We judged three albums to be best buys for this week's feature. One is a hits collection, another a soundtrack and the third a concept album.
"Gonna love it away, so cheer up," sing Ashford & Simpson on Street Opera's opening track. The 1982 concept album from Nickolas Ashford and Valerie Simpson gave the duo not only their second highest charting soul song (up to that point) with "Street Corner" (number nine), it also provided them with their second highest charting album on the soul charts (number five).
The album explores love in the inner city and the concept is wrongly thought by some to be confined to the first four songs. That mistaken belief fails to grasp the end of track four ("I'll take the whole world on if I have to . . . ") and the point of track five (Nick: "Woman, here I stand, want to do more but what for?" and Val: "Don't you remember there's two of us.") It also fails to grasp how the songs were long performed in concert including on the 1982 VHS concert release. Track five ("Working Man") leads into tracks six and seven. You have to wonder of those 'critics' insisting the song cycle is only the first four tracks, "Did they ever listen to the album they're pontificating about?"
"I'm just a working man," Nick sings in the closing of "Working Man" before asking, "What can I do but leave you?" The following track ("Who Will They Look To?") is a response to that as Valerie opens the number singing:
In a way, you're right, you know
In a way, you're right, you know
But think about the little babies too
They need you
Who will they look to?
The song winds down with the man insisting "You don't know how it is, You don't know how many tears, a man cries alone when he can't care for his own. You don't know what it's like, you wanna kick 'em or you want to strike, No, you don't know woman, you don't know." And the reply is, "That's nonsense, I do know, I do care. I understand what's out there." As Valerie holds "there," the next track ("Street Corner") immediately comes up with one of the most amazing piano riffs Simpson has ever composed while the chant is "Street lights! Rough necks! Bad guys!" Get it? Track six ends with Valerie's character insisting she does know what's out there and track seven provides an answer: "Street lights! Rough necks! Bad guys!"
A musical bridge links tracks six and seven with track seven truly kicking in thirty seconds in (as the male insists he's going away). "I believe times will be good again, oh, yes they will," Nick sings while Val insists, "Take good care of yourself, you, you and nobody else, hurry back to me as soon as you can." She will return to that instance at the end of the track which will lead into track nine, a reprise of "Working Man."
This is a concept album and one of the strongest of the eighties. Street Opera needs only a little book work to be staged as a musical, Ashford and Simpson have already provided the score and many, many details.
For those scared off by the thought of "concept album," let's add that there are few more thrilling moments in recording than when Nick and Val's voices come together to insist, "Times will be good again, yes, they will." Along with "Street Corner" and its amazing groove, "Make It Work Again" has a slower but just as steady groove. And both may be shown up by "Mighty Might Love" whose irresistible chorus will find you singing, "you've got to lay it brick by brick to make it stick, you've got to use all of you, cause that's the glue . . ." Those who attended or watched 1985's Live Aid may remember the song, they performed it at the global concert.
What's going to happen in the digital age? Supposedly, equality! At last!
Great . . . if it happens. If. See, a number of us have lived through other format transitions before. For example, Elaine and Rebecca strongly regret not listening to C.I. at the birth of CDs. C.I. has one of the most extensive soul collections on CD and has that as a result of realizing that artists of color and all female artists are the first dropped off the map. So when it was still 'fair' and 'equitable,' C.I. stocked up on the artists that would soon be dropped.
You may be saying, "See, digital doesn't require shelf space. It won't happen." There were hundreds of reason in each format flip-over why the discriminatory practices would 'never' have again and yet they always did. As for digital's requirement, if on your own personal computer you've ever had to add memory, you should be aware that this idea that an Amazon or an iTunes will stock everything and always do so flies in the face of what we know about memory and RAM. Translation, stock up now on the artists who are generally the first to be excluded.
Among songwriters, few can make the artistic claims Nick-O-Val Music can. From the Motown classics like "You're All I Need To Get By," "Ain't Nothing Like The Real Thing," and "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" to seventies work like "Reach Out and Touch (Someone's Hand)," "The Boss," "The Landlord," through their own recordings and much more, they are among the longest songwriting teams in music history and also among the most talented. Generally speaking, Nick writes the lyrics, Valerie the music -- and what lyrics and music!
Street Opera is the album they recorded after leaving Warner Bros and signing with Capitol. The Capitol years are where Nick comes into his own as a vocalist. Valerie appears to have been born as one of the country's most incredible singers and the Capitol years are the ones where Nick holds his own with her. Amazing music, wonderful songs and some of the most inspired singing make Street Opera not only an Ashford & Simpson classic, but an American music classic period. Amazon cost for the nine track album? $5.99.
Street Opera is an album you can not buy new in any format other than digital. That is true of the soundtrack in question as well, Sonny & Cher's Good Times. This soundtrack finally made it to CD at the end of the nineties and is already out of print in that format. For $7.92, you can get a digital download via Amazon. With only eight tracks, that's not much of a financial bargain. The reasons we pick this as a best buy include that it's not available (new) in any other formats and what's happening on the tracks.
What's happening? Take "I Got You Babe," the song that Sonny & Cher topped the charts with in 1965. You know it, you've heard it so often you feel like Bill Murray's character in Groundhog Day. But it makes two appearances on this soundtrack -- as the opening and closing numbers. The opening is largely instrumental and it's a reconfiguring of the song (arrangement by Harold Battiste who also arranged the version that topped the charts) that owes a great deal to flamenco. A similar arrangement is used for the closing which finds Sonny and Cher singing the familiar lyrics in a richer manner. While that's not surprising with Cher, for Sonny it's probably his finest vocal ever recorded. In between, you have "It's The Little Things" -- a wonderful gem that regularly pops up on the duo's compilations or as a bonus track to their original albums. It's infectious as hell. "Don't Talk To Strangers" pops up as a bonus track on some repackagings of original Sonny & Cher albums. Cher never overdoes the drama of this song and walks it through perfectly. Listen to her transition as the rhythm picks up. The first section of the song requires three transitions and that she be extremely 'up' during the third. She pulls it off so well you may not notice what she's doing but all those who later marveled over her (tremendous) acting skill could have seen what was to come by listening closely to this track. And when she sings "Hey, my friend" on "Trust Me," you wonder why no one's ever attempted to sample that. Probably some of Cher's finest singing with Sonny from the sixties. And this was the soundtrack to the film Sonny wanted to make, hoped would take them from having to depend on touring and recording, so he gave it his all. No linear notes so you miss the essay by the film's director William Friedkin which concluded with this paragraph:
A word about the music . . . the first time I heard these songs after Sonny had recorded them, I remember grasping him by the shoulders and hugging him. I was stunned at their richness and variety and at the tremendous opportunities they presented for visualization. I've heard them at least a hundred times since and they still gas me. They include a jazz waltz, a bossa nova, a traditional blues, a Dixieland can-can, a Gershwinesque ballet, a ballad in 6/8 time, and finally a pair of contemporary pop songs. All by the same writer. Pop music has come a long way.
A long way is what The Definitive Rod Stewart charts and, as a best buy, it's pretty difficult to beat. 31 tracks on the collection and Amazon.com is charging only $13.99. And the tracks . . .
The hits you may disdain -- such as "Da You Think I'm Sexy?" and "Passions" -- are and -- possibly due to the set running in order of release date -- you may appreciate them more within the context of his recording career. "Maggie Mae" has never stopped being appreciated and it is among Rod's many fine moments gathered on this collection. Often, compilers seem to suggest you have to choose between "You Wear It Well" and "You're In My Heart (The Final Acclaim)" -- or maybe there's only some recently lifted law that barred the two from appearing on any collection that didn't cost forty or so dollars? (We pick "You Wear It Well" as the better of the two, Rod still has a sense of humor on the earlier song.) "Tonight's The Night" is among the classics showing up and hits such as "Tonight I'm Yours," "Some Guys Have All The Luck," "Baby Jane," "Downtown Train," "Young Turks," "My Heart Can't Tell You No," "This Old Heart Of Mine" (with Ronald Isley) are also present. The set ends with some live tracks from his acoustic set for MTV and any doubting how badly Rod had lost his way -- well before he turned to 'the Great American Songbook' this decade -- needs only listen to "A Reason To Believe." Forty-three seconds into the track, Rod begins making a strong argument for retirement as he does such damage to this folk classic you picture Tim Hardin rising from the grave and pleading with him to end the travesty. (Those unfamiliar with the songs can be schooled immediately by Elaine who cued up Cher, Wilson Phillips, Hardin and Rod's own 1971 performance of the song to demonstrate how it is supposed to be done.) Ignoring that track leaves you with a solid set at an incredibly reasonable price.
So our best buy recommendations are a concept album (Ashford & Simpson's Street Opera), a soundtrack (Sonny & Cher's Good Times) and a collection (The Definitive Rod Stewart).