BB Video: Photographer Glen E. Friedman - Early Hip Hop, and The Liberty Street Protest

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Today's Boing Boing Video episode is the final installment of a series of conversations shot during a visit to Shepard Fairey's gallery in LA, as the work of legendary punk / hiphop / skate culture photographer Glen E. Friedman was going up on the gallery walls, for his first ever career retrospective "Idealist Propaganda."

The first episode focused on Fairey's famous Obama poster, the second episode on a collaboration between Shepard and Glen involving the hardcore group Bad Brains. The third was all about Glen's early work in skateboarder culture and hardcore punk.

TODAY: We explore Glen's work documenting hip-hop in the 1980s, and moments he captured with great artists like RUN DMC, Public Enemy, and Ice T, shown below.

Also in today's episode, Glen tells us about the Liberty Street Protest, a graphic statement against the Iraq war. This visual protest took place right across the street from the ruins of the World Trade Center site, destroyed in the 9/11 attacks.

As Glen explains, graphic images were hung in windows in a loft belonging to Def Jam mogul and hip-hop pioneer Russell Simmons, and the message was: "New Yorkers were right here when 9/11 happened, and we don't want this war in our names."

Glen's books are available here.

Big thanks to Boing Boing pal Sean Bonner, who coordinated this series of conversations. And very special thanks to Michael Donaldson, aka Q Burns Abstract Message, for generously allowing Boing Boing to use music from his Eighth Dimension label in this episode.

Below, a song from a Public Enemy record which featured Glen's photos on the cover. The track is "Rebel Without a Pause."

Previously on Boing Boing:

* BB VIDEO: Glen E. Friedman, Skate + Hardcore Punk Photo-History
* BB VIDEO: Glen E. Friedman in conversation and collaboration with Shepard Fairey
* Glen E. Friedman's photo show at Shepard Fairey's gallery
* BB VIDEO: Shepard Fairey and the Obama Poster, on Inauguration Day

• [Brettspiel]

  That track is “You’re Gonna Get Yours” off Yo! Bumrush The Show, their first album.

  http://tinyurl.com/9r6d7

  No cop gotta a right to call me a punk
  Take this ticket – go to hell and stick it
  Put me on a kick butt – line up, times up
  This government needs a tune up
  I don’t know what’s happenin’ – what’s up
  Gun in my chest – I’m under arrest

  /PE fan from waaay back.

• [Brettspiel]

  Also, “Rebel Without a Pause” is from It Takes A Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back.

  • [Xeni Jardin]

    Brett, thanks! I was actually watching/listening to both clips, and goofed and inserted the wrong embed code into this post. I’ve corrected that, you should be seeing/hearing the correct track now. Thanks for catching that.

• [hassan-i-sabbah]

  I like Flavor Flav.Brixton Academy 1985,Backstage,I swapped half an ounce of Jamaican sensi for Flav’s Gold ring.I still have the ring. I have a feeling that Flav probly smoked the boo…

• [Mojave]

  “Beepers connect the players to big time deals, with all of this technology who needs to steal….? Just live a life of leisure every night and day and your living proof that crime does pay…your life is dangerous and reckless, you’re eatin’ flyguys and girls for breakfast, you’re a titan of a nuclear age, your muscles flex with an uzi or 12 gauge….”

  and that’s just from memory bitches!!

• [Keeper of the Lantern]

  GF’s definitely right: New Yorkers didn’t want the Iraq war.
  And yet, across the Hudson, the Red States all voted to re-elect Bush.
  Why is that?

• [Brettspiel]

  No problemo, Xeni. I get to catch TWO killer PE tracks on BB in one day? I’m ok with that.

• [Gtaste2009]

  where’s coco?

• [KingOfCats]

  Flav: “Yo! We got the shit that’ll scatter your brains from here to White Plains!” lol

• [SpookyInteraction]

  Is dissent still patriotic in a post-Bush America?

  Just checking.