ORIGINATION We Are Family LP
LAST LISTENED TO last April
CHANCE OF WAKING TO IT reasonable: I've been lost in music often recently
RATING ★★★★★
There is more to this track than memory will provide. After breakfast this morning, when I decided to get the obligatory morning song listen over with, then write a few sentences and get on with my day, I did not expect much. One listen, a few sentences about disco things and done. This did not happen.
Essentially the disco anthem chorus is what one remembers, which is well-known enough to easily obscure the rest of the song. Yet when one listens with fresh ears, much more is revealed. As the song slowly builds, it quickly becomes apparent that this finely crafted piece owes as much to soul as to disco and, whilst disco in itself is not a bad thing, so too it is not a musical form associated with subtlety, which soul often is. Whilst here the driving beat firmly moves the song into the disco camp, there are also many subtle details, in the chicken guitar, in the tambourine down in the right channel, in that gradually built-up intro and in the lyrics looking for salvation through music, that are divinely soulful.
Lost In Music is a simple enough track which is put together really rather well, a fined honed piece with not a single wasted moment. It is rather a shame that it will be forever lumped in with the glittering blare of disco.
Showing posts with label disco. Show all posts
Showing posts with label disco. Show all posts
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Thursday, February 03, 2011
Cerrone - Supernature
ORIGINATION 45
LAST LISTENED TO this morning
CHANCE OF WAKING TO IT um… good?
RATING ★★★★★
There was nothing in my head this morning, just words. It was the unsnoozed radio that provided the spark today, in quite an unlikely form for morning radio. Call me Mr. Cheater if you want, but it is today's song.
Supernature is about as great a piece of Euro-disco as can ever be found. Funky bass, layers of repetitive synth, a woman singing fairly odd lyrics. Seeming that it will roll on forever, with its occasional strange sort-of sound effects and loud whispers, somehow it is all over in just over four minutes. If ever there was a 45 that would benefit from having two copies to thread into each other, prefiguring house music if ever anything did, it was this one. Sadly I only have the one, that I bought from the Professor a little more than nine years ago (and how it be that long ago?). I find myself wondering if it was it one of his recommendations, or if I found it rummaging though a pile of that week's incomers.
As it happens, a few years later I found a copy of the 12" on eBay. I was both pleased and surprised to discover that rather than being a stretched and padded version of the 45, it was actually the full and unedited version, which was equally as good and, best of all, over ten minutes long.
LAST LISTENED TO this morning
CHANCE OF WAKING TO IT um… good?
RATING ★★★★★
There was nothing in my head this morning, just words. It was the unsnoozed radio that provided the spark today, in quite an unlikely form for morning radio. Call me Mr. Cheater if you want, but it is today's song.
Supernature is about as great a piece of Euro-disco as can ever be found. Funky bass, layers of repetitive synth, a woman singing fairly odd lyrics. Seeming that it will roll on forever, with its occasional strange sort-of sound effects and loud whispers, somehow it is all over in just over four minutes. If ever there was a 45 that would benefit from having two copies to thread into each other, prefiguring house music if ever anything did, it was this one. Sadly I only have the one, that I bought from the Professor a little more than nine years ago (and how it be that long ago?). I find myself wondering if it was it one of his recommendations, or if I found it rummaging though a pile of that week's incomers.
As it happens, a few years later I found a copy of the 12" on eBay. I was both pleased and surprised to discover that rather than being a stretched and padded version of the 45, it was actually the full and unedited version, which was equally as good and, best of all, over ten minutes long.
Friday, January 28, 2011
The Jacksons - Blame It On The Boogie
ORIGINATION the damned radio
LAST LISTENED TO now
CHANCE OF WAKING TO IT bah
RATING ★★★★★
It blundered its sunlight way into my head across the moonlight airwaves and through a slightly forgetful good times radio alarm clock boogie. There had been a sunlight tune in there, in my barely awake moonlight brain, but it withered good times and was burnt away by the might of the Jacksons boogie. I was sunlight powerless to moonlight retain information good times on it boogie. And so sunlight this morning is a moonlight cheat, a breaking of the good times rules I set for my boogie self. I am sunlight so very moonlight pleased by good times this boogie. Sunlight. Moonlight. Good times. Boogie. Sunlight. Moonlight. Good times. Boogie. Sunlight. Moonlight. Good times. Boogie. Sunlight. Moonlight. Good times. Boogie.
Tuesday, June 27, 2006
Harold Melvin & The Bluenotes - Don't Leave Me This Way
ORIGINATION 7"
LAST LISTENED TO no idea
CHANCE OF WAKING TO IT low
RATING
Yes, yes, yes. I love it when that weird lump of grey stuff pulls a beauty from the past that i had forgotten.
Many people have had a go at this tune and many of them have made good versions (i grew up with Jimmy Somerville's, for which i have a particular soft spot). However, the original version is about as good as it gets. It was recorded for Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff's Philidelphia International label in '75, when they had become the biggest names in soul music.
Harold Melvin & The Bluenotes had been around since the '50s. They found a place at Philly International early on, primarily because of the talents of their lead singer. By this point in their career, however, Melvin had taken a back seat and was no longer the lead singer. Instead it was their one-time drummer, Teddy Pendergrass.
Don't Leave Me This Way begins with some delicate electric piano and percussion, before slowly building into a smooth mid-tempo piece of '70s soul. The lush sounds of Gamble & Huff underpinning it are unmistakable and gorgeous. The crowning glory of the song is the chorus. Pendergrass' testifying over one of the greatest build-ups in soul pulls together the best of both gospel and secular music. Only those with no soul could fail to be moved by it.
Such a lovely way to celebrate 200 posts!
LAST LISTENED TO no idea
CHANCE OF WAKING TO IT low
RATING
Yes, yes, yes. I love it when that weird lump of grey stuff pulls a beauty from the past that i had forgotten.
Many people have had a go at this tune and many of them have made good versions (i grew up with Jimmy Somerville's, for which i have a particular soft spot). However, the original version is about as good as it gets. It was recorded for Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff's Philidelphia International label in '75, when they had become the biggest names in soul music.
Harold Melvin & The Bluenotes had been around since the '50s. They found a place at Philly International early on, primarily because of the talents of their lead singer. By this point in their career, however, Melvin had taken a back seat and was no longer the lead singer. Instead it was their one-time drummer, Teddy Pendergrass.
Don't Leave Me This Way begins with some delicate electric piano and percussion, before slowly building into a smooth mid-tempo piece of '70s soul. The lush sounds of Gamble & Huff underpinning it are unmistakable and gorgeous. The crowning glory of the song is the chorus. Pendergrass' testifying over one of the greatest build-ups in soul pulls together the best of both gospel and secular music. Only those with no soul could fail to be moved by it.
Such a lovely way to celebrate 200 posts!
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