‘Lionel Richie’ (1982) from Andre’s Amazon Archive

Why am I giving five stars to an albums where I am not 100% crazy about every song?The simple reason is that,in terms of everything Lionel Richie is musically this debut album is one of his most overall richest experiences. Conceptually Lionel’s style of blending contemporary funk/R&B styles with slow,sentimental “countrypoliton” types of ballads really feels at it’s most down to earth and organic here. It would have been nice if Lionel had included more uptempo songs here but that is more of a preference on my part.But for those who feel the same way it is true.

The funk type tunes that are here are some of the very best he ever made.”Serves You Right” and “Tell Me” are great jams,more in keeping with a a kind of “naked sophisti-funk” type of groove then the more polished urban styled jams on Lionel’s final album with the Commodores In the Pocket.The other song of this type here is “You Are”-it isn’t exactly what I’d call funk but definitely a great peppy,uptempo R&B love song. It was really not a bad early solo hit for Lionel and frankly a musical style worth pursuing further.

Of course the majority of this album is weighed toward the ballad end of things,the style Lionel chose to make his musical calling but…….well to be honest not his greatest strength. Romantically and sentimentally satisfying fare such as “Wandering Spirit”,”Truly” and the brief final two cuts “You Mean More To Me” and “Just Put Some Love In Your Heart” are musically excellent for such slow-paced songs.However unlike with fellow Motowners Smokey Robinson,Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye,Lionel seemed to have difficulty inflecting his slow songs with any real sense of emotional expression.

Vocally these types of songs tend to come off as…well overly sentimental in his hand.He basically sounds like a black version of Kenny Rogers on these types of tunes and therefore it’s no doubt their musical connection and that Kenny appears on this album.Of course the bonus tracks really showcase another side of his talent.The demo of “Endless Love” shows the nucleus of a song that,while overproduced to the extreme in its final form really gives you an inside peek into Lionel’s technique as a composer with this demo having a more bare,folksy flavor.

The instrumental version of “You Are” is not only great to dance to but solid proof of Lionel’s 70’s-born concept that the catchiness of a great dance tune didn’t just come from the singing:it was the horns,the keyboards and most importantly the rhythm. If you a Commodores fan just getting into Lionel Richie’s solo music and want an easy starting point,in this case it might be best to start at the beginning here.

The next album Can’t Slow Down was of course hugely more successful commercially (not that this was any slouch in that respect either) but musically that album is a whole other beast entirely,for better or worse. This definitely finds Lionel with one foot in his past and the other in things to come musically and in any case is more than worth hearing

Originally posted on July 27th,2009

LINK TO ORIGINAL REVIEW HERE!

Funkiest Moments: “Serves You Right” ,“You Are ((Instrumental)” and “Tell Me”

Anatomy of THE Groove: “Tonight We Love” by Rufus

Rufus are extremely important to how funk music has translated into more recent years. As Questlove pointed out so well in his book  Mo Meta Blues while breaking down the 1977 album Ask Rufus, the bands fairly stripped down rhythm section based sound was a stylistic precursor to the neo soul sound of the early/late aughts. When guitarist Tony Maiden joined Rufus in 1974,he came a key focus of the band-often duetting with his voice and guitar with the bands iconic lead vocalist Chaka Khan. When Chaka left the band in the late 70’s to pursue a solo career,Rufus started recording albums without her.

The second of these post-Chaka Khan Rufus albums was 1981’s Party ‘Til You’re Broke. On this album the main instrumental,songwriting and vocal focuses shifted directly to Tony and the bands late 70’s keyboardist David “Hawk” Wolinksi. It was yet another album that music literature of my adolescence instructed readers to avoid. Ended up finding a vinyl copy at a small record shop in NYC while visiting my aunt. More recently I picked up a Japanese import CD of it. Still it really stopped me in my tracks to throw this vinyl on my aunt’s old turntable and be blown away RIGHT away with “Tonight We Love”.

John Robinson kicks right on the snare heavy funk drums. Hawk accents every other beat with his deep descending Moog bass. That synth bass worms it’s way trombone style into the main song. This consists of that squiggling synth bass accompanied by a higher pitched synth melody,Tony Maiden’s brittle drum-like chicken scratch guitar and the thick slap bass of Louis Johnson. Johnson’s bass and Tony’s rock guitar throw down hold down the refrains-while an easy going rhythm guitar holds down the fort along with more synth accents from Hawk and Jerry Hey’s horn arrangements.

On the choruses of the song,the main melodic statement turns to beginning theme of the song afer the main synth bass/drum intro-with Hey’s horn charts playing direct call and response to the vocal hook. There’s a second refrain after the second play of the chorus-this one in a more major key and featuring Hey’s woodwinds for the melodic statement. After a huge horn fanfare and drum roll,the song strips down to the drums again with Louis Johnson throwing down an ultra funky slap bass solo. After this-the song essentially reboots itself for another round of refrains/choruses before the groove fades out.

“Tonight We Love” is simply an amazing song. I’d personally put it up there as the finest funk Rufus made after Chaka Khan went solo. The late Louis Johnson almost acts as an official member of Rufus hear-his slap bass as much the star of the show as Tony’s many different guitar licks and Hawk’s many keyboard parts. This is a very Westlake studio oriented boogie/post disco type production-very well played on and produced. All the same,the funk kicks extremely hard in that classic “rufusized” sort of way. With the driving synths,guitar,drums and bass this is some serious early 80’s hard funk.

Anatomy of THE Groove: “The Only Reason I Live” by Marcus Miller (1983)

Marcus Miller is probably my favorite contemporary funk bass players. The youthful prodigy was discovered by by Michael Urbaniak in the mid 70’s. He went on to have a 15 year long career as a session bassist-recording with everyone from Luther Vandross,Bryan Ferry to perhaps his most famous stint as the right hand man in Miles Davis’s early/mid 80’s band. How many bassists who emerged after 1974 had that breadth as a player. Later in the 80’s,he became a musical director of NBC’s Sunday Night Live-as well as being a member of the house band for the show. This was yet another musical feather in his cap.

Marcus’s career came to my personal attention via a cassette tape that my father picked at a local thrift store. It was of Marcus’s self titled sophomore solo album. His solo career was at first more instrumentally informed by his work with Luther Vandross at the time-especially in terms of uptempo tunes. Following him being the main musical figure (in lieu of the absent Prince) on Miles Davis’s 1986 album Tutu,the sound of Marcus’s solo albums from 1993 onward follow more in Miles’s direction. His 1983 debut Suddenly showcases another side of his talents with songs such as “The Only Reason I Live”.

Yogi Horton starts off this song with a fast rolling drum-one that hits fast and hard every other beat on the snare. That in addition to providing a Mutron-type,round filtered drum flash on the next beats. Marcus comes in with a brittle chicken scratch guitar-throwing down a fast ans ascending synth bass line underneath it. On the choruses,he adds a high pitched blast of synth blast. The bridge features Marcus scat singing over the even more kinetic drums and synth solos. On the final refrains of the songs,Marcus’s thumb slams away on the electric slap bass as well just before the groove fades away.

As times marched on,this has become one of my favorite early vocal funks jams from his first solo career in the 80’s. On songs like this,Marcus merges two vital elements of boogie/post disco synth funk. It has the fast dance tempo and instrumental flair of a Quincy Jones Westlake production like “Love Is In Control”. But it also has the brittle, stripped down sound of a Prince song such as “Erotic City”. Considering that,aside from Yogi Horton’s drums,that Marcus played all the instruments on this song showcases he was on the funky musical forefront even early on in his solo career.

Andre’s Amazon Archive: ‘Body Talk’ by Imagination (1981)

My history with this trio of Lee John,John Ashley Ingram and Errol Kennedy began with hearing a song (actually from this album) on a disco compilation in the late 1990’s. Though I was reading about Imagination in music literature? Learning about their transitional music from Eurodisco into the electro/new wave funk era? Their music was next to impossible to locate. This was a group whose CD’s came into my life entirely through my earliest exposure to the internet. I ordered this hear in fact,started right from the beginning. And am still finding different things to enjoy about it all these years later.

The title song opens the album with it’s slow burning stomp built around a metallic keyboard,flowing piano and accompanying melodic synthesizer. “So Good,So Right” brings a Caribbean feeling to a similar style groove-only this time putting the focus more on the bass synthesizer. With it’s medium tempo disco beat,repeating rhythm piano and lightly psychedelic electronic effects,”Burnin’ Up” is basically straight up house 7-8 years before the music’s peak. “Tell Me Do You Want My Love” is a spare,Steely Dan like precision jazzy funk dance number while “Flashback” comes right out with the phase filtered hi hat based stop/start Rhodes piano fueled dance/funk groove.

“I’ll Always Love You (But Don’t Look Back)” is a tender piano ballad with a sad and spacious melody while “In And Out Of Love” returns to the spare Caribbean flavored groove of the opener. I’ve heard the musical style of this album referred to as many things. Post disco,Euro dance,synth funk and many other variations. With Imagination? It’s their musical personality distinctions that really make this band work so effectively with what they do. The instrumental approach is consistently stripped down,yet harmonically full. The arrangements don’t sound complex. But the playing of all three members is fluid,slick,clean and very expert. It’s again solid proof,as Miles Davis ones said in a nutshell,that the caliber and personality of the musicians were what made or broke electronically derived music.

Originally posted on June 23rd,2015

LINK TO ORIGINAL REVIEW HERE!

Andre’s Amazon Archive: ‘Ji’ by Junior

During the early 1980’s the UK was unleashing many R&B oriented acts such as Second Image,Level 42,Spandau Ballet and,yes even soon-to-be huge pop acts such as Wham! and Culture Club. There is one artist that stands out,not only racially but musically from the 80’s “Brit-Soul” pack. That would be Norman “Junior” Giscombe. In this review I am not only discussing the music but bringing attention to this sadly obscure artist and album. Junior himself was a UK “club kid” of Jamaican descent who dropped this debut in 1982 and had an (at least temporary) international sensation in “Mama Used To Say”,an uptempo contemporary funky soul delight.

While the percussion and horns are straight out of late 70’s Motown the message about the potency of both youth and old age was right on time and will strike a chord with any listener-son,daughter,parents,even grandparents perhaps. Although this album is primarily devoted to uptempo material the musicians,such as keyboardist and co-writer Bob Carter,bassist Keith Williamson and drummer Andy Duncan are probably unknown to the American R&B scene they show on this album they should’ve been a major force! Musically Junior’s sound borrows a lot similar influences as Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder.

Same goes for Junior’s vocals,although in that arena there is also a very heavy Howard Hewett influence. What results however is an stripped down and very artful sound that makes use of a horn section at times-a sound that makes heavy use of other music styles,jazz and Caribbean rhythms in particular for an extraordinarily funky mix.”Love Dies” has a really stark and edgy feel for a dance tune-chilly,spare synthesizers and the clank of percussion abound.”Too Late” is another popular tune and,although presented on this CD as an edited version of the 7+ minute original vinyl.

I own that vinyl and that version is an incredible bass driven and dark look at the sorrows of poverty-with it’s minor chords and mournful vocals it is nothing short of chilling. “Is This Love” puts Junior even higher in the vanguard as he presents a pop-fusion style midtempo slow jam sung like melting caramel over a dreamy bed of electronics,showing that he learned that critical quality from Stevie Wonder (and to an extent Jan Hammer) how to draw real lyricism,melody and beauty from synthesizers. On “Let Me Know” we’re treated to a keyed up dance-funk jam straight out of the Michael Jackson school.

It features some melodic melismas that are so astonishing it’s surprising they’re even…singable.But Junior,with his great hiccupy phrasing pulls it off without a hitch. My personal favorite song here is “Down Down”,one of the most frightening emotional depictions of a dissolved relationship next to Marvin Gaye or Ray Charles. The music however is very close to the lyric-a mean dance beat splits apart every so often into near total psychedelic incoherence;the music genuinely sounds as if it’s spiraling down. Anyone who can pull that kind of thing off rates through the roof in my book!

“I Can’t Help It” (not the Stevie Wonder song sung by Michael Jackson) continues in the sound of “Mama Used To Say”,only with slightly less catchy results but it’s still an incredible jam no matter how it goes down. “Darling You (Don’t You Know)” is the only other slow jam type of song here,even still it’s very rhythmic.With it’s use again of minor chords on piano and dreamy synths and guitar lines it points to both the darkness and the light of love.

Now all this taken together one will hear this album and ask themselves why this album didn’t knock the socks off the charts on both sides of the Atlantic,never mind the possibility of a huge pop career for Junior. Well perhaps the arty,jazzy production of this album or the music industry recession during this time contributed to that. Even so this was Junior’s most successful and most remembered album,that is….if he is remembered hardly at all. His follow up,1983’s more abstract and reggae/funk inflected Inside Looking Out [LP VINYL] failed to gain a hit or any commercial attention,nor has it ever been released on CD

.Neither did a pair of excellent albums with the glossy pop-funk of 1985’s Acquired Taste,the freestyle dance style of 1988’s “Sophisticated Street or the highly new jack/hip-hop inflected ‘Stand Tall’ could turn heads around. So aside from duets with Kim Wilde and a contribution to the huge commercial success of the Beverly Hills Cop: Music From The Motion Picture Soundtrack soundtrack this artist is largely a footnote,if that outside Europe.That’s a fate very undeserved of an artist of this caliber. So with the reappearance of this album on CD we can now sit back,listen,groove and think what might have been.

Originally posted on January 17th, 2009

LINK TO ORIGINAL REVIEW HERE!

 

Anatomy Of The Groove: “Spur Of The Moment” by The Jeff Lorber Fusion

Jeff Lorber is another example of how Philadelphia remains one of the East Coast’s most musical cities. He released his first two albums as a bandleader with The Jeff Lorber Fusion in 1977 and 1978-the later of which featured guest appearances from jazz fusion luminaries in Miles Davis alumni Chick Corea and Corea’s own protege Joe Farrell. Following signing to Arista in 1979 and his label debut Water Sign,Lorber bough in Seattle saxophonist Kenny Gorelick for their 1980 album Wizard Island.  Gorelick would pursue a solo career a few years later under his better known moniker of Kenny G.

The first time I ever heard the name Jeff Lorber was when DC native musician/DJ Nigel Hall loaned me his copy of Lorber’s 1983 solo album In The Heat Of The Night. Being that period was also my early years on the internet,there was the ability for me to go out and research Lorber’s music further. And then purchase albums that looked interesting. One such purchase,made on Ebay was a vinyl copy of the 1980 Jeff Lorber Fusion album Galaxian. It was filled with strong grooves. And one that still stands out for me was co-written by Kenny Gorelick. It was called “Spur Of The Moment”.

The groove starts right off cold with driving 4/4 beat. The chorus features Gorelick playing the singable funky melody on his processed sax. Below this,Lorber comes in with a snaky  synth bass while Marlon McClain comes in with a high pitched rhythm guitar. On the refrains,Lorber brings it on home on the electric piano with Gorelick’s bluesy exchanges. On the bridge,Lorber plays a heavy melodic synthesizer improvisation over a full electric bass. On the final choruses of the song,Lorber plays this synth solo and a honky tonk electric piano call and response with a full horn section before the song fades out.

The ultra melodic jazz/funk/pop style instrumentation and melody of this song is right in line with the streamlined sound Quincy Jones was getting with the Westlake studio crew at the same time. Yet with Gorelick’s brittle,succinct solos on his processed wah wah sax (as well as the somewhat stripped down rhythm) put this song right into the boogie/post disco funk mode of the era. The way the solos become more melodic grand and improvisational in scope showcase the talent of this band when they played together. It’s by far one of my favorite songs that the future Kenny G would ever be associated with.

 

 

 

Anatomy of THE Groove: “Bodytalk” by Cerrone

Marc Cerrone was right up there with Giorgio Moroder in terms of popularizing the Euro Disco sub-genre of music. His 1977 song “Supernature” essentially got the modern EDM genre started the same year as Moroder’s “I Feel Love”,performed by Donna Summer. The French born but Italian raised Cerrone was playing drums just before he entered adolescence. He was deeply interested in American soul,funk and rock music from artists such as Otis Redding-and later in the 60’s Jimi Hendrix,Santana and Blood,Sweat & Tears. This meant that his understanding of rhythm was off to a great start.

His first gig as a musician came as part of the psychedelic soul group Kongas. Their music became part of the underground  psych/soul/rock  sound that really got  DJ’s spinning  records in dance clubs. This helped initiated the early disco scene. After that,he went on to record at least a couple dozen albums between 1976 to present. These ranged in sound from disco,electro pop to hardcore funk. His most recent recording is an EP called  Afro. This features collaborations with African musicians such as Manu Dibango and former Fela Kuti band mate Tony Allen. The song that  got my attention on it is called “Bodytalk”.

Darting synth brass starts off the song with a heavy 2 by 2 beat drum kick. Cerrone keeps the 4/4 beat going with some thick percussion accents most of the way along. The main rhythm of the consists of a thick interaction between a churning rhythm guitar, a ultra funky bass line as well as keyboard parts consisting of a filtered Clavinet and Fender Rhodes. The horns act as the backing vocals to the melody. The bridge of the song really brings up the drums with the hard grooving slap bass soloing. That dynamic comes into play on the Afro Latin percussive part that leads back into the fade out of the main chorus.

Cerrone is dealing with some serious,live band oriented post disco/boogie funk of the highest order here. Musically it has a sleek production atmosphere,a very hummable melody but most importantly some heavily funkified rhythmic instrumentation. It reminds me of a Brass Contruction record from the mid to late 70’s in that regard. What my friend Henrique calls funk functioning as disco. It’s a wonderful thing to see how Marc Cerrone here has taken his intrumentality as a drummer and maintained his focus on hard driving,funky rhythms in his music into the 2010’s.

Andre’s Amazon Archive: ‘Continuation” by Philip Bailey

Somewhere between the final two EWF albums of the early 80’s Powerlight and Electric Universe this album came out during the same year in 1983. Gradually during the first three years of the 80’s the entire Earth Wind & Fire camp was starting to falter from various pressures and creative differences. A lot of this moved in tandem with the same sort of situation occurring within the R&B/soul/funk world during that anti disco freeze out. Since this would be the first real formalized solo album by any member of that band Philip didn’t have to look hard to find a way to carve out his own musical niche.

He went to musician/producer George Duke,whose jazz/funk/pop musical style was very close at this point to EWF and whose falsetto vocals were deeply influenced by Bailey’s,to produce and play on this album. Seldom has there ever been a more appropriate marriage of talents in recent years. The result is a short,crisp album that respects musical quality to such as degree I have to say I’ll personally claim it as my favorite of Bailey’s solo albums.

Consisting of eight tracks,six of which are uptempo and very heavily steeped in the funk idiom there’s a great degree of variety and strength to everything to be heard here. The album opens on a very strong note with “I Know”,a number reflecting how much 70’s funk and 80’s new wave had in common and there the two styles could intermix into 80’s urban funk. It also has this great slow driving bass groove as well. “I’m Waitin’ For Your Love” and the closer “You Boyfriend’s Back” also bring in the rockier new wave influence,soon to be a primary element in Bailey’s solo music.

In these cases Duke’s Seawind Horns take the place of EWF’s Phenix Horns so…may be a somewhat new song and dance but definitely the same old tune. Because of it’s hybrid of classic funk styles with electronic arrangements the newer sub-genre of boogie funk found a place here on the potent “Desire”,with it’s popping synth bass and Bailey mostly in his lower vocal register and and the more deeply funky boogie variant of “The Good Guy’s Supposed To Get The Girl”. “Vaya (Go With Love)”,with it’s cleaner urban funk/pop/jazz fusion sounds more like a straight up George Duke number but seems in a way one of those hit type songs that got away.

On the strong “Trapped” and “It’s Our Time” with Deniece Williams Bailey is essentially still in his old fashioned EWF ballad style with the sweeping arrangements mixed with the idea of rhythm. Overall this album has nothing on it that might lower it’s quality. Also it contains more than a fair share of strong,melodic pop/funk styled grooves. So why did it go so unnoticed in it’s day?And why did people such as myself have to learn of it’s existence over a decade after it came out? Honestly after listening to this album not only on vinyl for years but on this wonderfully remastered CD….I really have no idea.

Bailey was huge at the time due to associations with EWF,the album was contemporary with not an embarrassing moment to be heard and Bailey’s voice was in prime shape. Sometimes when a great album goes unnoticed…it just does so for no rhyme or reason. Anyway what matters to me is that Bailey didn’t wind up becoming a full on pop crooner or an adult contemporary solo artist. Even outside EWF he managed to continue innovating and experimenting within the funk genre.

The results could be very surprising. But Philip Bailey had the potential as a huge creative talent. He also had the potential with his melodic,pop friendly approach to be coerced by others into becoming a big time sellout. Luckily the years have shown him to be someone who tends to follow the creative drummer rather than the more obviously commercial one. And as pop friendly as this is,no matter how little success it had commercially at it’s time it may be one of his most significant releases from a purely creative standpoint.

Originally posted on September 22nd,2011

LINK TO ORIGINAL REVIEW HERE*

Anatomy Of THE Groove For The Brothers And Sisters Who Aren’t Here: “Butter” by Richard Dimples Fields

Richard Fields,who apparently got the nickname Dimples by a female admirer who noted his ever-present smile,started his career as the owner of the Cold Duck Lounge in San Francisco. He released a couple of albums locally in 1975 and 1977. In 1981 he signed with Neil Bogart’s Boardwalk Records. His best known song was a remake of a song from his debut album called “If It Ain’t One Thing,It’s Another”, a message song of sorts that he was encouraged to re-do by an old high school friend he ran into at a used car lot. He had a good handful of hits in the 80’s that slowed over the years until he finally passed away in 2000 in the Bay Area city of Oakland.

During my childhood,a 45 of his hit “If It Ain’t One Thing It’s Another” was in rotation in the family home. It was the B-side to this entitled “Mr.Look So Good”,an uptempo disco/funk number that was the title song to his 1982 album,which got my attention most. Something about his soulfullness and conversational lyric style was always appealing. One day I came across another one of his albums while crate digging entitled Give Everybody Some!,also released in 1982. It’s the only full album by him I presently own. And it has a lot of excellent songs on it. The song that always stands out in my mind however is entitled “Butter”.

A pounding,deep bass Clavinet opens the song along with an uptempo,percussion laden drum beat. Two grooving rhythm guitar’s accompany this-one of which plays a more liquid line while horn fanfares call out on each break. A phat slap bass line brings in the main body of the song. It’s a very bluesy melody on the refrain and chorus. And once the intro is over,a brittle bass and higher pitched melodic synthesizer provide the man rhythmic hump whereas the horns and upfront bass carry the melody Dimple’s is singing more. Just before the song fades out,the synthesizers take a back seat to the drum,guitar and horn line that opened up the song on the intro.

This song is a touch post disco/boogie classic that actually focuses on a lot of harder 70’s funk elements,such as horns and a thick slap bass. But the synthesizers and sleek beat are still very much present. Especially on the JB’s style rhythm guitar and stripped down dynamics,this also brings out an early 80’s Minneapolis Sound flavor about it as well. Fields’ vocal style is very interesting one to me. It has the idiosyncratic nasal drawl of Michael Jackson,but also the quiet groan of Ray Parker Jr. There is surely a distinctive vibe to this funk. And a lot of that has to do with how strongly it straddles two generations of the music: the one of the present and that of the immediate past.

 

Anatomy of THE Groove: “Kalimba Tree” by Earth Wind & Fire

Earth Wind & Fire had one of the most telling experiences with the post disco radio freeze out of the early 1980’s. Their inaugural album of the decade entitled Faces an alternately Afrocentric and idiosyncratic double album that was not as popular with audience as it’s sale figures indicated. Philip Bailey often mentioned he felt that when record label pressures began being put upon EWF to began courting their own classic sound, it actually began the downfall of that sound. Their subsequent album Raise! is actually among my favorites of theirs and got them a huge hit in “Let’s Groove”. The band indicate they felt that song signified them chasing success. Still this was a creative fertile period for EWF.

From their very first days at Columbia,EWF had always reserved some of their more experimental musical elements to linking interludes between songs. They were generally under a minute long. And the more pop oriented their sound became,the more anachronistic these interludes seemed to become. Still it was an excellent chance to showcase that they were still musicians. On vinyl the second side of the Raise! album began with such an interlude entitled “Kalimba Tree”. On the album it was under 30 seconds long. As featured in the 1982 EWF concert filmed in Oakland California,it was a lot longer. The new Funkytowngrooves reissue of the album features this longer version.

A round,space funk synthesizer wash opens up the groove. The percussion rings away as Verdine White’s bass line provides the most potent rhythmic element. As the higher key choral element comes in,brother Maurice’s Kalimba comes as Verdine’s bass scales down more. All along with one of Philip Bailey’s classic ebonic chants-later repeated on a second vocal course by Maurice. Roland Bautista plays a glassy guitar solo along with Don Myrick’s  jazzy sax solo. On the final refrain,hand claps come deep into play with a more rocking solo from Bautista as the same space funk synth wash that opened the song closes it out.

Sometimes when I hear a song,the mind begins to wander in terms of what might’ve been. Earth Wind & Fire would only have two more albums out of their original Columbia run after 1981. Hearing what I only understood to be a brief interlude extended out in this fashion got me to think just how long numbers such as “Departure”,”Brazilian Rhyme” or even 1983’s “Mizar” might’ve actually been as originally recorded. In any case,this showcases that the mixture of Afro-Brazilian rhythm,funk and jazz that were at the core of EWF’s sound were still alive and well amid the technological changes during the 1980’s. And that the band were still thinking on that same level as well.