Baby, I Could Be So Good At Loving You. The Friends of Distinction. 1969. RCA Victor.

The spell of good will cast by a certain kind of pop music is intensely short lived, and what is likely to remain of it, in trace form, is an iota of memory of having experienced the pleasure of fevered extremes. Executed with such an assured lightness of touch, Baby, I Could Be So Good At Loving You achieves a kind of commercial triumph by bringing together two popular genres—R&B and easy listening—without insult to either one. The group vocalist, Floyd Butler, shows us, with an astute and relaxed sophistication, just how far to pitch the voice of AM radio seduction without it tipping into a mimicry of overt sexuality. His performance follows in the tradition of the great sixties master stylists Dionne Warwick, Dusty Springfield, Johnny Mathis, artists who not only expanded the pop lexicon with jazz and Broadway musical influences, but who also, through artistic dynamism, helped establish a vibrant new paradigm of beauty and style, and whose pop art even manages to sidle into our dreams and fantasies, illuminating the way we think, and how we feel, about love and desire. Released in 1969 when the States was in the nascent grip of its now unending struggle to make social change a commonplace imperative, Baby, I Could Be So Good At Loving You worked at dislodging easy listening musical conventions from the kitsch conservatism into which it had become mired. Easy listening’s chauvinism was such an intrinsically American quality that most of its fan base could surely claim it as an extension of their patriotism. The dystopian tendency of mercantile institutional structures to want to influence and manage the value systems of a private citizenry is enough to make a sensible listener turn his back on what is freakishly normal—i.e., conservative—in culture, but we’re also irrationally loyal to our tastes. Once we recognize something’s appeal and assess its worth it more or less becomes ours. In this capacity we’re united in our willingness to collect from, and hoard to ourselves, the real world. Even if that means having to acknowledge work from the vampiric, shadow lives of Mitch Miller and David Foster.




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ça Plane Pour Moi. Plastic Bertrand. 1978. Sire.

  According to internet data, the Lollapalooza tour, 1995, reached Dallas, Texas, on August 10, a Thursday. Five of us rode in one car that I drove from Fort Worth to the Starplex Amphitheater; my fellow passengers were Jo, Pat, Trina, and that woman who lived in Azle, whose name I no longer remember, and who used to come into the record store often, along with her boyfriend. Her musical tastes tended toward the abrasive, commercial metal so popular with the white suburban kids of privilege: Nine Inch Nails, Iron Maiden, Alice In Chains. Her personal style was not that of a typical metal fan, more like Ally Sheedy after her character’s disastrous Breakfast Club makeover. I admired her bright and casual style, her propensity to good humor and cheer, and for not succumbing to conformity and becoming a metal clone like so many of our peers. She rolled joints during the entire car trip to Lollapalooza with the hurried precision of an efficient professional working against a deadline, and c
Read more

Blues Is King. Marshall Crenshaw. 1985. Warner Bros.

  Certain recording artists—Lindsey Buckingham, Lucinda Williams, Sylvester Stewart all come to mind—share such a deep affinity with American music that it can seem as if they’ve walked into our  fantasies of democracy and produced their best work from inside that dream. So it is with Marshall Crenshaw. His eponymously titled debut record was released in 1982, when American artists were engaged in a Janus faced dialogue with their audience; on one side, artists like Talking Heads, Prince, and Laurie Anderson boldly envisioned pop song dynamics that bore the irreducible stamp of their respective personalities, while on the other side, Los Lobos, the Replacements, and the Cramps refashioned the face of rock and roll itself to accurately mirror the tastes of a young public growing increasingly hostile to, as well as alienated from, the social and fiscal policies of a federal government that was becoming less and less representative. Somewhere between the two norms fell the music of Marsha
Read more

Les Bon Temps Rouler Waltz. BeauSoleil. 1988. Arhoolie.

  A modicum of sadness is built into BeauSoleil’s rendition of the Lawrence Walker ballad Les Bon Temps Rouler Waltz. It’s the emotional center point around which the song revolves, illuminating the record’s good faith by fixing the listener’s attention on the band’s collaborative dynamic, the process by which they draw poignancy from each instrumental performance. Every pop record is an implied contractual agreement between artist and listener, with listener consenting to his role as subjective recipient of the commercial audio product. The basic nature of this role is subject to change over a period of time as the listener’s relationship with the record changes, given, but not limited, to issues of personality maturity. Typically, the consumer role will fall into one of two camps: either the faceless, one-of-millions mass audience whose pop experience is often social or the cogent individual whose expectations of the pop experience are more personal and long lasting. The most signifi
Read more