If you know somebody in the music business, they’ll tell you that South By Southwest is a clusterfuck now — that what started as an intimate gathering of local Austin, Texas musicians and a few indie bands has become a jungle of corporate sponsorships and pure promotion. (Among the scrappy up-and-coming artists who made big splashes this year: R.E.M and, um, Van Morrison.) The other big knock is that South by Southwest doesn't make sense anymore now that the CD business is dying: that the old model of bands coming to town looking for some press and a record contract doesn't apply anymore.

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If you're an old Public Enemy fan, you die a little inside every time a new Flavor of Love spinoff airs on VH-1. Flavor Flav deserves a paycheck in his middle age as much as any veteran rapper – lord knows there are enough out there without one. But in the late Eighties, Flav was part of the most shocking band on the planet, an assault of radical politics and sound that showed Rage Against the Machine how to rage. After Public Enemy, nobody who was paying attention could write-off hip-hop as a minstrel show with a James Brown sample.

For a reminder of the fruitful mid-Eighties hip-hop scene that gave birth to PE, check out the website for the Eyejammie gallery in New York. There's a collection of early-school pictures from writer Harry Allen – PE's original "Media Assassin" – who went to Adelphi University with rapper Chuck D., Flav and Terminator X. Allen is a surprisingly talented documentary-style photographer, and the black-and-white shots show the various members of the band just before they pulled things together: Chuck D. making edits for his radio show, armed only with a pause button; Flav posing for an early PR shot with a guitar, looking like a rap-era Bootsy Collins. (The sense of humor was there – it just didn't come after "Best Week Ever.")

The show has been up since mid-last year, so check it out while it's still there: Bill Adler, the hip-hop historian who has run Eyejammie as a labor of love for the past four years, is going to shut it down in the next couple of months, so he can focus on writing an encyclopedia of hip-hop. And for an extra dose of Eighties hip-hop, check out RS.com's guide to rap's best year ever here.

[Photo: Hutson/Redferns/Retna]