During the "iPod Beemer" episode I did last week on the NPR show "Day to Day," I played a couple examples of the kinds of tunes you could rock out to in your iPodified BMW convertible — one of them was "Early in the Morning," by legendary '80s R+B icons The Gap Band. During that episode, host Noah Adams inadvertently dissed the Gap Band. When he heard that segment air, my D2D colleague Brian Unger vowed to settle the score of funk: he challenged Mr. Adams to a duel, and here is the result. Listen to Brian's segment "Don't Diss The Gap Band" — Link
Update: BoingBoing reader Mike Ransom of Tulsa Oklahoma says, "The GAP Band was named after three streets here in Tulsa: Greenwood, Archer and Pine. That's the same Greenwood and Archer mentioned in the archetypical Bob Wills Western Swing tune, "Take Me Back To Tulsa". Here's a further bit of trivia about one of those streets — Link. The story above is done in the style of Paul Harvey, a Tulsa native. Here is a morph I did of Paul Harvey from his high school yearbook picture — Link."
More Gap Band trivia, including the Greenwood, Archer, and Pine reference (an historic black business and commerce hub in Tulsa) here: Link
BoingBoing reader Greg says, "One thing I think your readers may find interesting is that the GAP band isn't named after just any three streets in Tulsa, but the center of what was once called "The Black Wall Street". In the 1910's it was one of the most affluent African-American communities in the country. In 1921, it was also the location of one of the worst acts of violence in American history. While dubbed the Tulsa "race riots", they more closely resemble a military assault. Here's a post I wrote about it: link
