Radio XLVII, side A, track 9: “Walk This Way” by Run-DMC and Aerosmith

Oh, Run-DMC and Aerosmith, when I recorded this song off the radio, I had no idea that there could possibly be any other versions of this.  Why should there be?  This song sounded like it was always destined to be created by all y’all.  Of course, now I know that this is a remake, and since this is the first version I heard, this is my favorite, but I think it goes beyond mere nostalgia.  This is just a damn great song.  The original is damn great, too, but what it’s missing is a little Run-DMC, Run-DMC.  As I mentioned, really great rap music was not mainstream enough at the time to get major play on the radio.  Hell, Run-DMC and Aerosmith, of the few songs that were featured on the “Fast Rappin’ Weekend”, this was one of them, and this one was already 3 years old at the time.  Pretty much all the rap I heard growing up was pretty sanitized and innocuous.  Oh, it was great, guys, don’t get me wrong, but I doubt very much that I’d get too much street cred were I to blast the rap I was listening to out of my Plymouth Volare station wagon.  Plus I couldn’t get much street cred anyway, since I lived on a gravel road, and the only people around to hear it would be deer, skunks, and badgers.

It does make me wonder what a rural, hardcore rapper would sound like, Run-DMC and Aerosmith.  I get that life on the city streets and life down on the farm are two very different things, but shit still went down, yo.  There were dangers all around.  You could get run over by a combine, get an arm ripped off in the power take-off  of a tractor, drown in a pit of pig shit, get buried alive in an avalanche of soybeans.  These were all real-world problems.  Not to mention the fluctuating markets, blizzards, an entire state suffering from seasonal affective disorder. . .there was plenty to rap about.  I wonder what the rappers’ names would have been.  Big Tracta?  MC Oatz?  MF Killa (the MF stands for Massey Ferguson.  I won’t go into it, but just like there’s an East Coast vs West Coast feud, so too is there a feud between those who only use Massey products and those who swear by John Deere)?  Had I any talent for rapping and any forethought, I would have explored the untapped market of people yearning to hear farmboys who wore their seed caps sideways dropping beats and busting rhymes about milking cows and slopping hogs.  Oh well.  I guess we’re just going to have to settle for awesome music like this.

“Walk This Way”

<awesome Run-DMC and Aerosmith jam>

Now there’s a back-seat lover
That’s always under cover and I talked ’til my daddy say
Said “Ya ain’t seen nothin’ ’til ya down on a muffin, and there’s sure ta be a change in ways”
Now there’s a cheeeerleader that’s a real big pleaser as far as I could reminiiisce
The best thing lovin’ was ya sister and ya cousin and it started with a little kiss, like this

<awesome Run-DMC and Aerosmith jam>

She starts swingin’ with the boys in school and her feet was flyin’ up in the air
Singin’ hey diddle diddle with a kitty in the middle and ya swingin’ like ya just don’t care
So I took a big chance at the high school dance with a lady who was ready ta play
It wasn’t me she was foolin’ ’cause she knew what was she was doin’ when she told me how ta walk this way
She told me to
Walk this way

Talk this way

Walk this way

Talk this way
She told me to
Walk this way

Talk this way

Walk this way

Talk this way
Well, just gimme a kiiiss

Like this

<awesome Run-DMC and Aerosmith jam>

School girl sleazy with a classy kinda sassy, little skirt hangin’ way up her knee
There were three young ladies in a school gym locker and I find they were lookin’ at D
I was a high school loser never made it with a lady ’til the boys told me somethin’ I miss
Then my next door neighbor had a daughter, had a favor, and I gave the girl a little kiss, like thiiiis

<awesome Run-DMC and Aerosmith jam>

She starts swingin’ with the boys in school witha feet flyin’ up in the air
Singin’ hey diddle diddle
Kitty in the middle
Swingin’ like ya didn’t care
So I took a big chance at the high school dance with a missy who was ready ta play
But it me she was foolin’ ’cause she knew what was she was doin’ when she told me how ta walk this way
She told me to
Walk this way

Talk this way

Walk this way

Talk this way
She told me to
Walk this way

Talk this way

Walk this way

Talk this way

Hey hey hey hey hey yoooowww yow yow yow yow yow like this

<awesome Run-DMC and Aerosmith jam>