Looking for a little motivation this Monday morning? Look no further than this terrific live performance by Philadelphia’s The Roots, on the David Letterman show in 2006. The song is “Here I Come”, one of the highlights of their album Game Theory, which is, to my mind, their best.
Author: Paul Lorentz
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The Friday Night Awesome: G.C. Cameron “Act Like a Shotgun” (1971)
When contractual obligations strike: G.C. Cameron joined the Spinners just in time to sing the lead on “It’s a Shame”, the esteemed vocal group’s biggest hit of their Motown tenure. Released in 1970, that single (co-written by Stevie Wonder with Cameron in mind) ended a nearly half-decade losing streak for the group on the pop charts and set them up for the greater successes they would achieve in the 70s on the Atlantic label. But when the Spinners split from Motown in 1971, a contractual quirk forced Cameron to stay on at the label, which, at the beginning of its second decade was experiencing some serious growing pains, including the departures of some of the label’s signature talents like the Four Tops and the songwriting-producing team of Holland-Dozier-Holland, who left to form their own Invictus label and were already scoring hits with the Honey Cone and Freda Payne often backed by moonlighting Motown session players. Cameron’s first solo single, released on Motown’s short-lived MoWest label, was this Willie Hutch-penned number which, amazingly, made its CD debut just two years ago on Hip-O Select’s The Complete Motown Singles Vol. 11B: 1971. Hutch went on to score a number of blaxploitation flicks, most notably The Mack. Cameron has recorded intermittently for various labels in the last 40 years (most notably doing the original version of “It’s So Hard to Say Good-bye to Yesterday” for the movie Cooley High, which Boyz II Men would cover to great effect in the early 90s). In the last 10 years, he briefly re-joined The Spinners, and later joined The Temptations.
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The Friday Morning Awesome: Kaleidoscope “Please” (1967)
Most celebrated as the band that delivered the song “O Death” from the Stanley Brothers to Camper Van Beethoven, the L.A.-based quintet Kaleidoscope was formed in the mid-60s around singer-multi-instrumentalists David Lindley and Solomon Feldthouse, the former (who would go on to play in Jackson Browne’s band in the 70s) schooled in bluegrass, western swing and vaudeville, the latter in modal jazz, Middle Eastern and Balkan folk music. Over four years and four albums, Kaleidoscope dropped these two wide-ranging collections of influences into a vat of boiling South California acid folk with some often pretty fascinating results. But don’t let all that make you think the band made “difficult” music.
Their debut single “Please” is an amiable, immediately ingratiating folk tune about a guy just learning to make his way in the world without undue (however well-meaning) outside interference. Feldthouse sings the verses with a talky matter-of-fact-ness. The lyrics are thoughtful and firm (“I know you mean to help… but don’t you realize you can’t live my life”), and the chorus is mostly just a single word – “Please” – which he holds solidly on a single note while harmonies shift and swirl all around him for nearly ten seconds. And finally, this simple request: Don’t say nothing at all. Just stand by me.