Home | About | Multimedia | Press | Letters | Glossary | Links Before Grandmaster Flash’s “The Message,” there was Age of Consent’s “Fight Back” Music brought Age of Consent co-founders John Callahan and David Hughes together in Los Angeles in early 1981. They met one night at a presentation given by Hughes regarding contemporary music. Callahan, recently arrived from the East Coast—a disco and rap devotee—took issue with Hughes’s dismissive criticism of disco. Callahan stuck around after the talk to exchange ideas about the music scene and to learn more about Hughes’s gay punk and performance perspective. A friendship developed. Later that spring, when Hughes was producing an experimental “Sound and Vision” series at a downtown gallery, Callahan suggested a rap—a political gay rap. At the time, rap music was new enough to be considered experimental and so the two wrote “Fight Back,” an anti-gay-bashing rap, which was the show-stopper at one of the series’ performances.
