Desperate Times Call For Desperate Pleasures
Johnny Johnson: Love Is Blue
Taken from the album Soul Survivor on Bell (1970)
Third Guitar: Lovin’ Lies
Taken from the 7″ on Rojac (19??)
The Parliaments: Your Goodies Are Gone
Taken from the 7″ on Revilot (1967)
Eddie Holman: Four Walls
Taken from the album I Love You on ABC (1969)
O, wracked wail of heartache. O, plaintive moan of sorrow. How the heart strains!
The selections today are born of the kind anguish that I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. The kind where the knees buckle and the heart cramps. The kind that can reduce a grown man to pathetic teary desperation. The kind of abject grief that can drive a guy to the loony bin… or, if fortune prevails, to the recording booth.
We got lucky with the latter.
Leading off with the Johnny Johnson track: um, I mean, WOW. How about this joint. Forget about the folk guitar that gives way to the meanest orchestral onslaught since Beethoven’s Fifth. Forget about the Ghostface sample. Forget that this track has been recorded by a bunch of heads. THIS IS THE VERSION. Listen to ol’ boy holding that note in the last bar of the song. That, my friends, is suffering.
Third Guitar are best known for making a highly noteworthy appearance on Shadow & Chemist’s Brainfreeze, but listen to these cats digging deep on “Lovin’ Lies”. When was the last time heard such ballistic hand drums, breaks and heavy emoting crammed into a track that clocks in at under two minutes?
Then there’s George Clinton in his pre-Funkadelic days cranking out a hard-hitting soul number with the Parliaments (drop the “s”, add acid, and you’ve got one loked out 70 year old with technicolor dreadlocks). A recent flea market find that I can’t seem to get enough of.
And lastly, a repeat of one of the first posts put up on this blog. A song that I have ADORED since the moment it entered my life and will likely continue to adore until the day I die. What a shame that Eddie Holman will only ever be remembered for “Hey, There Lonely Girl” because, as far as I’m concerned this is as good as it gets. Wail on, brother man. Wail on.