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Thursday, July 26, 2007
LOW YO YO STUFF
Captain Beefheart and The Magic Band
1972
Available on : The Spotlight Kid/Clear Spot
Reprise : 1999
[Buy It]
HOT STUFF
The Rolling Stones
Black and Blue
Virgin : 1976
[Buy It]
YOU THINK YOU'RE HOT STUFF
Jean Knight
Mr. Big Stuff
Stax : 1971
[Buy It]
SISTER BIG STUFF
John Holt
1000 Volts of Holt
Santuary Trojan : 1973
[Buy It]
COME AND GET THIS STUFF
Syreeta
Stevie Wonder Presents Syreeta
Motown : 1974
[Buy It]
STUFFS AND THINGS
Funkadelic
Let's Take It To The Stage
Westbound : 1975
[Buy It]
I was having a debate with a friend about the differences between childhood and adulthood pleasures. She was wondering why, when, and how the things that excited her as a child (cartoons, games, new streets, new jokes) gave way to adult opiates: money, alcohol, and especially sex. The stuff she did as a kid wasn't the same stuff she's doing as an adult; the adult stuff was more limited, more narrow, although arguably more powerful. It's an e pluribus unum situation: out of many childhood pleasures come a few adult pleasures, and possibly only one. The word, "stuff" seemed okay as a placeholder at first, but as time went on it started to settle in, partly because of its connotations of filling and being filled, and partly because it's the centerpiece of many songs.
Take Captain Beefheart's "Lo Yo Yo Stuff":Alright baby, do your Low Yo Yo with all your stuff
Now, baby, do your Low Yo Yo Stuff
Now, baby, it's in your being
Whether you're long, tall, short or skinny
Sometimes it's rough
You mean to tell me it's that Low Yo Yo Stuff? What's that stuff? Is it possible that he's activating the pleasures of childhood? Maybe he's playing cards on the road. Maybe he's spinning around until he gets dizzy. Maybe not. Later on, he clarifies further:What if my girlfriend back home
Finds out what my fingers have been doing
On my guitar since I been gone?
Don`t anybody tell her,
I been doing the Low Yo Yo Yo Yo
Like any other fella
Away from home, all alone
Been doing that Low Yo Yo Yo Yo
Ya, I been really carrying on! This is fairly straightforward music for the Magic Band, both thematically and musically. It's closer to "Shake Your Booty" or "Rump Shaker" or "Dancing in the Sheets" than it is to "Sweet Sweet Bulbs." It could be a Rolling Stones song. In fact, the opening riff of "Low Yo Yo Stuff" sounds similar to the Stones' "Hey Negrita," from the 1976 album Black and Blue. Mick Taylor had recently departed, and the Stones were trying out a set of new guitarists. Ron Wood -- who would eventually be selected to replace Taylor -- played lead on "Hey Negrita," but the most surprising song on the record was "Hot Stuff," a disco song with lead by Harvey Mandel, the blues-rock guitarist who had previously played with Charlie Musselwhite and Canned Heat. Here, there's a bit more equivocation with the "stuff": for most of the lyric, it seems to be music itself, or a general expression of exhilaration that comes from the music. Only in the last two verses does it begin to dovetail with Beefheart's stuff. And, of course, because this is the Stones -- and especially because this is Black and Blue -- the last verse reminds us which people have the hottest stuff. Here's a hint: not white people. To everybody in Jamaica
That's working in the sun
Your hot, your hot stuff
Shake it up, hot stuff The phrase had been around for a while. Vess Ossman recorded the ragtime hit "Hot Stuff Patrol" in 1897. But the implication became explicit, and by the time of Donna Summer's megahit three years after Black and Blue, there was no doubt what it meant. That song's not posted. Neither is "Mr. Big Stuff," the megahit five years before Black and Blue, on which Jean Knight, a New Orleans soul singer recording for Stax, stood her ground against a ladies' man. Usually, stuff is gendered female -- it's more common to hear of someone "showing her stuff" than "showing his stuff." In this case, it's male, and it's sizeable, related to his money and his "fancy clothes" and his "big fine car." Many girls have fallen for it, but Knight's defiant. Later in 1971, Knight released a sequel to the song, "You Think You're Hot Stuff," that plowed the same furrow with less yield. (There are probably a dozen other Big Stuff offshoots, and since other blogs like SoulSides and Stepfather of Soul have done a fine job working through them, here's only one, by John Holt, who stuffed the Stones' Jamaican stuff and Knight's big stuff into the same casing.) Knight, aware of adult pleasure but also the risk of accompanying risk of emotional pain, tells Mr. Big Stuff he'll never get her stuff (though she calls it her "love"). People aren't always so withholding. Syreeta Wright, singing a lyric that's as lubricious as any Stevie Wonder ever wrote, swoops and chirps while the backup singers repeat, "I'm coming, I'm coming, I'm coming, come and get it." You don't have to ask twice.
When I had collected all the songs, I sent a list to the friend who, I thought, had come up with this stuff in the first place. I thought it would help answer the question of why the entire kaleidoscope of childhood pleasures get funneled into a single (admittedly great) adult activity. "No," she said. "I had it the other way around. I said that the pleasures were about getting unstuffed."
"Are you sure?"
"Of course," she said. "It was my idea, so you'd think I'd know. My theory was that when you're a kid it's so easy to see the world as boundless, and when you're an adult, it gets harder, more cluttered, more pressured. The goal was to get unstuffed, which is about being unburdened and liberated. I'm annoyed that you would even use something I thought of, let alone get it backwards."
I remembered that it was her idea, and I agreed that she would know. She was right. Then I listened to Funkadelic's graffilthy "Stuffs and Things," which says plenty about being liberated:I'm going to ease in on your beat
I'm going to shuffle when I move my feet
I'm gonna stuff your stuff with thang
Until I make your whole thang twang
I'm going to do things to your stuff She was wrong.Labels: ben, funk, soul
posted by Ben
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