DJ Charlie Chase, Buddy Esquire & Joe Conzo Signed "Skate Odyssey" 1982 Vintage Museum Reprint Flyer
Features:
- Signed By DJ Charlie Chase, Buddy Esquire & Joe Conzo
- Includes NHHM COA
- Reprinted Poster
- Wet Signatures
- 8.5" x 11"
An remarkable piece of early-1980s hip-hop history for your collection: a vintage flyer advertising “Skate Odyssey — A Rappers Concert on Wheels!” on Saturday, May 1, 1982. The lineup features the legendary Cold Crush Brothers and Crash Crew, two foundational names from hip-hop’s formative era, at a time when rap was still a predominantly live, grassroots culture rather than the global commercial force it would soon become.
DJ Charlie Chase is a founding member of the Cold Crush Brothers and one of the earliest prominent Latino DJs in hip-hop. Chase and Tony Tone were also central to the creation and development of the Cold Crush Brothers' identity and stage presentation. The group became renowned for its live performances even before achieving major commercial success, when hip-hop was built around DJs, MC routines, battles, crowd interaction and reputation rather than record sales.
Buddy Esquire became the most celebrated flyer artist of hip-hop's earliest period. Between 1978 and 1984, he produced more than 300 flyers, creating a distinctive “neo-deco” visual language influenced by Art Deco, movie posters, typography and the visual culture of New York nightlife.
These flyers were the visual record of a culture that had not yet been extensively documented by mainstream media. Cornell University describes Esquire's original flyers as some of the surviving documentation of hip-hop's birth and early development.
Bronx-born photographer Joe Conzo Jr. was embedded in the early Cold Crush Brothers scene and became the group's personal photographer. Conzo's photographs are now regarded as some of the most important visual documentation of hip-hop's earliest years. This flyer sits squarely inside the world that Conzo was documenting: the clubs, skating rinks, community spaces, DJs and MC crews that formed the infrastructure of hip-hop before the culture became an international industry.
This is not simply memorabilia from the golden era. It is a document from the era before the golden era had even been named. For the serious hip-hop historian or collector, that is precisely what makes it special.
