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Pop Rock Nation

Author: GG

  • They Put Me In The Mix – JSlo 3

    After I created the Jam Slow mixtape, I was thoroughly impressed with how it turned out. Thus, I wanted to do it again. However, because Jam Slow had all of my favorite slow jams from that time and place on it already, the second one would have all the secondary tracks. And it turned out horribly. Jam2Slow was the worst slow jams mixtape ever created. I think I listened to it back once and then tossed it aside. Sometimes, I’ll hear songs that were on that mixtape and have to turn them off because it reminds me of Jam2Slow. Maybe my favorite on that tape was a song called It’s Over Now by a young man named Danny Boy. Danny Boy was actually on team Death Row and was the hook singer on Tupac’s I Ain’t Mad Atcha and Toss It Up. It was a rather boring song, but Babyface wrote it and Danny Boy had a pretty decent voice. I wonder what Danny Boy is doing today. He does have a MySpace page if anyone is interested. Give Danny Boy some love. You can see him in Pac’s classic video below.

    Since Jam2Slow was so bad, I waited a bit and then created the third tape, titled JSlo3 (yes, without the W). It was far better than the second one that I threw away, but still didn’t quite match the first. But there was still good material on it.

    JSlow3 (circa 1997)

    1. Dreaming Of You – Selena
    2. My All – Mariah Carey
    3. Cupid – 112
    4. Every Time – Janet Jackson
    5. Never – Boyz II Men
    6. Never Make A Promise – Dru Hill
    7. Don’t Leave Me – Blackstreet
    8. All Cried Out – Allure featuring 112
    9. Nobody Knows – The Tony Rich Project
    10. Doin’ Just Fine – Boyz II Men
    11. Where Are You Now – Janet Jackson
    12. Place Where You Belong – Shai
    13. On Bended Knee – Boyz II Men
    14. I Care ‘Bout You – Milestone
    15. The Beautiful Ones – Mariah Carey
    16. I Just Can’t Stop Loving You – Michael Jackson
    17. All My Life – K-Ci & JoJo

    My tastes certainly haven’t changed all that much. Actually, during this time, I was buying a ton of CD singles as I was a poor college student, but would soon enough buy all the albums of the singles that I bought on CD on this set.

    • It was all about the dude R&B groups back then – Boyz II Men, Dru Hill, Blackstreet, Shai.
    • I think I OD’d a bit on the Boyz II Men, but Doin’ Just Fine is still great today.
    • Who was Allure? A group on Mariah Carey’s old imprint who didn’t eventually make it. Though of course, the Lisa Lisa and Full Force version is much better, I bought this single and enjoyed the Allure/112 version.
    • The video to On Bended Knee was fantastic for the cameos featuring the beautiful Lark Voorhies (Lisa Turtle from Saved By The Bell – could Wanya really get her?) and Kim Fields (Tootie! – could Nate really get her?).
    • Who was Milestone? For the movie Soul Food, a fictional R&B group was created (K-Ci and JoJo, and the Edmonds brothers including Babyface) called Milestone and the boys together released a song for the soundtrack.
    • I remember having to cut about half of Mariah’s version of the Prince tune The Beautiful Ones (Mariah’s version featured Dru Hill) because the song was long and I was running short on time. Remember, this was audio tape.
    • All My Life was my favorite song at the time and became “our song”, when Carol (former wife, current best friend) and I started dating. Yikes, that was like 11 years ago.

  • Friday Throwback – My Lucille

    I may have mentioned this before, but back in the day, my dad used to record videos from MTV and VH-1, when those channels used to pretty much solely play music videos. I was able to see some pretty sweet stuff.

    One of those videos I remember watching was by B. B. King. It was a weird video where Dan Akroyd, Michelle Pfeiffer (who I thought was Jane Curtain), Steve Martin, and Eddie Murphy were his band mates. All I really remember from the video was Eddie smiling on the drums and Steve Martin screwing up the choreography. Ever since YouTube became the place to find this kind of stuff, I’ve been looking for this video. I found it.

    What I’ve been able to figure out so far is that B. B. King was in a movie with Michelle Pfeiffer and Jeff Goldbloom called Into The Night. This video was probably a result of him having a song on the soundtrack. That makes a lot of sense because I never knew why Pfeiffer was at the beginning of the video. And now that I notice, Goldbloom is in it as well. Enjoy.

    – Who is that mustachioed guy on the guitar? He’s the only one I can’t make out.

    – B. B. has once dance move.

    – Smile until it hurts Ed.

    – Ed has some hair on him.

    – Pfeiffer couldn’t hold it in when Martin screwed up his moves. She was cracking up.

    – That’s a mighty bar crowd there.

    – I wish I could belt it out like B. B. King. “My Lucille!!!!!!!!!”

    – Who are those guys hosting? At least one guy was rockin’ a Michael Jackson Thriller shirt.

  • They Put Me In The Mix – Jam Slow

    My MHW brothers have been putting up mix tapes. I’m not really a big mix tape guy, except when it comes to slow jams. I think I’ve always connected better with slow jams. I’ve noticed that artists use slower songs to communicate real issues or possible heartbreak or happiness much better than in faster songs. I guess the reason to have faster songs is much different and when you’re making the crowd dance, they probably don’t care what you have to say. But with slower songs, it’s different. Artists emote biographically through their music as it is, and I think they do so more during slower songs.

    When I was about 20 years old, I started making mix tapes of slow songs. I especially enjoyed the love songs. Call me soft or whatever. But just singing about love is inspiring. The first tape I created was called Jam Slow. Yep, that’s the title on the old cassette tape. I didn’t want to call it Slow Jams, so I went the other way.

    I’ve always had an idea on what I wanted to do with these tapes. I never just wanted to throw a bunch of songs on a tape and go with it. I looked at how artists told stories with their songs. They fit into a few buckets. There are the courting type songs, the early love songs, the “we have a future together”songs, the marriage songs, and the most famous of them all, the break up songs. I put them in order, not by artist necessarily, but by what the content was in each song. The first songs would be the courting songs, and then next would be the early love kind of songs that would then segue into real relationship songs. After that, the break-up songs would come in, and then the “get back” songs, and usually at the end, I saved either the marriage songs or the songs about starting a family. I did this with all the impending tapes as well. Now before you start to notice how weird I am, I’ll get right to the music.

    Look At Those Outfits

    Jam Slow (circa 1996/97)

    1. Falling – Montell Jordan
    2. Knocks Me Off My Feet – Tevin Campbell
    3. For Your Love – Stevie Wonder
    4. Down Low (Nobody Has To Know) – R. Kelly
    5. Nobody – Keith Sweat featuring Athena Cage
    6. Stay Gold – Stevie Wonder
    7. I’m Still In Love With You – New Edition
    8. When Can I See You Smile Again – Bell Biv Devoe
    9. Can You Stand The Rain – New Edition
    10. Never Can Say Goodbye – Jackson 5
    11. How Could You – K-Ci and JoJo
    12. If You Think You’re Lonely Now – K-Ci Hailey
    13. Lately (live version) – Jodeci
    14. Everytime I Close My Eyes – Babyface
    15. The Lady In My Life – Michael Jackson
    16. Love U For Life – Jodeci
    17. The Day – Babyface

    Look At Bob Wear The Bandana Under The Hat

    You can definitely see what kind of music I was listening to at that time. Lots of Jodeci, Steveland, NE, and MJ. I can remember being done with a relationship right around this time (and possibly sooner), but I don’t remember that being a large factor in the songs that I chose to be on the tape, like would happen during other times in my life. Some thoughts on it.

    • Falling by Montell Jordan is really the only song I’ve been able to get into by him. Of course, everybody has heard This Is How We Do It, but Falling is the only place where I’ve been able to truly get into his voice.
    • There are two Stevie Wonder songs on this list but also two Stevie Wonder covers by other artists – Lately and Knocks Me Off My Feet.
    • Stay Gold isn’t really a relationship love song per say, but it’s sort of a universal love song that I’ve always thought was magical.
    • New Edition, BBD, New Edition – I’ve always dug Ricky Bell’s voice.
    • Never Can Say Goodbye is definitely the oldest song on the list, but somehow it sounds just as fresh (at least in 1996) as the others.
    • I probably OD’d a bit on Jodeci at the time, but it was what I was listening to.
    • The Day is the song that probably describes the feeling of immediate fatherhood better than anything else I’ve ever heard.

    Oh such tears of joy, I’ve never known
    I can’t remember
    It’s like a song, I’ve never heard
    I’ve never sung, but know the words

    I’ll be back soon with the next version of Jam Slow. I dropped the Jam and shortened it to J Slow.