Run DMC live in London (1986)

Taken from this 1995 Radio 1 Rap Show, here's 18 minutes of the mythical night at Peoples Club in Paddington, West London where Run DMC, Whodini, Hurricane and Cut Creator (and possibly even LL Cool J) performed and freestyled for 3 hours at an after party on the Raising Hell tour.

Other snippets of the night have been online before and Westwood even played some of it back in his LWR days, but I don't think we'll ever get to hear the full session. I messaged DMC on twitter hoping to get more info but all he could offer was "I remember that night! Fun as hell!!!"

There was a good interview with Tim a few years ago on the XXL site where he spoke about the club:

"People's Club, that was like one of the first black-owned clubs in this country. It was originally called the Q Club, but then it lost its license. In those days, clubs could operate without a license so it was like an illegal club and that used to go on until 6, 7, 8 o'clock on a Friday morning and it was just crazy. It was a real hood spot; you're talking about the '80s here so there was a lot of guys dressing like pimps and it would be a lot of their girls in there as well. There would be a lot of pimps, a lot of drug dealers. You couldn't use the toilet in there because it was like a drug-dealing [den]. By 6 in the morning, there'd be a smoke cloud in the basement and there'd be people smoking coke and crack and it was just one of those extreme street spots, but that's where I played every Thursday.

And what used to happen was Whodini used to record their albums over in London 'cause they were signed to Jive Records and their studios were only in London so they'd be over. And people like Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince, but they didn't really come to the club like Whodini did. And then when that Raising Hell Tour with Run-D.M.C., Beastie Boys and Whodini came, they all used to just come down there and freestyle for hours and just hang out and get high. Larry Smith, rest in peace, he used to come there every Thursday. You couldn't buy anything by the glass, it was only bottles. You could only buy like a bottle of champagne, a bottle of brandy, a bottle of wine. As a young kid, like 18, 19, 20, just growing up in that environment, it was like the best experience"