was this rivalry which brought to mind the constant bastardization of popular songs mouthed off by teenaged boys who thought they were being tough and clever.

Shining star for you to see
This is strictly Family

While I'm on the subject, I may as well mention that the closest we got to a gang was the TrayVerMike. That was myself (as Mike), Tracy Caldwell and Verdis Arnold. Despite the fact that he did some time, I always think of Verdis as a quarterback and a mechanic. Verdis could easily throw a bomb from lightpole to lightpole, and his scratch-built lowriders would have done Mr. Arnold proud, had he lived long enough. Mr. Maurice Arnold was a SeaBee and drove a moving van. He'd be gone for long periods and left Verdis in charge of his other seven kids. When Mr. Maurice came home we'd know. If we didn't hear the truck, we'd hear the ass-whoopin'. Living next door to the Arnolds taught us all how to talk exactly like Ice Cube.

Tracy Caldwell was possibly smarter than me, and we debated that in the leadership of the short-lived TrayVerMike. But it was clearer that he was the money and living right kid. His mother had a master's degree in something and bought the house down the block. His was the only house that had more rules than mine, which seemed impossible to believe - for example what the proper kind of pillow was and why sleeping in certain positions would hurt your posture. Still, Tracy and I were best friends and used to count the scores of scabs on our bodies, each relating to some adventure in the neighborhood. I never met Mr. Caldwell, who divorced his mother. They had to move out to where Sportsman Park was, under the flight path to LAX and Tracy was more on behavioural lockdown than ever before. Needless to say, when he moved out, that was the end of TrayVerMike.

We never lived out our promise "TrayVerMike You", but if we had, we would have held down the territory from the 10 south to Exposition and from Crenshaw west to La Brea, except for a few spots on West Boulevard and Harcourt. Considering that TeeDee lived over on Blackwelder and I knew the kids at West Adams Foursquare, we could have extended the turf and challenged up to the Jungle. There were Pirus to the North, and we would have had to make a stand at Mt. Vernon Jr High which would have put us in over our head. And since we weren't under any sort of attack we were satisfied with our reputation as kings of sport.

Me and my brother Deet held down gymnastics and diving. We could represent on that pretty much citywide. Whether we were at the Colisseum Plunge, at Rancho Cienega, Sportsman's Park or Centinela, we were always in the top 5 flip floppers. I had a full twisting back, that's why. As well I had a very sweet Arabian to a front and could start another roundoff after that. Deet could do 4 gainers in a row. He could also put back layouts into the middle of a tumbling run.

Deet and Dock were good bballers. I was the most dangerous free safety in street football not coincidently because I could run hella fast, and I just realized this has got to be boring the snot out of most sentient creatures. It's just that old Earth Wind and Fire does that to me...

BTW. I would like to add that I was also listening to Rick James 'Ebony Eyes' this morning, and I bet you didn't know that.

Posted by mbowen at August 26, 2004 12:00 PM

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Comments

Shining star for you to see
What your life could truly be.

"No matter who you are."

Posted by: Joel (No Pundit Intended) at August 26, 2004 01:38 PM