(#367: 4 June 1988, 4
weeks)
Track listing: Shiver
(George Benson)/Shake You Down (Gregory Abbott)/Always (Atlantic Starr)/Sweet
Love (Anita Baker)/If You Were Here Tonight (Alexander O’Neal)/Almaz (Randy
Crawford)/Lovin’ You (Minnie Riperton)/Give Me The Reason (Luther
Vandross)/Criticize (Alexander O’Neal)/Weekend Girl (The S.O.S. Band)/So
Amazing (Luther Vandross)/How ‘Bout Us (Champaign)/Rock With You (Michael
Jackson)/Show Me The Way (Regina Belle)/Secret Lovers (Atlantic Starr)/One More
Chance (The Jacksons)
PRELUDE
As I said on Twitter, it isn’t flip-flopping, but coping. No
doubt many will be sniffing: a week’s break and you have to make a drama out of
everything? You weren’t floored by last Friday’s news like we were, and at that
time we really didn’t see any way forward with the blog when bad things were
happening elsewhere.
In the intervening week it has become abundantly clear,
however, that there isn’t actually a lot that we can practically do at the
moment; what’s happening is happening in another far-off country, and there is
some room for hope (although such things are always relative). It is probable
that there will have to be some travelling, and considerable handling of
matters, and so it is more reliable to propose that TPL will in the course of all this be updated rather more fitfully
than we would like.
But, as I also said last week, this is by no means the end
of the Then Play Long road. Indeed,
both Lena and I have been very keen to find ways to keep it going, all of which
culminated in a discussion last night which, in conjunction with the final
record being played on a radio show (and which itself is the concluding track
on entry #371), led or inspired us to want to continue taking the blog forward.
I therefore present the piece which I had begun to write
seven days ago before the bad news broke. Please note, however, that Lena will
be writing the next two entries, both of which will be long-form and require
considerable thought and application, given her first-hand experience of Britain in the
summer of 1988. So the ensuing pause will probably be a lot longer, but
absolutely worth the wait.
* * * *
It was advertised on television, and although I cannot find
the ad in question online, you should take care not to be fooled. A very different
proposition from the last CBS-dominant soul compilation album to make number
one – what a difference a dozen years make – the target audience, at least in
the UK, were young upwardly mobile couples, listening to Robbie Vincent or Tony
Blackburn on the radio, and following the instructions to open the freezer
door, light up the candles at the dinner table, and so on.
Given that CBS were also responsible for distributing the
Def Jam catalogue at that time, you could also maintain that Nite Flite is defined by what it omits;
one possible alternate title could be Don’t
Worry, This Is Not Public Enemy. And I have to say that there are times,
and indeed an initial impression, which suggest imminent immersion in Radio
2/Ford Cortina (or Mondeo)/furry dice/bedroom CD player in luxury Docklands
apartment land. “Shiver” sees Benson taking his thing about as far as it could
commercially go, while “Shake You Down” is utilitarian flatpack R&B,
carefully designed to stimulate its intended target, although I cannot imagine
that telling a woman that you want to shake her down, in 1986 let alone now,
would not provoke a response involving a can of Mace (I think of its late 1986
chartmate “The Rain” by Oran “Juice” Jones, which latter, of course, does not
make an appearance here). Atlantic Starr, represented here by two hits from two
different albums, are much too smooth and untroubled for my palate (even though
the lyric of “Secret Lovers” is deeply troubled). Nor does Regina Belle make
much of an impression (it is not a Peter Frampton cover, and the parent album All By Myself was a minor hit here, but
that was all). Meanwhile, “How ‘Bout Us,” though dating from 1981, was
originally recorded by Champaign
in 1975, and sounds it; the last dance before the disco is closed forever.
The music included on the rest of the record, however, is
music that is very close to my own heart, and moreover is music which goes some
way towards subverting the picture of sham elegance which its packaging might
suggest. I have always thought, for instance, that the unsullied glide of Anita
Baker’s voice is a gift which would lend itself well, and maybe even
startlingly, to unexpected other environments – I am very surprised that 4AD
never enlisted her for any This Mortal Coil project – and “Sweet Love,” a song
so strong that Courtney Pine covered it in the way Coltrane covered “My
Favourite Things,” typifies the hurting elegance of Rapture, the NME critics’
choice for second-best album of 1986; a slow-motion study of a patiently
blossoming passion which didn’t need to shout its truth at its listeners. “You
Bring Me Joy,” “Caught Up In The Rapture,” “Same Ole Love,” and even the
unjustly forgotten Rod Temperton ballad “Mystery” – all very fine (Janet’s Control, third in that same NME poll, could be said to act as a
darker, dirtier, lustier flipside of the same coin).
And this was also the time of Jam and Lewis, as producers
and song constructors, represented here by three tracks; “If You Were Here
Tonight” was actually written by the duo’s Time colleague Monte Moir, but
O’Neal gives a splendid performance, the crux of which is his slowly ascending
semitone in the second syllable of the second chorus’ “tonight” like a
reluctant rebel stepping back from the gallows. But “Criticize” and “Weekend Girl”
are superlative Jam and Lewis records, both of which interestingly turn on
extended dialogues between lead and backing singers; the girls heard on the
choruses of “Criticize” are arguing back with O’Neal’s disgruntlement, although
the song’s deeper subtext – don’t you EVER call me a sellout, whitey – is as
profound as ever (and I cannot think of another American pop song which uses
the expression “fed up,” let alone mean it so pointedly as O’Neal does). The
semi-random organ runs which decorate the multiple crescendi of “Weekend Girl” articulate the unspoken or unspeakable
desire of the song’s subject.
There was also “Almaz,” a late return to the charts for
Randy Crawford; I first heard it on the radio in early 1987, laid up with ‘flu
and surrounded by records of noisy, confrontational music, but still recognised
it as a song of melancholy greatness. Not actually a song about her husband,
“Almaz” is about an Ethiopian refugee couple, and their newborn child, who
lived next door to the singer (who wrote both music and lyrics herself), and
the attendant blend of fear and hope (minor-to-major and back again; “She’s
young and tender/But will life bend her?”) arising from their situation. What
the song suggests is, if you listen to it, quite radical.
As, structurally speaking, was “Lovin’ You,” the oldest song
here, the reluctant fourth single from 1974’s Perfect Angel, drawing a line between what came before (Rotary
Connection) and what was to come a lifetime later (The Orb). A simple 1967-type
song in many ways; producer Stevie Wonder liked the background birdsong so kept
it going throughout the entire record, and there is little else save electric
piano and a lost nightingale of a voice. Would such a record even have a sniff
at the Top 100 now, let alone sprint to number two? And that’s saying nothing
about the accidental poignancy of “Stay with we while we grow old” being sung
by somebody who never got to grow old; mainly because it was a number two hit,
and will therefore be covered more fully in the other place.
No arguments either with Luther Vandross, albeit with two
songs from two different albums (like Alexander O’Neal); Marcus Miller’s
productions and arrangements are so skilfully deserted, like a sunny, newly
depopulated island with a hidden landing strip, that they would have done the
Miles of Tutu proud (although the
cosmic sofa-surfing of 1985’s “The Other Side Of The World” remains Vandross’
great ballad performance). There will be plenty of chances to catch up with
“Rock With You” later in TPL; for
now, it’s enough to wonder just how perfect a pop record this is, insofar as
there is nothing wrong with it at all, right down to the spaces and the
“Popcorn” single-note keyboard solo and the chord changes.
But Michael’s is just one of several voices – though one of
the more prominent, there in the background – on the closing “One More Chance,”
this record’s curveball and you might have to scratch your head a little to
remember from which Jacksons album this came. Actually it comes from maybe the
least heralded album of their career, 1984’s Victory, and is written and lead-sung by Randy Jackson. It is such
a magnificent ballad performance that it shames the terrible singles that were
taken from the record. He knows he’s been wrong, with her and with and to
himself, and now he waits in limbo, pleading, his diminishing cries of “Say you
love me…say you love me…I want you to say it…say it…” emanating from the bottom
of an unreachable well. Marti Pellow is nowhere in the running. And so this
“comforting” compilation ends on a discomforting note, the night now
encroaching rather than enriching. Where the hell do we go from here?
