MO' META Blues Part 2

Quest Loves Records, Part I "When you live your life through records, the records are a record of your life."

1971: Stevie Wonder, Music of My Mind

I know this record was played right around the time of my birth, and for years after that. I encountered it very early, at a point when I was still judging records not by how they sounded but by how they looked, and I didn't like what I saw. Motown wouldn't commit to one factory plant-they used twenty plants regionally-and that was very troubling for me as a kid, because it resulted in inconsistent ink quality. Some of the records were printed too dark and some of them were printed too light. There was a man my mother brought into the family as a kind of grandfatherly figure, Mr. Lewis, and he was very dark, of Cuban background. He laughed like Geoffrey Holder, which scared me a little bit: "Ha, ha, ha, how are ya, man?" To me, his teeth always looked like the Tamla logo, which was on all the Stevie Wonder records. I wasn't a fan of photo collages either, and that cover is a photo collage. Records whose covers scared me would be buried in the bottom of the pile-the opposite of crate digging. There are also records from that period that my father thought I liked for the profanity. "Sweet Little Girl," from Music of My Mind, is one of them. Stevie's talking smack to his girl for not giving him some, and as the song is fading out, he says, in this puffed-up, aggressive voice: "Get mad and act like a n.i.g.g.a!!" I thought that was the craziest, most hilarious thing.

Extended Playlist

There were other songs that year, but I was too young to remember them. When I add songs, I don't want to fake it-I want to make sure they're really songs that were important to me.

1972: Sly and the Family Stone, There's a Riot Goin' On

Though it came out in 1971, I remember hearing this record in 1972 and embracing it for the wrong reasons. My sister was giving me a bath, and when she was was.h.i.+ng my afro, soap got in my eyes. I went running downstairs, screaming uncontrollably, and it just so happened that "Just Like a Baby" was playing in the background. It's not the most inviting or jovial song to start with, and there I was as my mother, my sister, and my aunt Karen held me down so they could flush out my eyes. Anytime I hear it now I wish I had Johnson's No More Tears. That's another record with photo-collage art, which made the eerie experience of the record even scarier. I was creeped out by Rose Stone's singing in "Family Affair." It sounded strange to me. But I used to love emulating Sly on "(You Caught Me) Smilin'." I'd use any excuse to make my voice raspy.

Extended Playlist:

I heard these on the radio, which my father controlled.

... Aretha Franklin, "Daydreamin"; Melanie, "Brand New Key"; O'Jays, "Backstabbers"; America, "Horse with No Name"; Johnny Nash, "I Can See Clearly Now"; Three Dog Night, "Black and White"; Billy Preston, "Outa-s.p.a.ce"; Carly Simon, "Antic.i.p.ation"...

1973: Rufus, Rags to Rufus / Sly and the Family Stone, Fresh

I have an obsession with the song "Sideways" on Rags to Rufus, which was almost just an interlude. It's like a jam session where you're hearing the band from outside the club, the sound all m.u.f.fled. Then all of a sudden the song opens up, clears up, and Chaka Khan is singing some jazzy stuff. Evidently it went on too long and no one stopped the tape, because then you hear her say, "The food is here?" There's also a great tremolo effect on the cymbals-I went through a phase where I loved to make that noise on my drums, that high hissing. And I loved Fresh, but I especially loved side 1. I treated it like a full song-suite, the way other people talk about Marvin Gaye's What's Going On. I never really played side 2 until I was an adult. "Frisky" is especially great. There are vocals and arrangements on there that you can't even imagine. Ironically, the song I gravitated to the least was its. .h.i.t a single, "If You Want Me to Stay." I was always an alb.u.m-cuts person, even back then.

Extended Playlist

My father had a warehouse where his band rehea.r.s.ed, and there was an area in the corner with a stack of 45s and a mono RadioShack portable record player. It was my playpen.

... Tony Orlando and Dawn, "Tie a Yellow Ribbon ('Round the Old Oak Tree)"; Roberta Flack, "Killing Me Sofly"; Paul McCartney, "My Love"; Stories, "Brother Louie"; Cher, "Half Breed"; War, "The Cisco Kid"; The Temptations, "Masterpiece"; Edgar Winter Group, "Free Ride"...

1974: Bill Withers, +'Justments

Sly and the Family Stone's Small Talk came out that year, and the t.i.tle song features a baby crying. By that time I was going to the studio with my parents. I thought the baby was me. This is a tough one, but I have to go with Bill Withers. He was my idol. I embraced all his records. But +'Justments is especially vivid. Sundays were a sad day in my house. When my parents were going away on tour, they would wait until Sunday afternoon to tell me and my sister. "No!" I'd cry. "When are you coming back?" +'Justments was playing during one of those Sundays in 1974. Later I learned that the record was kind of Bill Withers's version of Here, My Dear, Marvin Gaye's 1978 divorce record for Anna Gordy for his own wife, actress Denise Nicholas. "Railroad Man" is the happiest song on +'Justments, and it's about a train that decapitates a swindler.

Extended Playlist

A majority of these were when I discovered music on television, especially by watching variety shows. Everyone had a variety show.

... Barry White, "Love's Theme"; Gordon Lightfoot, "Sundown"; The Spinners, "Then Came You"; Joni Mitch.e.l.l, "Help Me"; Tom T. Hall, "I Love"; Average White Band, "There's Always Someone Waiting"; Curtis Mayfield, "Mother's Son"; 10cc, "I'm Not in Love"...

1975: The Ohio Players, Honey

This record, like many Ohio Players records, is famous because of the cover, which shows a naked woman holding a spoon up to her mouth, glowing honey dripping from it. It's famous to me because I got it for my fifth birthday, along with Moving Violation by the Jackson 5. There was a note, "Happy 5th Birthday from Mommy and Daddy-we love you very much," taped right on the honey jar. Later on I asked my mother: "Come on! How did you approve of that cover?" She explained to me that their eyes weren't open to the evils of the world until years later, when Prince came along. In a way, she was right. I didn't see it as salacious or s.e.xual at the time. After all, at that age most kids are playing dress-up or house. Me? I played record store. There were three mom-and-pop music stores on 52nd Street in West Philly, and the most notable was King James. It had these incredibly curated displays in the front, with Caught in the Tracks by the Commodores suspended high in the window and Up for the Down Stroke by Parliament hanging on a thread. I memorized the layout of the window and went right home and set up my own record store. I put Lou Rawls's All Things in Time out in front, which meant that Bert's Blockbusters from Sesame Street had to go a little further away: children's section. I thought I would do the corner displays just like they were done at King James. I put Honey up there. But at the record store the edges of the covers were curled. What I didn't know is that King James wasn't using actual alb.u.m covers-they were posters from the record company. You can curl and bend posters from the record company. You can't bend record covers with discs in them. So, yeah: I cracked Honey. There's no tragedy like your first broken record. And it wasn't like broken records got replaced. I know the entire Ohio Players catalog like the back of my hand. Except Honey.

Extended Playlist

My father had a Granada with both a ca.s.sette player and an eight track. It was very rare to have both of those things. He made mix tapes.

... Bee Gees, "Nights on Broadway"; The Eagles, "One of These Nights"; David Bowie, "Fame"; Donna Summer, "Pandora's Box"; Carole King, "Chicken Soup with Rice"; Earth, Wind & Fire, "New World Symphony"; Funkadelic, "Be My Beach"; The Isley Brothers, "The Heat Is On"; The Ohio Players, "Fopp"...

1976: Stevie Wonder, Songs in the Key of Life

I'm a person who loathes everyone who name-checks Stevie Wonder like there was nothing else to listen to in the seventies, and yet he turns up on my lists over and over again. Songs in the Key of Life is especially inescapable. It came out at the beginning of my first-grade school year, which I know because on the first day of school our music teacher told us to have our "mommies and daddies" buy us the record. To ask your parents for that record in 1976, that was a major event. We went to the record store to get it. I was thrilled, although I didn't like the cover art. I thought he was drowning in donuts. In school, we studied the liner notes. It was the first time I read liner notes obsessively. And then the teacher started us on side 4, on "If It's Magic," so we could hear Dorothy Ashby playing the harp. Then we went to side 2, to "Pastime Paradise," to learn about eastern finger cymbals, and to "Love's in Need of Love Today" to learn about harmony. That record was my textbook.

Extended Playlist

My father upgraded to a van. This is when I started to take charge of what people listened to. My sister was also an influence-she loved yacht rock.

... Average White Band, "Pick Up the Pieces (live)"; Phoebe Snow, "Cash In"; Al Jarreau, "Letter Perfect"; Paul McCartney and Wings, "Silly Love Songs"; Fleetwood Mac, "Rhiannon"; Elton John and Kiki Dee, "Don't Go Breaking My Heart"; The Miracles, "Poor Charlotte"; Starbuck, "Moonlight Feels Right"...

1977: Rufus, Ask Rufus

I'll put this alb.u.m in Questo's Top Ten of All Time every time. By 1977, we had four record collectors in the house, and I wasn't even officially one of them: Mama on funk, my aunt Karen on funk and jazz, Donn on eclectic rock, and my dad on easy vocals. One day my aunt went out to the record store without me and came home with a number of records, including this one. I loved it. It wasn't a jazz record, but it wasn't a soul record, either. Chaka Khan undersang everything. She wasn't up to her usual wailing tricks. The most notable presence on Ask Rufus was Clare Fischer, the uncle of the drummer, Andre Fischer, and a legendary string arranger in his own right. Orchestral work in black music is nothing new-Philadelphia created an entire genre based on adding orchestral arrangements to songs. But there's something about the beauty of darkness that Clare Fischer adds to these records that's just haunting. This was also a Sunday record in my house. My parents were going to do an extended trip to Louisiana and Miami, gone five weeks. When they told me how long they'd be away, the string breakdown of "Egyptian Song" came on. It's a soundtrack moment, a perfect ill.u.s.tration of childhood sadness, lush and spare and at the same time, creepy. And then the story got sadder, at least for me. In Louisiana, Aunt Karen met a man at a restaurant. It blossomed into romance and they decided to get married. When the grown-ups came back from that trip, my parents gave us another talk: We're not going back out on the road again, no, but Karen's leaving. She took the record with her.

Extended Playlist

This was definitely the punishment period. I would get records, and get in trouble, and lose them for months. Many of these I heard on my clock radio, with the volume turned down.

... Bill Withers, "Lovely Day"; Bootsy's Rubber Band, "What's a Telephone Bill?"; Brothers Johnson, "Q"; Commodores, "Fancy Dancer (live)"; Heatwave, "Put the Word Out"; The Isley Brothers, "Climbin' Up The Ladder"; Kraftwerk, "Trans-Europe Express"; Bob Welch, "Sentimental Lady"...

1978: Average White Band, Warmer Communications / The Jacksons, Destiny

This was the first year I had a major punishment. I wasn't misbehaving in school, not talking back or fighting or anything, just not exactly paying attention. Like I said, I was an indoor kid with a tendency to fall inward. To lay down the law, my father banned me from getting any new records. That was terrible for me. But he had his own music, including the Average White Band alb.u.m, which he played in the car when we drove. Still, there were new rules: I wasn't allowed to look at the cover art and I wasn't allowed to sing along. Eventually, maybe after a month, I was off punishment and the first record I bought was the Jacksons' Destiny. That's another scary cover: the group is sitting on top of the alb.u.m t.i.tle, which is like a seawall, and there's a tsunami beating on the letters, threatening the D and the S and the Y. There's also incoming fire or meteors or something. That alb.u.m was the first time the Jacksons took control of their own music, and it was a huge success, with "Blame It on the Boogie" and "Shake Your Body (Down to the Ground)." "Blame It on the Boogie" is confusing, because it's a cover of a song by Mick Jackson, an English singer whose real name was also Michael Jackson. He had a version of the song out at the same time, and British newspapers and radio stations took sides: some of them liked the Jackson version, while others liked the Jacksons' version. They called it "The Battle of the Boogie."

Extended Playlist

My parents went away on Mondays, so Sundays were sad days at my grandmom's. And my uncle's tastes came into play, too-he had more avant-garde records.

... Angela Bofill, "Under the Moon and Over the Sky"; The Bar-Kays, "Holy Ghost"; Commodores, "Fire Girl"; Nina Simone, "Baltimore"; Raydio, "Jack & Jill"; Sun Ra, "Twin Stars of Thence"; Switch, "We Like to Party... Come On"; Gerry Rafferty, "Baker Street"...

1979: Stevie Wonder, Journey Through the Secret Life of Plants