Rod Stewart - Every Picture Tells A Story
Rod the Mod finds his solo footing, headed for stardom, with the Faces in his wake.
6:00 AM GMT 22/06/2011
Features Disc of the day
The Impressions
Complete A And B sides, 1961-1968
(Eclipse, 2009)
Take out a summer afternoon to appreciate the genius of Curtis Mayfield.
A new trend has emerged in our neighbourhood: say you're sunbathing in the garden and you want to listen to the Autotune Top 10 countdown on Capital Radio. Don't bother with all the effort of taking a radio into the garden; simply turn your cheap kitchen stereo up to tinny, ear-lancing maximum volume and experience the manifold joys of Ke$ha, Rihanna and Usher blasting out of your back door. Oddly, this trend has not taken off round our house, and in an attempt to inure ourselves to this new sonic landscape, we've had to assemble a pile of records that turn our kitchen into a blessed retreat of angelic harmonies, and stop us going into the neighbours' garden and beating them to death with their Sanyos. Top of the list is this.
Devised by St Etienne's Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs (with liner notes by MOJO's soul sage, Lois Wilson), Complete A And B Sides is a Ronseal-simple concept that allows listeners to fully appreciate the compositional genius of Curtis Mayfield simply by illustrating the solid-gold fact that the man never wrote a single duff single during his time with the Impressions. Even the best compilations have some skipworthy tracks but from the eerie bolero incantations of 1961's Gypsy Woman to the anti-war soul valedictions of 1968's Don't Cry My Love, Complete A And B Sides is, to state the bleedin' obvious, all killer, no filler.
There are certainly highlights, but from the truly inspirational uplift of It's All Right ("When you wake up early in the morning/Feeling sad like so many of us do/Hum a little soul/And make life your goal/And you got to say it's alright!") to the twinkling romantic glow of I'm So Proud no songs ever expressed positive human warmth, love for your fellow man, and joyous inner spirituality better than the Impressions.
Sometimes Mayfield called it "soul", sometimes "faith", sometimes "moving" and "pushing" and "keeping on" but the message was always the same: that inside us all was the power for change. All of the tracks are imbued with Mayfield's trademark soaring melancholy, a quality that, as Lois Wilson points out in her liner notes, had much to do with the black key/F sharp tuning of Mayfield's guitar. Combined with that philosophy of positivity, the songs possess a peculiarly sweet sorrow, of strangely joyous farewell, as if Mayfield were passing on travel advice for a journey he knew he wouldn't be taking himself.
Andrew Male
Posted by Ross_Bennett at 6:00 AM GMT 26/05/2010
Further Listening
The Impressions – This Is My Country (Curtom, 1968)
Curtis Mayfield – Roots (Curtom, 1971)
Jerry Butler – the Iceman Cometh (UMC, 1968)
Previous Disc of the day
-
-
Earl Brutus - Larky
Last salvo of Ginsters Pasty-Warholism from Britpop ramraiders.
12:04 PM GMT 08/06/2011
-
Loudon Wainwright - T-Shirt
An overlooked small wonder from an unpredictable career.
6:00 AM GMT 03/06/2011
-
Landscape - From The Tea-rooms Of Mars… To The Hell-holes Of Uranus
Dry computer club Futurists, upon hitting implausible chart paydirt.
6:00 AM GMT 17/05/2011
-
-
Causa Sui - Summer Sessions Vol 1-3
Epic Danish jams, for when the neighbours get you down.
6:00 AM GMT 12/05/2011
end of body content back to top
Footer
Join us on:
© Copyright Bauer - all
rights reserved.
Reproduction of this
website, in whole or in
part, in any form or
medium without express
written permission from
Bauer is prohibited. All
use is subject to our
Terms of Use
|
|
Comments
Comment on this post
All killer no filler eh! Have you listened to 'Up Up And Away' or howabout 'Amen'. Yes the rest is compositional genius and one can only hope that Mayfield's Okeh and Curtom productions eventually get released with the care to detail that the Impressions catalogue has been treated to in recent years.
Posted by David Morris-Hind at 12:22 PM GMT 01/08/2010 Report Abuse
Reply to this post
Comment on this post