Five For Friday

Perhaps I’ve taken a page from Greil Marcus’ “Real Life Rock Top 10” columns from The Believer (and now Pitchfork), but life is more interesting when there’s a soundtrack set to it. This soundtrack comes from all sorts of places, from songs heard overhead at stores, wedged in the middle of movie soundtracks or found through a favorite Twitter or Instagram account. The ways we consume music in the 21st century are vast, and new and previously unknown (to us) songs and artists are at our fingertips at all times, thanks to the internet and apps like Shazam.

To aid in this discovery, here are five albums and songs I’ve kept in my rotation lately. There’s no rhyme or reason to why I like them, other than that their melodies and lyrics appeal to my ear. Maybe they’ll appeal to yours, too.

“Come Running to Me” - Herbie Hancock: Herbie Hancock is best known for his 1973 jazz-funk opus Head Hunters and his work with the legendary Miles Davis Quintet. Jazz purists dismiss his efforts from the late 1970s as fusion dreck, but beneath the glitzy disco backbeats is Hancock’s signature funky synth. Off of 1978’s Sunlight, “Come Running to Me” combines a latin drum beat with a flute-driven melody and one of the earliest uses of vocoder on record, a trend Hancock pioneered in the late 1970s before Zapp & Roger’s stylized hits of the early 1980s popularized the device. The result is eight minutes and 24 seconds of danceable funk that’s poppier than jazz and freer than soul.

“Make It Easy On Yourself” - Jerry Butler, The Walker Brothers: Back in the age of cassettes, one of the albums my parents played on car trips was a tape of Jerry Butler's greatest hits. Now a politician in Chicago and a regular host of PBS music specials, Butler was known as the Iceman during his reign on the soul charts, thanks to his cool, cutting voice. Nowhere is it more evident than on the plaintive 1962 ballad “Make It Easy On Yourself.” Written by Burt Bacharach, Butler has the musical equivalent of an emotional breakdown in the song’s two-minute duration, and it’s impossible not to tear up a little bit when singing along to this tune about lost love. Growing up with Butler’s version of the song meant I missed out on the Walker Brothers’ rendition from 1965, where Scott Walker's (not the governor of Wisconsin) soothing baritone and the band's atmospheric orchestration puts even more pleasure in the pain.

“Rock & Roll is Cold” - Matthew E. White: On occasion, I hear a good song at work that I end up Shazaming so I can listen to it at home. Matthew E. White’s rollicking “Rock & Roll is Cold” is one such tune. The long-haired White runs Spacebomb Records out of Richmond, Virginia, and has found success as a producer. His songwriting is where he shines, however, and his works takes listeners back to an era that never existed, combining the hazy vocals of the ‘70s with the straight-ahead, experimental rock instrumentation of the ‘60s. There’s nothing groundbreaking about “Rock & Roll is Cold,” but it riffs on a familiar formula - the simple two-chord rock tune - and takes it to the next level thanks to White’s conversational, soulful singing and the subtle rolling piano licks that drive the tune.

“The Heart Part 4” - Kendrick Lamar: I wrote about Kendrick Lamar’s latest single, “The Heart Part 4,” earlier this week. If you haven’t listened to it yet, now’s the time, not just because everybody’s talking about it, but because it’s time to get excited for Kendrick's upcoming album, slated to drop on April 7th according to the clue in "The Heart's" final verse. Though Kendrick may have had a suspect collaboration with Maroon 5 last year that raised a few eyebrows, “The Heart Part 4” is proof that his forté - and his aim - is still socially conscious hip-hop set to catchy grooves that switch time seamlessly, no matter how many star-studded collabs he lends his poetry to.

“Basketball Jones” - Cheech & Chong: Listening to Sid Mashburn’s radio show is an introduction to old school songs and artists I've never heard before, and a reacquaintance with tunes I haven’t listened to in years, like Cheech & Chong’s “Basketball Jones.” Some of the lyrics are banal - perhaps “That basketball was like a basketball to me” made more sense in 1973 - but Cheech Marin’s charmingly cloying falsetto and the moody, intense guitar reverb turn this into a harder rocking version of the song it parodied, Brighter Side of Darkness’ hit “Love Jones” from the year before. Despite "Basketball Jones'" humorous origins, it’s worth a listen from a purely musical sense since it enlisted a roster of all-stars, including Billy Preston on organ, George Harrison on guitar, Darlene Love, Michelle Phillips and Ronnie Spector as cheerleaders and Carole King on electric piano. With that lineup, “Basketball Jones” features the most unsung supergroup of the decade.

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