Apologies for the lack of any activity around these parts in the past week; between working on about half a dozen post ideas right now, getting my year-end write-ups out of the way, and making my way through 8 Diagrams (2007) and The Big Doe Rehab (2007), finding time to drop even a Song of the Week has been tough. Until I can get my act together this weekend, enjoy this post I wrote for EarFuzz earlier this year.

The sweetest of ’70s Soul has always been about summertime and sunshine for me, so during these dreary days of November in New England I’ll occasionally have to remind myself that June is only… eight… months… away by digging out some of the more ignored Soul records in my collection. Recently I’ve taken a certain fascination with Sylvia Robinson’s Pillow Talk (1973), and the more I listen, the more I become attuned to how utterly strange this record is. An explanation is probably in order.

Regardless of one’s feelings about Robinson as a cold, heartless businesswoman (see: The Sugarhill Gang, a discussion for another time), she nevertheless had a long and successful career in the music industry, beginning in the late ’50s as the latter half of Mickey & Sylvia, most remembered for their single “Love is Strange.” During the ’60s she worked behind the scenes, nurturing New Jersey trio The Moments to stardom while raising her family. She began releasing solo records under her first name in the ’70s, moving into bedroom disco and even hip hop during the ’80s. Yet while many of her contemporaries patiently waited by the assembly line for producers to churn out chart-toppers for them, Robinson actively played a hand in shaping her own career, writing or co-writing most of her material and supervising the daily operations of running her record label with her husband, Joe. She was also a hell of a guitar player to boot.

Still, listening to Pillow Talk, one gets the impression that something just isn’t right, but it’s difficult to place a finger on what it is. It’s a pleasant listen, to be sure, undeniably sensual and full of slithering, late-night grooves. Perhaps it’s Sylvia’s reserved presence and somewhat hesitant delivery, at times sounding as if she’s curled up on the couch in the control room, intimidated and cradling the microphone; others, her whispery coos and moans have all the sincerity of a minimum-wage phone-sex operator. But there is a certain intimacy in her voice that connects with the listener despite the fact that it’s quizzically buried in the mix most of the time. “Gimme a Little Action” is one such example, a sleeper cut that would have benefited tremendously from a boost of Sylvia’s vocal track, yet she seems content to cuddle into her surroundings, treating her voice as equally as the other instruments of pleasure. And oddly enough, it works.

“Gimme a Little Action” – Sylvia 4:00 (Pillow Talk, Vibration 1973)

“Sunday” was written for Sylvia’s brother’s fiancee, who tragically died in a car accident the night before they were to be married. It sounds unlike any of the other selections here, a haunting ballad with just Sylvia, her acoustic guitar, and a lone cello. The atmosphere calls to mind something out of a Country-Western musical from the ’60s, with Sylvia’s cries echoing throughout the moonlit desert canyon long after her companions have fallen asleep by the campfire. (Attentive listeners will recognize this track as the basis for Ghostface’s “The Letter” skit from The Pretty Tony Album [2004].) Compared to the relatively standard instrumentation and arrangements of the original Moments version, the two are like night and day.

“Sunday” – Sylvia 3:12 (Pillow Talk, Vibration 1973)

“Sunday” – The Moments 2:47 (Not on the Outside, But Inside In!, Stang 1968)

Pillow Talk is definitely worth checking out, if only for two reasons: 1) there are few records of the era that sound remotely similar to it (keep in mind that this stuff was pretty risque for the time), and 2) a seven-minute version of “Not on the Outside” where Sylvia seductively introduces her “little band,” then instructs her guitar player on how to play his solo as if he were forcibly pleasuring her. Bizarre, to say the least.

Opeth “In Mist She Was Standing” Orchid Candlelight 1994

For a good six or seven years, Stockholm’s Opeth could do no wrong in my book. Their finely-honed balance of crushing riffage, rich melodicism, and uniquely structured songwriting – displayed in all its glory on My Arms, Your Hearse (1998) – was nothing shy of a revelation to these ears. I spent hundreds of hours trying to wrap my head around Still Life’s (2000) complexities, and still hold Blackwater Park (2001) to be metal perfection from start to finish. I wasn’t entirely comfortable with the less-metal/more-’70s-prog direction band leader Mikael Åkerfeldt had shifted the group toward on Deliverance (2002) and especially Damnation (2003), and I was utterly defeated when I heard these tendencies nurtured to fruition on Ghost Reveries (2005) two years ago. (A recent listen to the record revealed it to be much better than I had remembered, though it’s safe to say that I’ll never want to hear “Hours of Wealth” again.) With the recent departures of longtime guitarist Peter Lindgren and drummer Martin Lopez, I highly doubt that my unwavering devotion to the band will reach the same levels of fanaticism, and the recent announcement that Opeth will occupy the opening slot on Dream Theater’s 2008 tour hardly gains them any points. Yet I’m still amazed by the replay value of those earlier records, especially the debut Orchid (1994) and ambitious follow-up Morningrise (1996).

It wasn’t until after My Arms, Your Hearse that I backtracked through the band’s catalogue and heard these two records, which, other than the extended song structures, bear little resemblance to what Opeth would grow into. (Part of this could be attributed to the fact that the impenetrable rhythm section of Lopez and bassist Martin Mendez had yet to jump on board.) Orchid’s opening volley “In Mist She Was Standing” remains one of the band’s finest quarter-hours (literally, clocking in at 14:09), with an abundance of single-note dual-guitar harmonies, galloping 6/8 grooves, Åkerfeldt’s chilling death-metal roars, and expansive instrumental passages and brief acoustic interludes in equal measure. Åkerfeldt’s gift for composing the most gorgeously sad and moving melodies is already apparent at this early stage – note the dreary spaciousness of the movement at 5:34, which sounds like something off Pink Floyd’s Animals (1977). His wealth of ideas here is ebullient, moving through each section with a furious, don’t-look-back intensity that he would abandon by the time of Still Life; in other words, enjoy that riff while it lasts, because you won’t hear it again. It’s a wonder how lesser bands like Night in Gales and even In Flames had the stones to continue after hearing something of this caliber; in less than fifteen minutes, Opeth just trumped anything they could ever hope to write.

“In Mist She Was Standing” – Opeth 14:09 (Orchid, Candlelight 1994)

Few hip hop veterans are more qualified to be the subject of a graphic novel than MF Grimm. For those unfamiliar with his compelling story, I’ll summarize it briefly: Percy Carey was born and raised in Manhattan’s Upper West Side, and through connections with his neighbor Morgan Freeman, was a regular child cast member of Sesame Street for four years. As he entered his teens his business interests shifted to those of the illegal variety and around the turn of the ’90s, Carey’s reputation as a notorious drug dealer was matched by his skills as a ferocious battle rapper; he supplemented his income from the narcotics trade by ghostwriting and working with everyone from Kool G Rap to MF Doom. Then, in ‘94, while being courted by several major labels and on the cusp of blowing up, Grimm was shot seven times, leaving him blind, deaf, and paralyzed from the waist down. He recovered his sight and hearing and continued to write and record for the remainder of the decade, yet he still requires a wheelchair for mobility. Grimm was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2000 for narcotics conspiracy charges, was released three years later, and is currently focused on overseeing the operations of his label, Day by Day Entertainment, which releases his material.

The handful of 12″’s that Grimm recorded during the ’90s were gathered and released by Day by Day two years ago on a collection titled Scars and Memories (2005), which is about as essential as breathing for heads like me who used to regularly fantasize about a hungry Grimm verbally destroying tracks by producers like Doom and Rob Swift (for proof, hear his devastating first single “So Watcha Want” from ‘93). The A side of one of those original platters was called “Get Down” and was released in ‘96 on the underground Dolo Records. The track is about as close as Grimm achieved to a club hit, which is to say it barely registered at all, but it’s a fascinating cut nonetheless for its half-assed and ultimately failing intentions (packing the dance floor) yet has aged much more gracefully than any of its peers from that era (ahem, Bad Boy Entertainment).

The production on “Get Down” was handled by the legendary turntablist and studio wizard Dr. Butcher, and was obviously influenced by the sound of A Tribe Called Quest’s then-popular Beats, Rhymes & Life (1996): plenty of electric keys, subterranean bass thuds, and swinging, downtempo grooves. Butcher’s beat consists of a two-bar loop of a minor-keyed chord progression outlined by a Fender Rhodes, emphasized by pedal bass hits and an uncomplicated, no-frills drum pattern; the only variation occurs when the keys drop out for a brief four-bar spell at the beginning of the second verse. Grimm is joined here by guest DJ E-Kim, who supplies the run-of-the-mill “Everybody on the floor, throw your hands up” hook for the chorus and echoes a few of the MC’s lines during the verses.

What’s so odd about “Get Down” are Grimm’s unusual lyric patterns in his verses, to say nothing of his overall disposition here: he doesn’t exactly seem amped or committed to an attempt at a club banger, yet he’s not completely resistant either. E-Kim opens the track with some standard exerpts from the DJ lexicon before Grimm begins:

Days of Alazay, nights of Cristal
Champagne corks bust like your pis-tals
Feelin’ good, sit back, wine, dine
Watch the diamonds glitter, gold shine
Expensive games we play
Mad shout outs coming from the DJ
Some come as couples and others single
DJ scratch it in, everybody jingle

Grimm opens his verse by reciting a laundry list of time-honored hip hop standbys: guns, jewelry, alcohol – nothing new here. What’s so unique about it lies not in the content, but Grimm’s delivery (I’ve underlined the syllables that fall on every downbeat). Around the third bar, he begins to shift his rhyme scheme two beats so that the rhymes fall in the middle of the bars rather than toward the end. What at first appears to be accidental is revealed to be intentional; note the casual but methodical pacing of the words and how Grimm pauses after the word “expensive” to preserve the pattern.

A lot of players party, game’s tight
But jealous motherfuckers only come to start fights
You’s a bigger nigga, ignore it
They’re broke, mad at you for it
Eye on bottle, really want to pour it
Throat’s so dry, playa haters don’t know why
They can play too if they really try
There’s enough for everyone to have a slice of pie
To the bar, more drinks we buy
“How we live?” Live the good life ‘til the day we die.

Grimm continues this inverted rhyme scheme, hesitating before the downbeats and progressing in short, compact phrases rather than extending ideas and thoughts. The second half of the first verse is dominated by his exploration of two vowel sounds: “-or” and “y,” the latter of which is exhausted for five bars. He slows his pacing for the line, “Playa haters don’t know why,” which suddenly brings him back to a standard rhyme pattern for the last four bars; the change in feel is subtle yet noticeable. E-Kim then enters with the party chants before the second verse:

My crew’s representing jitty
Exotic women, perfume, dress pretty
See the DJ, he got the music flowing
Party over here, Soul Train line going, have no fear
Ladies hypnotize with bootys on the low
Players smile with cuties, dress spandex
So you know the ass out, niggas sweaty
Drunk about to pass out, but fuck that
Hear a favorite song, to the floor, stagger back
With the slight ditty-bop though, stepping like The Mack
Bitches roll in packs, eyes on money stacks
All dime pieces, none seem wack
Soul come through speakers as sound
Can you feel it? Can you feel the love all around?

Compared to the off-kilter rhyme patters of the first verse, the second is more conventional but not by much, as Grimm can’t resist playing with the downbeat for the first eight bars. As he depicts the atmosphere in the club, he strangely eschews elaborate descriptions for direct, almost dumbed-down outlines like, “ladies hypnotize with bootys,” “dress spandex,” and “hear a favorite song.” The whole thing seems like it was penned in less time than it took to record it, a sentiment that is carried over into the third verse:

Look – you come in here to have fun, don’t act up
No wins, you’re outgunned a thousand to one
Represent Monsta Island, shine like the sun
Parties rock straight from start, continue, never done
Five families unite, become one
Invisible on map, the world we run
Accumulate the papers, nonbelievers left stunned.

Grimm drops a few references to his crew, organized crime, and his bank account before abruptly concluding the verse. At this point in the song his enthusiasm appears to have diminished for the party-over-here! vibe, though to his credit, his delivery and rhyme patterns remain consistent throughout. Perhaps he was aware of the song’s somewhat thin transparency during the recording, realizing that his style was better suited to “Emotions,” the record’s gullier B-side. Regardless, “Get Down,” remains more listenable than 95% of what qualifies as a ‘club banger’ today, and if anything, helps to further illustrate a curious transitional period for one of the ’90s most slept-on lyricists.

“Get Down” – MF Grimm 3:23 (Get Down/Emotions 12″, Dolo 1996)