Favorite Song No. 147: Doug E. Fresh & the Get Fresh Crew – The Show

“The Show” was my mom’s favorite rap song, or at least the only one she knew the words to. When it came out, I had it on a mixtape a friend at school gave me, and for whatever reason, she picked up on that song out of all the rest. Mantronix, the Beastie Boys, Run DMC– they held no interest for her. Only Doug E. Fresh and his Get Fresh Crew, which then featured up-and-coming superstar Slick Rick, mattered to Mom. She couldn’t perform the entire song, but she, like every other rap fan in 1986, knew this part:

Six minutes…Six minutes…Six minutes Doug E. Fresh you’re on
Uh uh on, uh uh on…

As well as the section later in the song that goes

Here we go, come on, did you miss the show?
No, no, no-no-no no we didn’t
No no-no-no no-no-no no we didn’t
No we didn’t, well don’t get us wrong
Excuse me Doug E…Excuse me Doug E…Excuse me Doug E. Fresh you’re on

I never ceased to get a kick out of my nearly 60-year-old mother rapping along with Doug E. Fresh and Slick Rick. And, before she died, she told me that when she reached out to me from heaven to prove to me, her atheist son, that God is real and there is an afterlife, she would do so by using “The Show” by Doug E. Fresh. So far, she hasn’t done so, but I imagine she’s biding her time. At her funeral I had my ears on the lookout for some random car driving by the cemetery blasting “The Show,” but to no avail.

I’ve pictured the album above, because it features one of the most beautiful and evocative covers of its era, but the original 12″ mix of the song is the real winner, an that was only available on, well, the original 12″ single. That wasn’t uncommon in the ’80s. Rap started as a singles medium, but albums were the norm in the rock world, and as rap became mainstream, labels expected albums. In most cases that meant, just like with rock music, a lot of filler tracks surrounding a couple great singles. Many rappers, likely to give fans a reason to buy an album when they already had the hit singles, would replace the hit single versions with remixes for the album. I rarely liked that. I remember Eric B. & Rakim’s first album in particular being a disappointment. That one also had a fabulous cover, and I eyed it in the record shop for weeks before finally amassing the funds to buy it, but instead of the songs I knew and loved it was a bunch of lesser remixes. I bring all this up to explain that while you see the beautiful album cover above, you will hear the 12″ version when you click to hear the song.

That said, the remix of “The Show” is actually better than most remixes of its era, and I used to play it often. It has a great vocal element in the intro, and then the DJ cuts up “Oh, my God!” from an old Crash Crew record throughout the song, which became something of a defining feature of the song. Crowds wanted to hear that sample when they heard “The Show.” But, the remix is overlong, and has too many dead spots, so eventually I started remixing it live. I’d open with the album intro, then mix into the 12″ version, and pull out my copy of “Punk Rock Rap” and cut up the “Oh, My God!” soundbite live over the song. It gave the audience the best of both worlds. Somewhere I have a tape of me doing that in a mix, so if you want to hear what I sounded like as a DJ in 1986, just ask!