THE TIME CAPSULE: LOVELY DAY. More retro tomorrow.
<<<THE T⏳ME CAPSULE<<<
LOVELY DAY
Bill Withers
1977
U.K. - #7; U.S.A. - #30
Trivia:
Bill Withers died of heart complications in March 2020. A remake of "Lovely Day" by The S.O.U.L. S.Y.S.T.E.M. was included on the film soundtrack for 'The Bodyguard'.
Check out all the songs tha4t have been featured in this daily segment on Spotify, including today’s retro track.
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1fw40hqEA0Fgh4cq4yoXD0?si=BYCiWGK3QRim_FaIIkAIdg
spotify:playlist:1fw40hqEA0Fgh4cq4yoXD0
As hip-hop acts were springing up
all over America, the practice of sampling led to unlikely combinations where
raps and beats were mixed in with excerpts from a plethora of rock and pop sources.
Chic, James Brown, Kraftwerk were among the most commonly sampled. In 1982,
Malcolm McLaren incorporated novel sources on his ‘Duck Rock’ album. Radio duo
World’s Famous Supreme Team chatted between the tracks. “Buffalo Gals” was
a cross-cultural watershed moment. McLaren had made his name managing groups
such as The Sex Pistols, Bow Wow Wow and Adam & The Ants. He then began
working on his own album. For “Buffalo Gals”, McLaren used African musicians to
record an old Appalachian traditional square dance song “Buffalo Gals” on a
track that also was among the first hits to feature “scratching”. Trevor
Horn produced the genre-hopping song, bringing to life McLaren’s musical
vision. In its wake, countless other recordings created new hybrids of sounds
and genres. Along with the hillbilly-hop of “Buffalo Gals”, McLaren himself
flirted with popera and Strauss-house on subsequent projects.
Grandmaster Flash began spinning
records while in his teens at local dances and beat parties around the Bronx
area of New York. He pioneered innovative techniques such as cutting
(switching between tracks); phasing (controlling turntable speeds) and back-spinning
(manually repeating short pieces on a record). He then teamed up with rappers
like Kurtis Blow and- later - The Furious Five. The chart success of “Rapper’s
Delight” proved that music fans would purchase hip-hop records. Flash & the
Furious 5 signed with the same label: Sugarhill Records. After a couple of
R&B Chart hits, the act released “The Adventures Of Grandmaster Flash On
The Wheels Of Steel” in 1981. This was a new watershed for hip-hop. In 1982, “The
Message” was unleashed. This new recording proved to be even more revolutionary.
Previous rap tracks featured rappers talking themselves up and partying. “The Message”
used the new form of expression to reflect social concerns. Here was a song
where the rap dealt with the raw detail of life in the ghetto. It opens with
the line: “It’s like a jungle sometimes, it makes me wonder how I keep from
going under”. Lyrics such as “broken glass everywhere, people pissing on
the stairs you know they just don’t care” describe the urban decay. The
chorus emphasizes the frustration and anger in the streets with the warning: “Don’t
push me, ‘cos I’m close to the edge, I’m trying not to lose my head”. Throughout,
the scene depicted by producer / lyricist Duke Bootee is grim. It laid the
foundation for gangsta rap, where Public Enemy and N.W.A. would follow in the
wake of this landmark release.
