Shuffle #39 (December 6, 2014)

Shake It – Iain Matthews

Yesterday Girl – The Smithereens

The Real Feeling – Ace

Back To Black – Amy Winehouse

I Wish It Would Rain – Rodney Crowell

Can’t Depend On Love – Gordon Lightfoot

Sunlight – The Youngbloods

Greenback Dollar – The Kingston Trio

Red Rain – Peter Gabriel

#4 Fire On The Bayou -- Neville Brothers (1981)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJpzNfao8X4

I’ve seen the Nevilles a few times, including at least twice at Wolf Trap, but my favorite show by them was at Rockville’s Hometown Holidays (annual Memorial Day weekend celebration) in 2000. I think the guys realized that many in the crowd for the free show on a drizzly Saturday evening didn’t necessarily know any of their stuff, so they stuck to their best material, rather than going off on any tangents (political or otherwise).

This one is the best of their best. If you can listen to it for more than a few seconds without getting an irresistable urge to get up and shake your booty, consider yourself clinically dead.

#5 Slippin' Into Darkness – War (1972)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6L-2IQMDwcA

For my money, War is the best funk band this side of James Brown. Calling them a “funk band” really doesn’t do them justice, however, with the way their sound frequently features Latin rhythms and the harmonica work of Lee Oskar (probably the only Dane ever to play in a successful American funk or soul act).

While the group is best-known for top 10 hits such as “Cisco Kid”, “Why Can’t We Be Friends”, and “Low Rider”, “Slippin’ Into Darkness” is their masterpiece. Dave Marsh writes that the lyrics “evoke the dissolution of the civil rights movement into the drug-laced daze of the frustrated early seventies.” I’m not sure how much of that was intentional – the lyrics are certainly opaque in places – but “You’ve been slippin’ into darkness / Pretty soon you’re gonna pay” definitely does hit home.