Besides the rare grooves in this latest thrift sto' stash, I also snagged a copy of Ice Ice Baby by Vanilla Ice. The first ever hip-hop track to top the Billboard charts (continuing the time-honored tradition of white American artists profiting from black music), and a massively over-played video that still draws attention today with many, many millions of views on YouTube, this track is the very antithesis of a rare groove.
I never owned the track before (and apparently the 12" is rarer than you would think, since it was pulled from stores after the song hit #1, becuz the record company wanted folks to buy the whole album). But had to get it. I remember watching Ice (aka Rob Van Winkle) on the best reality show of all time, The Surreal Life, on its second (and best ever) season, which aired over the winter of 2004, also featuring Ron Jeremy, Erik Estrada, Tammy Faye Messner (Bakker), and a memorable cameo by Gary Coleman.
Before this show, the last time Ice had made headlines was in 1999, during the taping of an MTV special called 25 Lame. He was invited on camera to destroy the master tape of the video for Ice Ice Baby, and instead took a baseball bat to the show's set. The Surreal Life revealed a very vulnerable Vanilla Ice. (Note from 9/10/13 - and also relaunched his career, leading directly to his current stint as a star of reality TV home improvement shows, the latest being Vanilla Ice Goes Amish, which premieres on October 12, 2013.) It was because Ice told Ron J. how much he admired Rick James that Ron called the guy up and got him to stop by the set one night, and it was very sweet, Ice was totally awestruck. Erik Estrada chimed in and told the camera, "I knew Rick from the Studio 54 days...I used to like to trip to New York City, Friday night, I'd head right to Studio 54, until Sunday morning, just jamming all night and getting crazy." When Ice asked Rick, "How did you two guys meet?", meaning him and Ron J., Rick said to Ron, "You'd come to my house, man, every night, and there'd be like, 30 girls." Classic.
By August of that year, Rick James was dead.
- Dyn-O-Mite