Again I sing the praises of 70’s funk. This one is the perfection of Sly’s Family Affair style. Family Affair was the bigger hit but what do they know? Among its many virtues, this is the baddest baseline in history. I open the floor to other contenders.
IGNORED OBSCURED RESTORED
This weekend marks the 10 year anniversary for the SotW. Wow, over 500 postings (almost 700 songs) without ever missing a week. Thank you all for your feedback and encouragement.
It also marks the 50th anniversary of an important milestone in my life as a music lover. You see, 50 years ago this week my parents threw a party for my 12th birthday at the roller skating rink they owned and operated. I invited my entire 6th grade class which was about 40 kids. (Yes, we had large class sizes at the parochial school I attended.)
Many of my classmates gifted me records, supporting my growing interest in music. The records I received were on the Top 40 of New York’s 77 – WABC, the most popular station of the day. The link below is to the survey of what was hot that week:
77 WABC Music Survey, Ferruary 13, 2018
I had almost all of the Top 20 records and I’ll select one for today’s SotW. Coming in at #8 that week was “I Wish it Would Rain” by the Temptations.
“… Rain” features another outstanding, plaintive vocal by the great but flawed David Ruffin. The music, fitting for the sentiment of the song, is supplied by Motown’s house band, The Funk Brothers.
The lyrics were written by Roger Penzabene after discovering that his wife was cheating on him.
Sunshine, blue skies, please go away
A girl has found another and gone away
With her went my future, my life is filled with gloom
So day after day I stay locked up in my room
I know to you, it might sound strange
But I wish it would rain, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
‘Cause so badly I wanna go outside (such a lovely day)
But everyone knows that a man ain’t supposed to cry
Listen, I gotta cry ’cause crying eases the pain, oh yeah
People this hurt I feel inside
Words could never explain,
I just wish it would rain, oh let it rain, rain, rain, rain, ooo baby
Day in day out my tear-stained face
Pressed against the window pane
My eyes search the skies desperately for rain
‘Cause rain drops will hide my tear drops
And no one will ever know that I’m crying
Crying when I go outside
To the world outside my tears
I refuse to explain, ooo I wish it would rain, ooh, baby
Let it rain, let it rain
I need rain to disguise the tears in my eyes
Oh, let it rain
Oh yeah, yeah, listen
I’m a man and I got my pride
‘Til it rains I’m gonna stay inside, let it rain
Can you feel his pain!?! It turns out Penzabene was hurting so bad that he took his own life in desperation on New Year’s Eve 1967, a week after the single was released. Damn!
The song has been covered by many singers, most of them soul artists. To my ear, the most interesting cover was by the Faces with Rod Stewart taking the lead vocal. It’s worth checking out if you’ve never heard it.
Enjoy… until next week.
An old friend of mine and I spent about an hour of the Super Bowl talking about the old AFL, sparked by an impromptu contest of could we name all the original AFL teams as well as a player on each.
Today he sent me this. Quincy Jones doesn’t like it:
Still, not uninteresting. A highly influential industry dude seems to be letting loose. Not shocking. But not uninteresting.
I’d link to some Michael Jackson stuff but he was a pederast, sadly, or some Bill Cosby stuff, but he was a rapist, sadly.
Still worth reading, I think. And I hope I never get old.
Here’s one that’s definitely grown on me over the years. The noisy guitary chorus with the Keith Moon drums doesn’t feel right at first and takes some time to get used to. But what the hell. . .
Actually it was a #1 hit in Britain. Somehow I missed it back in the day. Garage soul with Satisfaction-plus fuzztone. That singer’s got some pipes. They didn’t write it but they might as well have. The original by Jackie Edwards is an early reggae song and a fine tune, but Spencer and the fellas make it something else again.
From the same label as the Ron Gallo cut I posted last night, there was a link on the end of his video, this is just plain goofy exuberant fun. The album is out later this month.
This entertains me way more than it has any right to:
You have to hear this. Rock from Philly. I came upon this from my 19 year old daughter’s playlist. Life is good.
The Washington Post profiles an old failed punk rocker turned failed but also kind of exalted country artist Zane Campbell. There’s also a video well worth watching.
This is a big ol’ shaggy dog story involving musical history, the Ramones, drugs, drinking, notebooks and a voice that the writer gushes about. It’s also tough to judge from the video if the artist the writer describes deserves the attention. But he rewards, even if he isn’t actually worthy.
To judge that I went to hear his music, something the video avoids.
I’ve now sampled a lot of his country stuff. I didn’t find album cuts, there aren’t any on Google Music, but there’s lots of poorly recorded live videos. I don’t know, I think I get why the video stays away from his song.
The 2015 album the article admires is available on Spotify, if you want to give some better produced tracks a try. It’s a better presentation, but the awkward breathing mars the singing, and weird pauses disrupt the flow of the songs. Campbell’s history is a checkered one, he freely admits, and it is reflected in the polish of these songs. It isn’t like they need to be slicker, but they should be more integral, more bewitching, instead of sounding like a man fighting to keep up. I liked the Post story better before I heard them.
