I've never been to Africa, which is particularly embarrassing in my case since I have a Doctoral Minor in African Studies and a large part of my dissertation involved the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Not having been to Africa is far and away the greatest regret I have in my life, one that will be reconciled some day soon I hope.
Though, to be honest, I fear that if I go, I might never come back.
I've spent so many countless hours, days, weeks, months and years studying African history, interviewing African intellectuals, reading African literature, parsing African politics and culture, absorbing African music, learning and teaching African philosophy, that-- despite the fact we've never met in person-- I strangely feel as if I have a deep and abiding relationship with many parts of that Continent. Everyone has their imagined home-away-from-home, I suppose. For some it's Paris, for others it's Rio de Jeneiro, and I'd even bet for some it's Memphis. For me, it's Cape Town. One of these days, someday soon I hope, I'll at long last find myself atop Table Mountain and I am confident, that day, a lifelong thirst will be finally quenched.
And so, the song I choose as the one that makes me think of a place I've never been is "Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika (God Bless Africa)." It's the national anthem of Tanzania, Zambia and part of the national anthem of South Africa. It was originally composed as a hymn, and was taken up again as a part of the pan-African liberation movements in the mid- to late-20th century. It is also an absolutely moving, stunningly beautiful and truly awe-inspiring song.
Thirteen years ago, I had the good fortune to attend the ceremony and dinner at which Nelson Mandela received the Freedom Award from the National Civil Rights Museum here in Memphis. I got to meet and chat with Madiba that night, an honor and a privilege I will never forget. At one point during the evening, a choir who had traveled to Memphis with the South African delegation sang "Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika." It was the first time I had ever heard it and I remember thinking that there was nothing I wanted more than to go to whatever place was the source of that sound. I began graduate school the next year and I knew the day that I walked in the door what the subject of my dissertation would be. And that's exactly what it was.
Here's the renowned South African a cappela group, Ladysmith Black Mambazo (who you may or may not know from their collaboration with Paul Simon), performing the song:
In South Africa, the different verses of the song are frequently sung in the nation's several languages: Xhosa, Zulu, Sesotho, Afrikaans and English. What a beautiful testament to what makes a nation.
One final note: if you've never seen the amazing film Amandla! A Revolution in Four-Part Harmony, which documents the role that music played in South Africa's anti-apartheid struggle, you should stop whatever you're doing right now and go watch it. There is really nothing else in the world like human voices raised in solidarity and in song.
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Nostalgic? Check out my entry on Day 18 of the 2011 version of the 30 Day Song Challenge.
It's hard to think about "holiday" songs in the middle of June-- in Memphis-- so today's entry will be brief. I'm picking a Christmas song, not because Christmas is my favorite holiday (my favorite holiday is a tie between New Years Eve and Halloween), but rather because, c'mon let's admit it, Christmas has the best songs. I was tempted to pick something from the old Bing Crosby movie White Christmas because the very sappiest part of me loves that film so much. But the truth is that a new version of a new-ish Christmas song came out last year and absolutely won me over the first time I saw it. (For the record, this song is as much about seeing it performed as it is about hearing it.) It's a version of Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas" performed along with late-night host and former-SNL star Jimmy Fallon, his late-night house band (and Philly legends) The Roots, Mariah herself, and a bunch of adorable little kids. What really makes this otherwise motley crew irresistable, however, is the fact that they bust this song out on a menagerie of grade-school music instruments. It's really too cute for words.
Warning: this video may give you diabetes.
I don't have anything else to say about this. It's summertime, after all. In Memphis.
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Nostalgic? Check out my entry for Day 17 of the 2011 version of the 30 Day Song Challenge
Today is a two-fer in my picks for the 30 Day Song Challenge, in part because the prompt itself is a compound prompt. I'll just say in advance that I'm only considering TV or movie "theme songs" and not any old song from a TV or movie soundtrack (which would include far too many songs that may or may not necessarily be associated with a television program or a film). I actually have an entire playlist on my iPod that is nothing but my favorite theme songs. And I'm talking about bona fide "theme" songs, not just songs-associated-with-a-TV-program-or-movie.
I'll start with my pick for favorite TV theme song. This is a song that I've always loved and I've never forgotten since the first time I heard way back when. In fact, this is the song I have set for my wake-up alarm. After you hear it, I'm sure you'll immediately change your alarm song, too. It's from the 1974-1979 series Good Times, about a poor black family in the Chicago projects. Like many 70's sitcoms, Good Times served up its fair share of regrettable stereotypes and now-anachronistic social faux pas, but I actually went back and watched a couple of episodes a few weeks ago and it's still really, really good. When I was a kid, I used to copy that schtick by James "J.J" Evans (played by Jimmie Walker)-- I'm Kid [clap] Dyn-O-MITE-- all the time, much to the chagrin of my parents and teachers and other white people.
Here it is, the opening and closing credits of Good Times. Unfortunately, this clip doesn't show the most abiding memory I have of this show, which was its feature of Ernie Barnes' painting "Sugar Shack" (pictured above) in the closing credits. ("Sugar Shack" is my single favorite piece of artwork of all time, and I would happily accept your gift of a print of it to hang in my home.) Good Times was a great show with a great theme song. Check it out:
And for my favorite movie theme song, I'm picking something a bit outside-the-usual for me, but I can't think of any other circumstances under which I might get the chance to pick a song from Burt Bacharach, one of the greatest songwriters of American 20th century popular music. I know there are a lot of better movie theme songs out there, so this pick is really a love tribute. I think the (original, 1981) film Arthur is one of the funniest movies of all time, and despite all its cheesy-saxaphone corniness, I love this theme song. Here's my pick, "Arthur's Theme (Best That You Can Do)," composed by Bacharach and performed by Christopher Cross:
Two great lyrics for you today, folks. Ain't we lucky we got 'em, good times and the best that you can do is fall in love. Sometimes its the simplest of sentiments that ring the most true.
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Nostalgic? Check out my entry for Day 16 of the 2011 version of the 30 Day Song Challenge
I really dislike the designation "best friend." I can't entirely explain why but I've always felt like it's an impossible-to-determine category. What makes a good friend the "best"? The time you've known each other? The experiences you've shared? What you've given or sacrificed or provided for one another? Is it about quality or quantity? Is it measured by intensity or duration? What is the for-the-sake-of-which of friendship, anyway?
I think I can trace my general attitudes toward friendship back to my youth. In my younger years, my family moved around quite a bit. In fact, when I entered the 9th grade, I was in my seventh different school. As a consequence of that itinerancy, I would say that I've always been, still am, by both necessity and habit, someone who tries to find and make friends wherever I am in whatever ways I am able. Unlike a lot of people, I don't have friends now that I've known since childhood, friends with whom I went to summer camp or learned to fingerpaint or read or ride a bike. The longest "continuous" friendships I still have are with a couple of high school friends. (Shout out to my Bartlett girls, VivaviousVal and JamMasterJen!) Next to them, my longest and most enduring friendships have two sources: (1) my friends at Wild Bill's, a juke joint in town that I've been frequenting for going on twenty years now and (2) my Villanova (grad school) friends, people who I see maybe once a year. That is to say, measured in duration alone, my "best" friends are not exactly "longtime" friends. They're all friendships I formed in my adulthood.
To make things even more complicated, I had my first serious fall-outs with a few friends in the last year and half, which gave me pause for the first time in my life to really consider not only what I think it means for me to be a friend to someone, but also what it means for me for someone to be a friend to me. What I (unfortunately) learned from those experiences is, first, that friendship is something that should never be assumed, no matter how long it's lasted or how dear it is or how unassailable it may seem. Friendships require constant maintenance, and if they're weaker than you thought and you look away for a second, they can vanish like a thief in the night. I learned, second, that friendships can't be maintained unilaterally. In the unfortunate case when you discover that a friendship is a one-way affair, you'll inevitably find that it can't withstand even the slightest turbulence. But I also learned, third, that there comes a time to let some friendships go. It's sad when that happens and it leaves a gaping and irreparable hole, to be sure, but the world doesn't end. In fact, it gets better, even if only because you come out of those experiences with a far richer understanding of and a far deeper appreciation for the friendships that abide.
Here's one thing I can say with total confidence: friends are friends in my book, full stop. On the whole, I'd do the same for the least of my friends that I'd do for the "best" of them. That's the long and short of what it means to be a friend, I think. Superlatives are unnecessary where friendship is concerned. That said, today's prompt for the 30 Day Song Challenge (The Sequel) asks for a song that reminds me of my "best" friend, so I have to put aside my populist inclinations for the moment and choose amongst my beloved. Somewhat surprisingly, it wasn't at all difficult to do.
Adriel Trott, you BAMF, we've known each other for going on thirteen years now. We've been there for each other in every high and every low of those years. You know the very best and the very worst of the stories that can be told about me, and you've been (for the most part) discreet about telling them. There is nothing that I don't love about you. What is more, yours is the only wedding I've ever voluntarily attended and, when you walked down the aisle, I actually cried. We're both women of strong opinion, modest pedigree and sometimes ill repute, which makes our friendship loud and raucous and not for the faint of heart. And it makes for a friendship for which I wouldn't trade anything.
I'll just say that, despite the million times you've asked me to play it, I don't really love this song. But here it is, "Closer to Fine" by the Indigo Girls. This one's for you:
If I was ever inclined to give someone the designation "best" friend, Trott would get it, hands down, no contest. I don't know if I can say it any better than the song does: The best thing you've ever done for is to help me take my life less seriously.
It's only life, after all. Trott and I both come from hard-scrabble, grint-and-grind, fake-it-til-you-make-it cities, and families, and probably also genetic makeups. I might say that we're one of those split-souls that Aristophanes recounts in the Symposium, but that would be to give myself too much credit. She's a force to be reckoned with, brilliant and brave, true as steel and just as strong. And yeah, she brings me closer to fine every year that our friendship grows.
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Nostalgic? Check out my entry for Day 15 of the 2011 version of the 30 Day Song Challenge.
I have a whole complex theory about breakups, the first and most important axiom of which is that breakups hardly ever "take" on the first time. As a rule, if you've been in a real relationship with someone-- meaning, first, that you've invested a significant amount of time and emotion into the relationship and, second, that you've gotten to the point where your lives (friends, family, stuff, memories, home, schedules) are genuinely shared-- then I figure that it takes at least three tries for a breakup of that relationship to really stick. The first try is the one where you immediately discover that you don't know how to do anything by yourself, so you go running back to the safe and familiar the first time you feel lonely. But you find, alas, that what was broken is still broken, and although the rapprochement has given you a few nights/weeks of that familiar touch, it only makes the next parting more laborious and excruciating. The second try at a breakup is usually the ugliest one, because you both know you should've never rekindled the flame and so whatever other hurt you already felt is now augmented with shame and regret. This is when the claws come out, you say the hateful things you shouldn't ever say, your friends start being honest with you about your poor judgment, you slowly begin to think of what used to be "ours" as instead "mine" and "yours," and eventually you find that all the time you spend together only verifies and intensifies the feeling that this is not what I want. It's between the second and third (i.e., "real") breakup that you resign yourselves to the inevitable, like watching a snowman melt. It's going, it's going... and then, mercifully, it's gone.
I think that when a relationship finally dies, people have one of two reactions: either they focus their five stages of grief on their lost love, or they direct those emotions at themselves. I count myself among the latter. As a rule, in my life, I haven't remained "friends" with my exes. Not out of any kind of abiding anger or because I don't think they're good people or even because I don't still love them, but only because the relationship we had was in a very special and very unusual category. For me anyway, with very few (almost no) exceptions, those kind of relationships are just non-transferable to another category.
Enough with the amateur psychoanalyzing, though.
I picked today's song for two reasons. First, it's a song from an album that one of exes gave me on our second try at our breakup, so it's actually a song I associate with an actual breakup. But, second, this song captures the general sentiment that I feel after a breakup, which is something much more damning of myself and my inclinations than it is of anyone else. Here it is, "I Fall in Love Too Easily" by Patricia Barber:
I didn't know this at the time I first heard this song, but "I Fall in Love Too Easily" is an old jazz standard, first introduced by Frank Sinatra in the 1945 film Anchors Aweigh. It's been recorded by many of the great jazz musicians over the years, but Barber's version will always be the one that hits home for me. Her rendition is so quiet and so tender, and it captures just the right amount of vulnerability that the song requires. It is, after all, a song of self-reckoning, of owning-up, of looking at oneself in the mirror in the cold light of day and recognizing where one's fortress is weak.
My heart should be well-schooled / because I've been fooled in the past / but I fall in love too easily / I fall in love too fast.
That just about sums up the whole emotional content that I associate with breaking up. And, for the record, that goes for all kinds of breakups, not just romantic ones.
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Nostaligc? Check out my entry for Day 14 from the 2011 version of the 30 Day Song Challenge
First things first, if you don't know the story of that Vancouver Kissing Couple to the left, one of the greatest stories and images of the last decade, read about them here. Love and Revolution are two of my favorite things.
Picking my favorite "make-out song" violates more than a few of the Don't-Get-Too-Personal rules I've tried to uphold on this blog over the many years I've maintained it, but whatever, I'll just keep the details to a minimum. I also probably should have read the prompts for this version of the 30 Day Song Challenge in advance, because if I had I might've have saved my pick from Day 9 (Marvin Gaye's "Let's Get It On") for today. Since I vowed not to repeat any selections for the whole 30 Days, that meant poor Marvin had to set aside for today's make-out sesh. What a shame. Good thing there are a million good ones to choose from on my iPod.
My pick for today, "Bring It On Home To Me," is a classic. It's been recorded by practically everyone. It's a story of love and longing, like most great make-out songs, but it's got both a sweetness and an edge to it that sets it apart from the others. What is clear from the lyrics is that the possibility of the singer's love coming home to him is far from assured. And so, to make it sure, he's promising a lot. Jewelry and money and forgiveness and tenderness and even his own servitude, even after he's dead and buried. He's outright begging. Begging for one thing and one thing only: just bring that sweet lovin' on home.
Now, sometimes-- most of the time, really-- begging is completely un-sexy. It can be feeble and pathetic, or it can be histrionic in the way that motivates people to investigate the ins and outs of restraining orders. But the kind of begging in "Bring It On Home To Me" isn't that way. It's sweet. It's impassioned. And, most importantly, it's believable. My guess is that the version of this song that most people know and love best is the one by Sam Cooke. But I'm picking the Percy Sledge version, for a number of reasons. Here it is:
Percy's version is a little slower than Sam Cooke's version, it has that great organ, some really stellar female backup vocals and, just in general, it's about a thousand times sexier than any other recording of this song, imho. What makes this a great "make-out" song is quite different than what makes Marvin Gaye's "Let's Get It On" a great make-out song. This one is still aiming at the same (ahem) goal, I suspect, but it knows it can't get there without a healthy dose of good-ole-fashioned romance thrown in. I mean, he's not technically asking for a make-out session; he's just asking for her to bring her sweet loving home.
What happens when she gets home may be a fait accompli, to be sure, but all that beseeching sure is nice.
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Nostalgic? Check out my entry for Day 13 of the 2011 version of the 30 Day Song Challenge.
I'm really glad I was born at a time that allowed my life to span two millennia. I sometimes think about my historical counterpart 1000 years ago. She would have been born in the latter part of the 10th century, when the world was dim and dark and governed entirely by authoritarian power. She would have lived almost 500 years before the invention of the printing press, 700 years before the discovery of electricity, 900 years before she could've even imagined anything like suffrage. Most likely, she wouldn't have been able to read or write. She would have lived hard, died young, bathed infrequently and probably done all of her lady-business outdoors. If she were living anywhere near where I live now, she would have witnessed the very first years of the development of early Mississippian culture, building mounds and cultivating maize crops and, in general, going about a life that couldn't be more alien to me than if she had lived on Mars.
Now more than a decade into the 21st century, my memories of the fin de siècle are beginning to fade, but I do recall the Y2K phenomenon being a pretty big deal. OMG, ALL THE COMPUTERS ARE GOING TO CRASH BECAUSE THEY CAN'T CHANGE DATES!! Thankfully, it pretty much went off without a hitch. Little did we know then, though, that the Day That Would Change Everything was still a year away. It's still hard for me to believe how different the world is now than it was before 9/11.
Anyway, as I mentioned in the previous posts, I'm a huge fan of 50's-70's music, but far less so of the music of the 80's and 90's. The Aughts, however, marked a return to good music for me-- and, for the record, I love the music of the twenty-teens as well. There were a lot of good things to choose from in the 00's, but when I was deciding, I tried to pick something that I think I'll still be playing 20 years from now to remind me of the Aughts. And so, here it is, "Hey Ya" by the incredibly entertaining duo Outkast:
It's funny, and more than a little anachronistic, that the song I will most remember from the 00's has a hook that instructs you to shake it, shake it like a Polaroid picture. Many, if not most, of the folks who were shaking it to Outkast's 2003 hit probably didn't really know what a Polaroid was, though they quickly made up for that with the insta-spread of the ubiquitous Instagram app. Hipsters are a strange breed that way, all nostalgic for nostalgia as they tend to be. Even the video is an homage, partly to the era it's throwing-back to and partly to the throwback itself.
"Hey Ya" is one of those songs, like the Jackson 5's "I Want You Back" or Rufus Thomas' "Walk the Dog," that makes it just impossible to sit still when you hear it. And go ahead, just try not to clap-clap-clap-clap when that part comes up between verses. (You know the part.) You think you got it? Oh, you think you got it? Well got it doesn't get it when there's nothing at all.
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Nostalgic? Check out my entry for Day 12 from the 2011 version of the 30 Day Song Challenge.
This week, I've begun my third stint in the Rhodes Institute for Regional Studies. RIRS is an innovative summer program in which Rhodes' best and brightest students get to create their own independent research projects (each of which has some relation to the region) and work with one faculty member for eight weeks to complete it. The projects span a really incredible range of topics and disciplines and the close-contact, collaborative and intensive environment in which we work all summer is exciting. My favorite part of RIRS, however, is the first week, when we give our research Fellows a crash-course in Memphis culture, history, politics and arts. For five straight days, we have the Fellows all day long-- and even a couple of nights-- which can be a bit overwhelming and exhausting, but which inevitably makes for some incredible conversations and experiences.
I mention this today for two reasons: First, because "Memphis Week" of RIRS is really exhausting. Therefore, today's entry on my song-pick from the 90s will be brief. Second, because it just so happens that as a result of this being "Memphis Week," I've spend all day for the last couple of days with a bunch of young people who were born in the 90s. Several times today, as I was chatting with some of them, I wondered to myself what they would pick as "the" song of the decade in which they were born.
I feel fairly confident that it wouldn't be this. Here's my pick, Boyz II Men's (1992) "End of the Road":
I know it's cheesy. I am aware that I have chosen a boy-band. But I can't help myself, I loved Boyz II Men then and I still do now.
-------------------------------- Nostalgic? Check out my Day 11 entry from the 2011 version of the 30 Day Song Challenge.
Let me just begin with the plot-spoiler for today's post:
I do not love 80s music.
In fact, there is very little about the 80s in general that I even like, much less love. And I have almost no nostalgic feelings for that decade at all. I don't like big-banged, hair-sprayed hair. I don't like the sound of a synthesizer. I don't like leg-warmers. I don't like Reagan or the Cold War or anything celebrated in the film Wall Street. I don't like slap-bracelets or waterbeds or jazzercise or My Little Pony or neon-colored anything. I also don't like epidemics (see: AIDS and crack and famine) or New Wave or metal of any kind (heavy, glam or otherwise). To this day, the smell of Love's Baby Soft makes me throw up in my mouth a little. I don't even like, and didn't like at the time, Judy Blume. The people/trends/phenomena from the 80s that I do like now I only came to like well after their heyday, that is, only after liking them came to be infused with a healthy dose of irony. Maybe my lack of affection for the 80s is grounded in the more generalized I-hate-everything-about-life disposition that defines pre-teen girls, which I was in the 80s. I don't know. At any rate, unlike the previous three days in this 30 Day Song Challenge (The Sequel), and unlike the subsequent two days to come, I don't find choosing today's song to be all that difficult. I didn't even find the process of determining it all that enjoyable, to be honest.
Did I mention I don't like 80s music?
An aside, in my own defense: of course it's true, if I'm being generous, that there are many bands/artists/songs from the 80s that I "like." I mean, you can't completely excise an entire decade of music from your catalog of appreciation and still call yourself a music-lover. But, on the whole, this is my least favorite decade of music in the last century of American popular music. Most of what I would say I really "love" of 80s music I love for reasons that are entirely different from, if not outright opposed to, the general criteria I employ for determining what counts as good music. That includes even the absolutely idiosyncratic criteria that I would generally let pass as acceptable ones, like the "this-marks-a-momentous-moment-in-my life" criterion. For better or worse, there are no songs from the 80s that signal those momentous-moments in my life. I did not drink my first alcoholic drink or smoke my first cigarette or lose my virginity or break the law for the first time or tell my first devastating lie or even have my heart really broken in the 80s. So, none of the quasi-objective or subjective criteria I usually employ hold. It's not that I don't, or can't, "get" what it is that people love about 80s music. It's just that, to the extent that I get it at all, I understand that affection more abstractly than I do viscerally. As I said on Day One of this challenge, taste is a funny thing.
To wit, it will come as no suprise, I suspect, that my pick for today is Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean," not only my favorite song from the 80s but one of the best music videos of the then-still-nascent MTV era:
MJ had been at it for almost 20 years by the time the 80s rolled around, which is when he released the record-breaking album Thriller. I was a young and impressionable 11-year-old at the time, but Thriller was the first album I bought with my own, very meager, allowance money. What I didn't know at the time, but was ecstatic to find out upon my purchase, was that Thriller came with not one, BUT TWO, full-size posters of Michael inside the album. That was the first and only poster of a musical artist that I ever hung on my bedroom wall. (*Swoon*) For the record, during those same years, hanging on my younger brother's wall-- and I am sure he will order my assasination for reporting this-- was a poster of Alyssa Milano. If history is written by the victors, let me be the first to write:
Little brother, I WON.
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Nostalgic? Check out my Day 10 entry for the 2011 version of the 30 Day Song Challenge.
Ahhhhh, the 70s. Among many other things, it was a great decade for babies. Including and especially yours truly. I was born the same year as the Roe v. Wadedecision, so that just goes to show you... errr, umm, well ... I don't know how to finish this sentence.
That's me in the picture to your left on my 5th birthday (still in the 70s) and now (just a couple of months before my, ahem, 40th birthday). My, oh my, how things change over time, n'est-ce pas? I was the first-born both in my immediate family and in my larger family, that is, the first-born of my generation of Johnsons. I was also the first girl born in my family in over 70 years and, with the exception of my younger brother, it was only girls after me in my generation of kids. So, I like to think of myself as a game-changer in that way, because I generally like to credit myself with lots of things I haven't actually merited. (I'm also going to take this opportunity to plug another amazing Johnson-girl from my generation, my cousin Hillary, who is an absolutely phenomenal photographer-- check out her site here-- and also her husband, Clark, who is also awesome and has recently launched his own brand of skateboards, which you can check out here.) More relevant to today's post, however, it's worth noting that I was also born a "P.K.", something that shaped many of the contours of the person I am today, both positively and negatively. Chief among them, without a doubt, is my deep and abiding love of music. I suppose it makes a difference what sort of church you're born into, but for PK's like me-- born into Protestant, evangelical, holy-roller denominations, where every song raised up in the congregational voice is raised up in three-part harmony, such that you intuitively understand the relation between the triad parts of a musical chord before you even understand how to count-- well, in that environment, one just grows up recognizing that music determines the measure of your soul as much as sin and salvation do. My earliest musical influence was, of course, gospel/hymnal music, but I also had the great fortune of having two parents who were died-in-the-wool fans of 60s and 70s popular music (especially Motown). I've often heard my mother say, only half-jokingly, that if you asked her kids when they were young to sing "Joy To The World," there was a 8 in 10 chance that they'd begin with: Jeremiah was a bullfrog!
To this day, if you asked me to sing "Joy To The World," you'd most certainly hear a story about how, if I was the King of the world, I'd tell you what I'd do. I'd throw away the cars and the bars and the wars and, well, you know.
All in all, I'd have to say that the 1970s are my favorite decade of music. I was only six years old when the decade ended, so I can't possibly claim to have been reflective about, or even consciously aware of, the music of "the 70s" at the time. But I often wonder whether or not those sounds, that zeitgeist, the weird and ultimately inexplicable way that a countless number of cultural elements coalesce to form a generation's sound, also formed me in a way that I "remember" without being able to call it up in any specific memory of my own.
To repeat (at this point an ad nauseum repetition) what I've said for the last two days of this Challenge, it's impossible to pick just one song from the 70s. However, today's pick was made (slightly) easier by a restriction that I imposed on myself on the first day of this Challenge. I promised then to do my best not to repeat any selections in this month's posts from the ones I picked in my original 30 Day Song Challenge venture from June 2011. So that knocked out my favorite song of all time, the Rolling Stone's (1978) "Beast of Burden," and several other picks that may have found their way to the top of my 70s songs. Even still, let me say again, for the record, this is an impossible task.
Here's my pick for a song I love from the 70s. It's Marvin Gaye's "Let's Get It On." The recorded version is an absolutely triumphant piece of work, of course, but here's a rare live version of Marvin gettin' it on:
For the record, I arrived in the world the very same week as this song. Props, please. "Let's Get It On" is, hands down, one of the grooviest, grindiest, libidinous, erotic, provocative, simultaneously pleading and demanding, flat-out rough and raw, and really, truly seductive songs ever recorded in the history of American popular music. There's nothing wrong with love, if you want to feel love, you gotta let yourself go.
Amen, Marvin. Preach. Is there anything, in the history of human expression, truer than that?
What I hope for everyone (of age, that is) is that he or she has a moment in life when s/he is so moved, so entranced, so motivated, so driven and so undeniably turned-on to say to someone else not only"let's get it on," but to follow that imperative immediately with this minute. I'm a fan, of course, of the long history of songs (in blues and country, especially) that thinly-veils sexual propositions with metaphor and analogy, but there comes a time, alas, when nuance is nothing short of a liability. This song has absolutely no nuance whatsoever. Not. One. Bit. That distinguishes it for many as the kind of crude, base, sexually illicit and explicit product of the 70s that we'd spend the next decade repressing and sublimating, not to mention paying the price for. But this song, for a moment in history, and for a million other moments when it's been played and replayed at just those times it was written to serve, is a masterpiece of human desire, in the purest sonic rendering of human desire.
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Nostalgic? Check out my Day 9 entry for the 2011 version of the 30 Day Song Challenge.
I'm a Philosophy professor in and from Memphis, Tennessee, and this site has been my soapbox since 2006.The title of this blog is taken from a list of rules I pass out to my students each semester. It's Rule Number 1.
