(I keep posting stuff I've written elsewhere here instead of the stuff I mean to write - apologies, but this one is too important not to include here for posterity.)
If you're talking Seventies soul, you're talking Hot Buttered Soul. Even though I think it was released in 1969 - but hey, that makes it the blueprint, right?
Four tracks, three of them past the ten-minute mark. All of them utterly fantastic, and goddamn but with the weather as it is right now, I need to dig out my tape of this, or maybe even go buy it. Everything about this album is flawless, from the music to the title to that photo of Hayes' big beautiful bald dome. YES.
It's a little annoying the way everyone thinks of Isaac Hayes as being just about sex, and in a 'comedy' way to boot (which is why even though a lot of the stuff he did in South Park was funny, I wish he hadn't done it). This is serious music, not in a joyless muso zzzzzzz way, but in an oh-my-god-this-is-fucking-amazing-you-cannot-fuck-with-Isaac-Hayes way. It's also weird that so many people over at the Amazon entry for the album seem to think it's great 'make-out' music - most of this record is tragic! 'Hyperbolicsyllabicsesquedalymistic' is the only song that's actually about sex - the rest are about heartbreak of one kind or another, and they all contain the quality that makes so much black American music so great: infusing tales of personal struggles with an anguish that draws on the wider context of political and historical struggle.
Worth noting that Hot Buttered Soul is also one of the most heavily sampled albums I know of, and by the best artists in hip-hop. I believe Public Enemy built 'Black Steel In The Hour Of Chaos' around a piano loop from 'Hyperbolic...', while the Wu-Tang Clan liked 'Walk On By' so much they made a song that was basically just RZA and Ghostface rapping over the top of the arrangement - and sounding like they were about to burst into tears - then invited Hayes to come and sing on it as well ('I Can't Go To Sleep').
If you're talking Seventies soul, you're talking Hot Buttered Soul. Even though I think it was released in 1969 - but hey, that makes it the blueprint, right?
Four tracks, three of them past the ten-minute mark. All of them utterly fantastic, and goddamn but with the weather as it is right now, I need to dig out my tape of this, or maybe even go buy it. Everything about this album is flawless, from the music to the title to that photo of Hayes' big beautiful bald dome. YES.
It's a little annoying the way everyone thinks of Isaac Hayes as being just about sex, and in a 'comedy' way to boot (which is why even though a lot of the stuff he did in South Park was funny, I wish he hadn't done it). This is serious music, not in a joyless muso zzzzzzz way, but in an oh-my-god-this-is-fucking-amazing-you-cannot-fuck-with-Isaac-Hayes way. It's also weird that so many people over at the Amazon entry for the album seem to think it's great 'make-out' music - most of this record is tragic! 'Hyperbolicsyllabicsesquedalymistic' is the only song that's actually about sex - the rest are about heartbreak of one kind or another, and they all contain the quality that makes so much black American music so great: infusing tales of personal struggles with an anguish that draws on the wider context of political and historical struggle.
Worth noting that Hot Buttered Soul is also one of the most heavily sampled albums I know of, and by the best artists in hip-hop. I believe Public Enemy built 'Black Steel In The Hour Of Chaos' around a piano loop from 'Hyperbolic...', while the Wu-Tang Clan liked 'Walk On By' so much they made a song that was basically just RZA and Ghostface rapping over the top of the arrangement - and sounding like they were about to burst into tears - then invited Hayes to come and sing on it as well ('I Can't Go To Sleep').
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