This is one of the main reasons I am doing this exorcise. I have never heard this album before. It is certainly classic, important and absolutely brilliant. Nevertheless, it has escaped me for my whole life. Not because I didn't like the singles or anything. Just because it wasn't something that compelled me enough to seek out. One of the things that really strikes me when I was listening to this is how diverse the sound can be from the same instruments in pop music. If you took a string quartet and had them play One by Metallica and Prelude No. 2, Bmv 847 by Bach, you would certainly notice a difference, but would it be as great as hearing I Wanna Hold Your Hand by The Beatles and Bodies by Drowning Pool and any track on here (if you stripped away the extra instruments). These were produced with the instruments, guitar, bass, drums and vocal. Yet the differences are huge. Partly due to the electronic component for sure, but what I'm really talking about is the diversity of these instruments. You can take a guitar and play classical, flamenco, jazz, blues, soul, rock, metal, pop, R&B and probably hundreds of sub-genres of those. The same can be said of the other instruments involved too.
Anyway, moving back to the album..It wasn't really hard at all for me to grasp or understand. As deep and complex as it is, both lyrically and musically, it is very accessible and easy to listen to and like. That's one of the greatest things about Curtis Mayfield.
0 Comments