Your eyes won't believe what your mind can't conceive

I like B-music. What's B-music? You know what B-movies are. B-music's the also-ran, the didn't-quite-make-it, the one-hit-wonder or, in its most piquant form, never-was-gonna-make-it-but-they-followed-the-dream-anyway (aka Anvil).

I fell down a Spotify k-hole and found some sweet late-disco/early Quiet Storm B-music.

The Jones Girls had been plying their trade for most of the 70s. They were Detroit-born sisters, forged in gospel singing, discovered first by Curtis Mayfield and later, after backing Diana Ross on tour, re-discovered by Gamble and Huff. Stars aligned then, and though they didn't become stars, dancefloors pulsed in '81 with this track.



I'm aching to find a good 12- or 7-inch copy of it, and in this week's obsession with it I've figured out its A-list sonic cousin.



Chaka's track is clearly more sophisticated, and there's a good reason why there's a gulf way wider than the Mediterranean Sea that separates "Tunisia" from "Egypt." Chaka's single "Night" in Tunisia is a cover that came from the mind of an actual genius who's genetically incapable of creating something as rustic as the unnecessary Middle Eastern-sounding keyboard riff in "Nights Over Egypt."

The Jones Girls can sing. But what they didn't have is access. The saying in the creative world is that you have to work with artists who are at least a little better than you so that your craft is raised. Access is based on timing, and the Girls' timing was not good, seeing as it was situated on the back-end of the (post-payola) Gamble and Huff juggernaut and given writers from the Philadelphia International stable that were maybe on the downslope of creating hit soul music.

After 1984, while Chaka found the third act of her career, The Jones Girls never got back on track.

Unequal songs, unequal careers, unequal access. But I (and probably only I) respond both songs with equal enjoyment, despite the unfair outcomes for the singers. But maybe they didn't want any more than that -- someone's ears being pleased at the sound of their song.

I best return my ears to simply listening before I embark on a master's-thesis rumination about the post-80s diminishing returns of Patrice Rushen.

Heard In the Car: The chosen are few

I'm brimming with new features, but I've not had the focus to post them. While I was zipping to the grocery in a jet black car in the six o'clock darkness, a quiet storm broke in that musty Civic. I had to wait it out in the Whole Foods parking lot:



(I'm pretty sure I was the only person in that lot listening to this jam.)

Since I don't have a fancypants phone that I can simply wave aloft for it to name that tune, I had to, gawd, use Google to find it, listening til I found a unique-enough snippet of lyric to punch in.

The Isleys! In 2003! With R. Kelly! Shoulda know that bouncing bass groove was his (not to mention the tiny "hoos" throughout). That's what drew me into the song, actually. My head began to nod reflexively (another sole instance in the Whole Foods parking lot).

I'm gratified, actually, to learn that the Isleys continue to make contemporary music and that it's on commercial terrestrial radio. You can trace a line from "This Old Heart of Mine" (1966 -- and also prominent in a season two episode of Moonlighting in which David reunites with an old flame [nooooooo! Maddie!] played by Dana Delaney who [while the song is still playing waaaaay past its actual conclusion] confronts her pushy new boyfriend and happens to shoot and kill him [it was a detective show, remember?]) to "That Lady" (1972 -- one of my favorite funk songs ever, even when it was used to shill shampoo in the 90s) to "Between the Sheets" (1983 -- oh damn, that ding-dah-ding ding-ding transition is ...wow [and sampled everywhere now]).

I said I was not focused, didn't I?

All of these make me just want to simply drive at night, maybe give a tiny "hoo."

Paint a perfect picture

Dammit, I have to say that I prefer the Purple Rain-era version. He got all quiet storm on this. I miss (and love) the big synthy fills from the original.

I would have posted it, but the clip from the film--complete with a hacked off Morris Day and Apollinia and Prince eyeballing each other--with the French dubbing, she gone from the interwebs.

Will I hear this tonight?


Prince Performs The Beautiful One's Live! on... by Doloresdu92

George Lopez has(d) a talk show?