Black Fighting Men in Vietnam

Artist: Black Fighting Men Recorded Live In Vietnam

LP: Guess Who's Coming Home

Side One

[ listen ]

Side Two

[ listen ]

Guess Who's Coming Home. It isn't Sidney Poitier. Here's a different sort of Motown Sound from 1972 that I found at Daybreak Records a few weeks ago. It's fascinating that the record is presented as a warning to America that thousands of black men who have been trained in combat and who are handy with weapons will soon be returning to the USA and demanding their equality. At the same time, it's depressing to see what little progress in race relations we've made as a country over the past 45 years. We still can't get past the color of peoples' skin when deciding how to treat them, and are basically in the same place now as we were then. 

I was hoping to get this posted on Veteran's Day, but unfortunately I'm a few minutes late. Happy Veteran's Day to all those who have served, putting their lives on the line and into the indelicate hands of those deciding when and where and how the USA will go to war.

Kagny & the Dirty Rats

Artist: Kagny & the Dirty Rats

LP: Kagny & the Dirty Rats

Song: "Pocket Rocker"
[ listen ]

After leaving Troy, NY, I drove up into the Adirondacks and went camping by a lake. I enjoyed looking at all of the beautiful autumn leaves, had a delicious breakfast at Nancy's Village Cafe in Malone, stopped off at a castle on an island in Alexandria Bay, and then finally made my way over to Watertown, where I grabbed a sandwich and a beer at The Paddock Club, a local watering hole.

[ Camp ]

[ Leaves ]

[ Nancy ]

[ Castle ]

[ Club ]

The handsome bartender at The Paddock heard me whining about his town not having a record store, so he pointed out that there was actually a little thrift shop called Thrifted across the street that had some records for sale. I hustled over to check it out and found some vinyl in a small alcove behind a beaded curtain. This 1983 Motown LP by Kagny & the Dirty Rats was the only thing I bought. My online sleuthing didn't turn up much, but I did discover that Kagny's bass player is the very one and the same Cliff Liles who was in Apollo, a group that had released their only record just four years earlier. I was hoping "Pocket Rocker" would be a song about discreet public masturbation, like on a bus. No such luck.

[ Thrifted — Watertown, NY ]

Lionel Richie

Artist: Lionel Richie

LP: 7" single

Song: "My Love" 
[ listen ]

"You've been my friend and you've been my lover, oh lawd. Honey, you're everything I need. You've made my love so strong, now I know where I belong. Oh girl, you'll never have to worry. Oh baby, any more, any more." Oh, lawd—I should have been an early '80s pop ballad lyricist! This shit is easy, as long as your public isn't too discerning. And as we can see here, they were not. I could have been famous. Just thinking about it blows my mind. All the time. Did you know that Lionel Richie scored 13 consecutive top ten hits between 1981 and 1987? "My Love" was the 4th one, peaking at #5 in 1983. I found this single at River Street Beat Shop in downtown Troy, NY.

Downtown Troy is a wonderful, exciting place. It's basically a large grid of mid-sized 19th century structures on lovely tree-lined streets. It doesn't seem to have had its charm slit open and gutted to make way for huge crappy cement things the way so many other downtowns in upstate New York did in the 1960s, '70s and '80s—before people finally stepped back to take at look at what they were destroying and said, "Hey, this is actually kinda' neat. Let's make it a landmark." I even had a French dip dinner with au jus in a bar that used to be frequented by gangster Legs Diamond—or, as I like to call him, ole' Diamond Legs. The man was notoriously hard to kill.

[ River Street Beat Shop — Troy, NY ]

Vanity [1959-2016]

Artist: Vanity

LP: 7" single

Song: "Pretty Mess" 
[ listen ]

When I went to Golden Oldies after Prince died to see if I could find more of his 45s, Scott, the guy working there, said that he'd heard that Apollonia had died too just a few weeks earlier. I looked her up when I got home and found out that she was still rather alive. But then when some friends and I went to see PURPLE RAIN at Oak Tree Cinemas this past Thursday, my friend Beatrice said that it was Vanity who had died—but this time it was true! (It's hard to keep track of Prince's women—Vanity; Apollonia; Sheila E.—they all look kinda' alike, they all like to wear lace, and of course they're all deliciously sexy.) 

A few things I learned about Vanity today that I didn't know before: Vanity 6 and Apollonia 6 are the exact same band, just with a different singer—and both groups' #6 really IS a reference to their total combined breast count. Vanity was set to sing "Sex Shooter" and co-star in PURPLE RAIN, but then Prince had to scramble to find a replacement when their relationship hit the skids and Vanity ditched Prince and his entourage for a solo career with Motown Records. In 1994, Vanity overdosed on crack and had a near-death experience, during which Jesus appeared to her and told her to change her ways. So she did. And that, my friends, was the end of the sexy, saucy nastiness of the artist formerly known as Vanity. You can read more about Denise "Vanity" Matthews here and here, and here's her obituary from the New York Times. And as for "Pretty Mess," we'll it's just totally and wonderfully bonkers. 

Vanity

[ January 4, 1959 — February 15, 2016 ]

We will miss you, Vanity.

Apollo

Artist: Apollo

LP: Apollo

Song: "Apollo"
[ listen ]

Song: "Space Cannibals"
[ listen ]

After my appointment at the Doctor's office in Fairhope, I headed north to the small town of Daphne to visit a record store there called Bay Sound. It's a small store, but loaded with lots of neat vinyl at good prices. I picked up a pile of old soul, R&B and funk, in addition to a weird Spanish-language clown record that I'll likely be posting here soon. The guy working at Bay Sound was friendly and willingly sampled tracks from my pile of interesting-looking LPs. His assistance was only interrupted once, when he accidentally charged a customer $1,095 for a $10.95 CD using the store's new credit card payment system. Understandably, he had to stop playing my records to make a few calls.

Anyway, this 1979 self-titled album by Apollo is one of the things I picked up at Bay Sound. The group was originally called Kryptonite, after the rocks that could destroy Superman, but the folks at Marvel Comics realized that allowing this group of musical youngsters to name their band Kryptonite would surely destroy their enterprise, so the group had to come up with another name...Apollo! Though their lineup featured talented future record executives Benny Medina and Kerry Gordy (the antics and escapades of Benny living with the Gordy family in Beverly Hills is evidently the basis for The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air!), Motown wasn't interested in funding a second Apollo album. So this is, unfortunately, Apollo's one and only LP. You can read all about the group on Wikipedia here and go here to read a harsh and humorless Apollo review.

[ Apollo: 1979 ]

[ Bay Sound — Daphne, Alabama ]

The DeBarge siblings: Bunny, Chico, & El

Artist: Bunny DeBarge

LP: 7" single

Song: "Save the Best For Me (Best of Your Lovin')"

[ listen ]

The eldest and only female of the humongous musical DeBarge family, Etterlene "Bunny" DeBarge mainly stayed in the background, writing songs and singing backing vocals for the group. Bunny finally broke free and released a solo record in 1986, which included the top-20 R&B single "Save the Best For Me." She was then promptly dropped from her label. Sadly, stardom was tough on Bunny and she turned to hard drugs to help her cope. While working to overcome an addiction to prescription drugs in the 1990s, Bunny returned to her hometown of Grand Rapids, Michigan, where she became a born-again Christian and began performing gospel music. In 2008 she published a memoir called "The Kept Ones," which you can purchase for over $100 here. Go here to read more about Bunny DeBarge on Wikipedia, and you can learn more about her famous singing family here.

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 Artist: Chico DeBarge

LP: 7" single

Song: "Talk to Me"

[ listen ]

Jonathan Arthur "Chico" DeBarge was just 13 years old when DeBarge was formed in 1979, so he was never a part of his older siblings' singing group. He was only 20 years old when he released his first record on Motown, which included "Talk to Me," a top-ten R&B hit that peaked at #21 on the Hot 100 singles charts. Sadly, after the release of his second LP, "Kiss Serious" in 1988, Chico was thrown into prison for drug trafficking. He reappeared nine years later with the appropriately-titled "Long Time No See" and has released several albums in the years since then. Chico has five children, one of which he named "Chicoco," and he survived being stabbed outside a Philadelphia nightclub back in 2003. Chico evidently received some disastrous advice from Motown's fashion department for the sleeve of his "Talk to Me" single, later blossoming into a very handsome fellow once that messy black poodle of a hairdo was cut away from his head. You can read more about Chico here.

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 Artist: El DeBarge

LP: 7" single

Song: "Someone"

[ listen ]

The 6th of the ten DeBarge kids, Eldra Patrick "El" DeBarge was born in June of 1961 and was lead vocalist of the DeBarge family singing group I keep mentioning here. His beautiful falsetto adorned such DeBarge hits as "Time Will Reveal," "All This Love," and "Love Me In a Special Way" before Motown founder Berry Gordy encouraged him to go solo in 1986. El immediately hit gold with the bouncy and annoying "Who's Johnny," which was a #1 R&B hit, a #3 hit on the Billboard Hot 100, and was featured in the film SHORT CIRCUIT, starring Ally Sheedy and Steve Guttenberg. "Someone" was the third single released from El's first solo album (after "Who's Johnny" and "Love Always"), and it peaked at #32 on the R&B charts and at #70 on the Hot 100. El continued releasing critically-acclaimed albums throughout the 1990s, though his popularity began to wane. Sadly, El was arrested a number of times in the 2000s on drug charges, and was finally sentenced to prison in 2008. Once in the slammer, El took stock of his life, became a born-again Christian, and began setting his life back on track after being released from prison in 2009. His "Second Chance" LP debuted in November of 2010, and the record's first single earned a pair of Grammy nominations. Unfortunately, El was unable to attend the awards ceremony due to suffering a relapse and then checking himself into a rehab center. More info about El DeBarge, whom I've always considered to be one of the best-looking men in the music business (those bedroom eyes!), can be found on Wikipedia here.