In honour of my upcoming wedding (Dutch bureaucracy folded at the first hurdle! Bureaucrats actually turned out to be amazingly helpful and quick! Rightwing myths turned out not to be true!) and S.’s musical taste, no metal today but some serious funky shit. Yes, you can like Metal and still appreciate other musical genres, or actually know more Black artists than just Jimi Hendrix or Ice-T. Personally funk hits many of the same buttons as metal does for me. Somewhat more dancable perhaps and less aggressive, but the same raw power.
first up: Rufus, featuring Chaka Khan, with their best number, the Stevie Wonder composed “Tell me Something Good” — you really don’t need to read the liner notes to suspect this is a Stevie Wonder song, do you?
A Stevie Wonder song can only be followed by the man himself. He may have been somewhat of a joke for those of us who grew up in the eighties, but damn the man is good and nowhere as good as here — “Superstition”:
Sly and the Family Stone proved flower power could be funky too, before moving on to darker stuff as Nixon became president. This is “A Family Affair”, played live in 2008 as after years and decades apart the Family Stone got together again. Incredibly moving in the right mood.
Mention great funk bands and this is what you’re thinking off the Parliament-Funkadelic groove thang:
Now to cool down with some mellow Brothers Johnson instrumental: “Tomorrow”
Followed by some smooth Isley Brothers – “Caravan of Love”:
Finally, let’s end how we started: rauchy with Bette Davis and “Big Freak”: