Back in 2004 I worked for a small startup company that made — hang on to your hats — software with which you could use your mobile phone to connect your laptop to the internet. This was back in the days when dinosaurs still roamed the land, the iPhone wasn’t even a glimmer in Steve Jobs’ eyes and there were like a billion different phone makers who each brought out a zillion different phones, all which needed to be tested to see if our software could recognise and use them correctly. Manually. To be honest the job paid lousy but it was a recession and the long hours were sort of made up for by things like free lunch (yes yes) and free drinks. But especially by the pooled music library that lived on the network to which everybody had uploaded their favourite music to work through the night with.
It so happened that one of the dudes working there was a huge funk and soul fan and thanks to that I got to sample a lot of groups and artists I’d barely heard off until then. One of which was Curtis Mayfield, who upon then, only knew from Move on Up as one of those songs you hear on golden oldies radio. Hearing him in context was a revelation. Being a metal head by nature I’d never done much exploring of the funk & soul genres, but what with Sandra being a Northern Soul veteran and getting my hands on that co-worker’s stack of classic funk ‘n soul that changed rapidly and Curtis Mayfield was on the forefront of it.
You can understand why looking at this 1972 Beat Club mini concert, can’t you? Socially conscious music you can dance to performed by a band at the height of its powers.