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  • The Infatueighties Countdown: #101: “Ain’t Nobody”

    Chaka Khan. Chaka-chaka-chaka-chakakhan. Chaka Khan. Oops,wrong song.

    A year before she had her biggest hit with a cover of a Prince album track, the woman whose momma named her Yvette Marie Stevens joined forces with her old band Rufus for the last time and produced this electro-soul classic. If they were gonna go out, I guess why not go out with this, right?

    The cover of the 45 for \"Ain\'t Nobody\" by Rufus & Chaka Khan.

    Some of you may remember “Ain’t Nobody” from the movie “Breakin’”,which it made an appearance in after it’d already become a hit. What some of you may not know is that the song, which was written by Rufus member David “Hawk” Wolinski, was originally earmarked for use on “Thriller” by Quincy Jones (I can hear Michael singing it). However, Wolinksi decided to keep the song and use it as one of the two studio tracks on “Live-Stompin’ at the Savoy”. Add Chaka’s unusual phrasing and one of her most powerful vocals, you wind up with one of the best-loved songs of her career, although it’s chart position (#22 pop) wasn’t exactly earth-shattering. Nevertheless, the song won Rufus & Chaka a Grammy, and to this day, no Chaka concert is complete without it.

    I did not realize this song had a video until, you guessed it, I popped over to YouTube earlier today. No big surprise that the rest of Rufus appears nowhere in this video. Nevertheless, witness Chaka in her full-fledged big-haired glory. And bust a move like Turbo and Ozone.

  • O’Neal McKnight’s “Check Your Coat”: This Has To Be a Joke

    I’ll admit that I’m not much of a TV watcher anymore. Once sitcoms started to suck in the mid Nineties (and I went five or six years without an actual television set), my couch potato days were over. As of right now, my television watching usually consists of sports (or “Sportscenter”), “Law & Order” reruns, “Scrubs” and “30 Rock”. And VH-1 Classic and VH-1 Soul, pretty much the last things anyone over 30 has in terms of music television.

    I was sort of mindlessly watching VH-1 Soul one night two or three weeks ago, when the video I’m about to unveil popped onto the screen. I was talking to a friend on instant messenger as this was playing, and I couldn’t help expressing my distaste (disgust?) to him (his response: “Why does he have two last names?”). There are so many things wrong with this video, from McKnight’s 1980 MJ-meets 1991 Boyz II Men look to the cameo by faded rap star Greg Nice (of Nice & Smooth fame). For a while, I thought this had to be a joke, because no one could have bankrolled or shot this with a straight face. Right? RIGHT?????

  • Sunday Shuffle: Do You Feel Me?

    I just bought a USB turntable and fell in love with it immediately. I’ve also found a local record store called “In Your Ear” that has tons upon tons of vinyl, most of which is 3 bucks or less. I went there last week and wound up with 31 albums, all of which are slowly making their way onto my iPod. Among the choices: “Still Crazy After All These Years” by Paul Simon, a ton of DeBarge (and El DeBarge solo stuff) and Marlon Jackson’s solo album. Yes, Marlon made a record. More on that some other time.

    We are now up to 16,939 songs (show-off). Here’s today’s seven:

    Track 1: “Baby Jane” by Rod Stewart: I can see how “serious” music fans would take everything Rod Stewart made after the mid Seventies and uniformly say “crap”, but damn it, my two favorite Rod songs are “Da Ya Think I’m Sexy” and “Love Touch” (Mr. Cass, you’ve got to have my back here!). So bite me. “Baby Jane” was a hit single in 1983 or 1984, and had sort of a dance-rock flair to it. It’s a genre he mined intermittently throughout the Eighties, before he went the grizzled rock balladeer rout in the Nineties and turned into Barry Manilow with a raspier voice at the turn of the century. Listening to those standards albums, you appreciate his 80s music a lot more, don’t you “serious” music fans?

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