1984

I just had to thieve this one from true-schoolers Cheebah when I saw it today; some of you will be familiar with the footage from RTE's 'Reeling In The Years' series - hence the odd soundtrack. 1984 was the year when I, and everyone I knew, got serious about b-boying - for some reason hip hop became a vital force for many of us born in the 70s, thanks largely to the fact that we practically all knew someone older who was working on Thatcher's building sites, and they always returned home at christmas with cassettes - Morgan Khan's streetsounds, Kiss FM and the rest. When hip hop became trendy, then a joke, and then mainstream in the 90s, most of us had settled into whatever aspect of the elements we were most comfortable with, but had moved on. Still it was a genuine subculture of the estates and outskirts, visible to the rest of the population only on saturday afternoons in town and city centres. Much respect to The Dizzy Footwork Crew, wherever they are now. Those Nike suits were 1984's confirmation money for many of us kids. The new ones are a pale imitation.