Yeah, I don’t always think about the music of the early 1960s either. However, it is always prone to polish our subliminal sensitivities. Such was it this last night, when out of deep slumber, came this chart-topping musical wonder! This was the latest to invade jukebox musical mind while I tried to sleep.
I reluctantly rose to sip some bedside water.
From within and without of the same night’s sleepy and dream, came this classic contemporary musical stream.
To the point that to arise from slumber to activate the now convenient bedside android; for to search a hazy “Rebel”? Then for she immediately came, “The Crystals” from the the black and white television cave and haze of my captive family youth television view and decades prior to the beloved DJ booth!
Now satisfied soonest to lay again and unfortunately lurch alone. It was worth exorcising this subliminal serpent of spirituality. Which, I surmise, is always active naturally.
Don’t ask me why this tune woke me up. WTFK ? and STILL, I Love, and always will associate with my comeuppance, the first drum-roll and tinkled piano notes of and this entire this song… even in 2024, Baby! Can you still do the “Shindig”?? I hope you look at all that was going ON in this video. Those ladies – patterned after Diana Ross & The Supremes – must have had a lotta of off-camera pressure on them. “Troopers”.
Check out (listen for) the boss baritone sax during the bridge! Thanks for reading and please comment.
I’d watched her perform on grand stages like the legendary Beacon Theater, on Broadway in Manhattan and introduced her to audiences.
Phyllis Hyman, a celebrity singer who sought me out and introduced herself to me during my “Welcome to WBLS FM” coming-out party at club 70West in 1984. you may remember her biggest hit, “You Know How To Love Me” ? Check out the video below!
I will never forget the time this late Superstar singer, Phyllis Hyman, found me during a moment of quiet reflection, contemplation and stage announcing prep, sitting aside from the main stage on a smaller, raised carpeted area. I was looking down – we didn’t have cell phones back then – when suddenly I spied this large palm of a female hand offering itself towards me, in front of my face.
I raise my gaze to see a broad-shouldered woman, adorned in a purple and black cape, Khufu-like hat in front of me. I must have looked aghast as she said, in a semi-deep female melodious voice, “Hi… I’m Phyllis…” I was going to myself, “Oh shit! That’s Phyllys Hyman herself!, while trying to play it cool. Yes, I was a little slow back then in retrospect.
Oh my gosh, now so many decades later, I am so sorry I failed to realize her admiration towards me vibe! I never knew, until many years later, how much she liked me!
My girl. So sorry I did not understand your admiration for me.
So, it all came to a head to a point that she, by surprise, cursed me out about it one evening when we ran into each-other at the legendary “Possible 20” bar and restaurant on West 55th Street, in midtown Manhattan, New York City, where all who where anybody in the 1980scame to wind-down after their entertainment, music, and media gigs, who used to congregate. I did not think that a woman of her physical stature and voluptuousness, would ever be attracted to a slim guy like “Jimi B”.
Not sure WHY this came to me here in 2023. maybe it the doldrums of between Social Security checks poverty. Why she revealed and talked to me again, except for my senior social insecurity, aging and wanting to share my legacy, creative poverty and mutual unfulfilled love; but knew I had to post this with sentimental love, going with the current flow of chronicling, educating my DJ years, those who I was privileged to meet and/or introduce and entertaining you who found this post because, in my humble opinion (and that of some psychologists) the mode of music melds mental metal.
[I’m breaking format here to post a music review on this blog because you are getting a 2-for-1, as I posted the companion to this album on my musik-ONLY blog a couple of days ago]
April 21, 2019, Richmond, Virginia – I just met the star singer of “Mississippi Hippie Blues” and her husband in an Airbnb Inn kitchen! By the time we parted company a few days later, she gave me her CDs to check out. While still trying to figure this new area out; (will I stay? but I must chsange something…) I decide to write about her Rochelle Harper Band, “We’re Stayin’, Ya Hear!!” (2007) that I listened to while traveling up and down I-95, house-hunting.
I leave the room after hitting “play” every time because I know she’s gonna yell, “MISS-ISSIPPEEEEE!!!” at the top of her ample lungs,(and it really irks me) beginning (the Shed Song) of this album. It shocked me the first time, as I like to listen to musik loud. Maybe it is her native area rallying cry; I either skip it or turn it down for a second.
Track two, “The Blugill”, reminds me of the 1970s band, Tower of Power with Lenny Williams, in many ways! I hear a lovely baritone sax in this collection! Any band featuring a baritone is #1 with me! The brass and woodwinds reminds me of the legendary Memphis Horns. The drummer, I am guessing, the same one from her solo album, Blair Shotts, is crisp and Motown-accurate! They cover Hoagy Carmichael’s “Georgia” on cut four, doing their just respect to the classic.
“Spare Set Of Keys”, song number seven , features Ricky Chancy on that Nashville honk-tonk harmonica from the outset. It must be the sea-air flava of one of those Gulf Coast “boogie-woogie” party events that Rochelle described to me when we met at the Airbnb Inn.
Slowly, easily, I heart cut 10, “Your Woman”, one of my favorites of the two CDs they gave me. Understand that the guitar hook partially makes it happen. “I’ve got to be/If I’m not your wo-mon…” [organ out]
Then, if you wanted to hit “repeat”, don’t! The next song, “I dun Caught dem Blues” does it one better – or at least stays in the same pocket. Catching you with a time-tested guitar solo over soulful blues strut, it comes back-to-back with the guitars highlighting Rochelle’s musical mouthfuls in the midst of a big-time bluesy organ fantasy foundation for their solos. This one is, as a straight long-distance drive in the interstate, a groove that could go on forever.
Curiously, track twelve….”Amazing Grace” is not what its title suggests, and sounds very much like a cover of The Animals’ “House Of The Rising Sun” with different words. Indeed, the inner cover jacket (shown in the video below) denotes that its about a Rising SON. Whose?
The Rochelle Harper Band has pure potential for live performances, for sure. She says “the daddy [she] hardly knew inspired” her to shoot for the highest of heights and also that, sadly, one of the members died recently. A succinct aggregation of sounds that transcend musical moods and categories, with her as catalyst, is an intergalactic formula. One minute they are funky and the next rockin’ soulful country blues, with the energy of a Marvel action movie!
All-in-all, you will hear entertaining music with crisp and clear studio production (until she yells again, lol). How about some new stuff, y’all?
“One Mississippi…two Mississippi…Three Mississippi” peace signs, out of five.
I’ve dug this one since Labor Day 2017 and my forty-years of music radio mind knew it was a “hit” the first time I hear the loop on Kiss FM, Ukraine online! I probably am late to the table to dine upon the pleasure of a morsel of Katy, and yes am slightly out-of-touch more than when I was actively Jocking. This too can pass; the concept of this creativity is clever-forever. (hyphen nation)
The video speaks for itself, does not detract from the tune and plays to my inner punter, that I pray I have not left behind, who yearns to “spin again”for a live crowd of dance-hall fun-lovers real soon!
In this you hear…today’s Sexy sense of humor, punny, money and mouth-watering gold!
Major Props to Katy on so far she has come to over the adversities and insults such as being dropped from Def Jam’s roster. Who has the last laugh on this now, Russell Simmons? As the turntable turns…
‘Nuff Said! lol Love it. Love Katy! What a tasty morsel!!
Where is the broth?
I can use it for another dish!
Maybe fish.
Ummmm, I am smellin’ it.
She is now my phone’s ringtone. “‘Cause I’m all that you want, boy
All that you can have, boy
Got me spread like a buffet
Bon appétit, baby…”
I’m turned-ON!
Enjoy and be sure to brush your teeth after eating.
It was a given that my generation of men always embraced the “Playboy” lifestyle out of college in the 1970s and now, amusing as it is that some criticize us for it; it really made us better (and more sexy) men!
You know that my writings are not “politically correct” because I do not believe in that line of thinking, and you like that! So, here we go again:
I first heard this jam in the background of a Frankie Crocker on WBLS FM radio show, I think; or maybe it was a “High Life” theme on a Miller beer ad or some commercial? Who? What? “This is what you ARE!?
what you listen to is a continental, bon vi vant style, which brings to mind the French Rivera! Don’t you think?
I came upon this “high life” song again by dint of my jukebox musical mind remembering when I reviewed it for http://www.about.com/dancemusic back in the late 2000s, when the legendaray “DJ Ron” was my Editor! Wow! I like the continental style of the lead singer, who brings us into a vacationing state of mind on this compilation of “Dimitri In Paris”,
I had the exceptional honor of interviewing Ms. Leslie Gore, who was born as Leslie Goldstein, in her suite at the Hilton hotel on Avenue Of The Americas in the spring of 1992. She was in town for performances, of course, and I got wind of it and reached out to her. Oh…my..God!, she granted me this talk maybe because I was jocking the seven pm until midnight shft at an oldies station, WXNJ 94.3 in Avalon, New Jersey at the time. It is one of the highlights of my life as a radio on-air talent! I mean, this was a real recorded interview on a cassette tape and if I can ever get my life together again and retrieve it/process and reproduce it, I will share it again with the world via YouTube, maybe!
Known for the smash, “It’s My Party”, Leslie Gore’s body of musical work encompassed many more Top 40 hits with bullets [to number one status]. I didn’t know until recently that she was produced by the legendary Quincy Jones and that she had turned “femenist/gay”. Yet even those personal choices, from her music, it did not sway me. That is rare for me, an “old school G”. Many have been burnt and mischaracterized by that kind of mentality – including family members.
from Wikipedia I read, “The lyrics of “She’s a Fool” tell of a romantic triangle.[5] The singer is upset that the boy she likes is being treated poorly by his current girlfriend.[6]Allmusic critic Richie Unterberger believes that the success of this song was crucial to Gore’s career because it was dissimilar lyrically and musically from the two singles with crying themes that preceded it, and thus she was able to avoid being typecasted”.
Whateva. I had no hint that she was gay. I think she even flirted with me. It is all so silly and confusing with that shit. lol
Leslie was a great interview and I think that if I’d been brave enough to ask her out for a post-interview drink, she would have said “yes!” with enthusiasm. I always hear her music in my mind from time-to-time, or randomly sampled on some commercial, as they do these days in the twenty-first century of media advertising.
I began this post upon the news of her death in February of 2015. I am sorry that I let it lay dormant in my “drafts” until now. Please forgive me, Ms. Gore. When I think of my old transistor radio that I would keep under my pillow, so that my parents could not hear me listening to MusicRadio77 WABC when I should have been asleep on school nights, I cannot help but hear you singing, “It’s My Party and I’ll Cry If I Want to…”
And now the album my previous EP revu teased has dropped!
Janey Street’s “My Side of Paradise” [BER 1020 Blu Elan Records]
If you would talk to Janey Street, you would never know that she is a singer because she is just a natural, typically loquacious chick with a regular speaking voice that has a slight New York City treatment. What I think it allows for is a variety of pitch within this collection which ranges from rock to funk along the blues street in paradise. The concept of this album measures today’s social mores.
The album begins like I thought it would with the first drummer rim shots.
This is a collection of very well written songs. I emphasize “well-written” lyrics and performed by Janey Street who has apparently paid enough blues dues to earn a shot to fulfill her dreams, proving that we must keep on keeping on (to borrow a title from the late, great Curtis Mayfield) because it is never too late as long as we have breath in our bodies and a strong pulse. Many of these heartfelt songs will end up rambling through your mind as soothing tune wedgies, long after your first listening to the album.
What I love about the first two tracks, which are my favorites, is their Motown-esq funky band feel that even features one of my favorite instruments, the baritone saxophone which made so many hits of the 1960s and 1970s so ballsy and timeless! It kicks in about midway into “Among The Missing” and staples it until the end. They keep that horny horn into “Good Side” and even lead with the baritone which becomes integral from the outset and throughout! I can totally relate to the lyric, “I’m a little moody in the morning/I can change my mind without warning…”
The next tune and ballad, “Bring it On”, brings in the orchestral strings and I think I heard a cello at one point! It is a bit strident at times as occasional vocal overreach stretches Janey’s vocal range. What I found curious is how she pronounced the word, “stubborn” during this song. It sounded more like “stubbren”. No phonics?
“House Of Mirrors” is a storytelling funhouse rocker that is reminiscent of many 1980s Top 40 hits. The next tune, “Situation” you already know how I feel about its succinct relevance from my prior writings. Events are oft not as hideous as we worry about them being at the end of the day.
I have another line for song number six, “Tears Taste the Same”, ‘they taste like whatever you been drinking, they taste like Beer…’ Nice, cold ending, by the way.
The advanced EP single, “I’m Not The Girl I Used To Know”, cut number seven, has actually grown on me since I reviewed it in June of this year. Maybe it is because of its context position midway through this album and because I can see how it speaks to some inner truth many people might feel even though I am the boy I used to know – and then some!
“Grand Delusion” takes on the perceived illusion that the internet and social media creates in this, the future that is now, if you do not know how to use it correctly. “Rose-colored glasses made for the masses…” Her treatment makes this global technology dysfunction seem almost pleasing – but as good as it is for song, they are off the mark in-reality, which is a debate for another post.
“Radar” mellows it out like a Joni Mitchell song from the seventies. “Scat Like Ella” is the best possibility for a “tune wedgie” as it is catchy and will linger in your music mind for all times. It is a really good concept song that Ms. Street performs to the max and conveys the message succinctly. Again, the lyrics carry part of the day as she mentions so many of the giants of legendary Jazz music. I left it believing that she really does want to “scat like Ella Fitzgerald after hearing her give us a sample! Now I think I want to scat like Cab Calloway!
At the “End of the Day” is a finale, mostly acapella and well-positioned wrap song for the album, which, maybe, with the exception of “I’m Not The Girl…”, tells a kind of revolutionary story about the times within we reside in toto. I like Blue`lan’s packaging of the CD, which includes a lyric booklet. My final question is how to get a ticket onto that train to Janey’s Side of Paradise – or is it an island? As a songstress/storyteller, Janey Streets consistently paints a beautiful word-picture throughout the effort that defies any one music genre catagorie, in my opinion. I bless it with Four out of a possible Five Guitars.
Janey Street, “I’m Not The Girl I used To Know” [BER 1016 Blue Elan Records]
Envision a young girl with her coloring book, singing and humming original nursery rhymes and songs her mama taught her while she draws pictures and you will see what I feel about listening to Janey Streets’ “I’m Not The Girl I used To Know” advance EP CD. It is a musical coloring storybook.
I took the disc on a recent road trip in order to get out of the negative, big city element, and received a whole new perspective and inspiration from these five songs. The autobiographical title song is the least of the five on this sampler that I like because, somehow, it makes me sad. I do not like “sad”. Not sure what she and her writers were going for there. I would have lead with “Tears Taste The Same” which has a Fleetwood Mac-ish introduction from the very first notes. It is upbeat and the lyrics full of vivid analogies, like, “Tears taste like beer…” Yes they can!
“Situation” is my favorite because of the social statement it makes that is very relatable to all of modern humanity and the advice therein. “It’s just a sit-u-ation transformation ain’t nothing new/so when you freak out, its probably nothing and it happens to ev-rey-one…”
“Paradise” is another change of pace and syncopation. I channel a Joni Mitchell spirit was in the studio with Janey on this one! Last, but certainly not least, is my second fave on this short scrapbook, “Bring It On”. I heard some notes that conjure Cher to my mind. “If you think you’re gonna prove me wrong, bring it on…”
All in all, this is a nice teaser for a forthcoming full album that is due for a June 24, 2016 release, that is sure to be a pleaser across several radio formats and for a performer who has worked and prayed for the success she is due.
Now, just to reaffirm to you, I only qualify as a Country music critic by dint of my living in good ole Nashville, Tennessee for twelve years through the 2000s until 2012 and because I covered three CRS conventions for Michelle Jasko’s, Nashville Radio Syndication which required me to hang out with copious Country music artists front as well as back stage and reacquaint myself with similar Music Industry types who I knew from my Top 40 radio DJ days, circa, 1979, et al, thereby gleaning that “Country Music peeps are just like everybody else in “the biz” – often quite nicer to interact with. Our country, America the Beautiful, needs more of that kind of cross-cultural interaction!
I preface this thusly because of the incredible man and protector of our American way of life this recording artist, Pete Scobell, is!! How does a Navy Seal become a Country music performer? Well, one reason is because it was always in his nature! Music is not just a hobby nor something else he wants to try to conquer.
Even though the folks who wanted me to review Pete advanced the first single, “Walkin’ A Wire”, which is a catchy song, I quickly passed on that to dig into the whole CD album which they also sent. My ears quickly latched upon cut two, “Guns & Roses”. This is a hit music song with many attributes around relatable lyrics in the “now” plus an equivalence to another world-famous band. In fact, my missing Inna from Ukraine, just LOVES Guns & Roses and Axl Rose. Maybe they ran off together – Pete has a song for that.
In this great album are many songs with relatable and vivid lyrics borne of struggles all of us have experienced. Take, for example, the very tame “WILD”, which is about when your best friend is buried in the ground before your eyes. On the other hand, a few tunes sound like just another country song like “The Fight”. My other favorites are the Country-funky “Dive Bar” (“…where they still play Hank and crank that ole Country with a steel guitar…”) and the very relatable, introspective “Disappear” which caused me to become sad the first time I listened to it when I heard him sing “seems like everything I love slips through my hands….” I took some weeks away – maybe it was the juxtaposition of my personal struggles and Martha sending me this music? So I eventually dove back into the album and found a kind of musical salvation. “Feels Like You Know Me” rocks out with great drum work and a stand-out hook, “…Jesus on Sunday!” For those of us who question whether our prayers are ever heard, let alone answered there is “There’s Gotta Be A God” ~ Amen. I cried real tears at the end of the first time I listened to it. You will want to hear it and again I emphasize the relatable lyrics on this incredible album!
The next-to-last track, “Hearts I Leave Behind”, first struck me due to the military-style drum marching band ending-to-fade which caused me to revisit the song, re-read the liner notes and learn that this was originally a song he recorded with Wynonna Judd! “I Live in the hearts of those I leave behind” is strong stuff with the classic Country American instrumentation. As a drummer, I love the rolling drums to fade!! It is my second-place favorite!
“What ever happened to just seeing what happens” got me off my lazy bed to write more about this music!
Last, but surely not least is “Friends With Money” with a very different, conversational on-location intro. Again, more very clever lyrics that denote how Pete is helping us process our lives today. “I got God and I got church/I got a gun if that don’t work…” lol Love it.
Thanks to a team of songwriters and Pete’s personality, we get to listen to a production of today’s life and frustrations which just might, with appropriate airplay, help cure many of the negative afflictions we hear about here in today – the future which is now.
Hey I am about a rare thing here! Five Gold Guitars!!! I never DO this. I felt this whole album. Maybe it was the South Carolina trip, lol !!
Here is the ACOUSTIC version of “Guns & Roses” for your mind…
Pickhitt: Major Props to Ms. Martha Moore for staying on me to listen and review this album.
**SureShott: check out a more generic version of this review at my new, music-only review site, https://achilliadsmyvinylrecordshoppe.wordpress.com/ where I am still working-out some of the kinks. Please add your comments to the community!
It is against the backdrop of the cowardly and horrific Islamist bombing of the Brussels airport that I pen this review of music by a native daughter of that country which bothers no other and I cannot understand why those scum continue to maim innocents instead of fighting a nation’s armed forces face-to-face; such sissies!
Well, on to her important music EP, “Wait 4 It”. I must have met Belgium’s hot foxy female vocalist, Irenka, during my twelve years living in Nashville, Tennessee, right? Or Nyet. I would have remembered such a creative presence, energy as hers! The first sound that I hear on track one “Comme Si” is Irenka clearing her throat. I said, “What??” Listened again; however, quickly those sounds turn into her spittin’ like a Euro human beat-box meeting Soft Cell’s 1981 “Tainted Love” – at least in musical key – as she then croons in French, the lingo most speak in Belgium. The last time I listened to this much lyrical love language was on Dimitri From Paris’ 1998 “Sacre` Francaise” or when I reviewed the various artist Playboy Club remix back in 2009. “Scare Bleu!”
“Dreamland”, track two, is an introspective, somnambulistic ballad where she displays her vocal range for the first time. This and the next selection where she lets her fingers do the singing on track three are perfect for a cloudy day. Irenka is really playing a beautiful classic-style piano solo instrumental! I know because I asked her. Next up and showing an inner versatile similarity to the late Amy Winehouse but with a better voice, or Billy Holiday, she styles on, “I don’t Need No Lover (except to hold me through the night from time-to-time)”. I think that this arrangement reminds me of New Orleans blues-jazz in a street march parade; especially because of the brass accents. At one point I was unsure whether Irenka would hit the climbing high-note – but she did. You will know it when you listen. It is a song that hearkens me back to the days of, “Hubba-hubba!”
Finally, she rocks out with the fourth and last track, “A Reason To Hate Me”.
The video, “Comme Si”, takes us on a musical personal journey and is full of familiar scenes from my twelve years living there in Nashville/
Athletic, isn’t she?
Upon learning of the repulsive, pusillanimous Brussels airport attack, act we communicated and her reply, in great musician style was, “Luckily all family is safe, but it is nonetheless terrible, and it is our duty, we the artists, to bring peace and love to this crazy world!”
The world is not as crazy as some of these recent lunatics who inhabit it and I might have been at first on the fence in limbo about Irenka, but now that I have listened copiously and seen her video, there is no “reason to hate” on Irenka with three-and-a-half hopefully motivating musical stars. This is the last music review here at this varied and long-standing blog since 2009. From now on, you are invited to check out my musical musings at https://achilliadsmyvinylrecordshoppe.wordpress.com/
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