|
|
|
|
|
|
HOME | ABOUT | BIOS | EMAIL |
|
 |
| |
Friday, March 07, 2008
JUST LIKE A TEETER-TOTTER
Bar-Kays
Animal
Polygram : 1988
[Buy It]
One day this week I was talking to a friend. She was thwarted by this, confused by that, suddenly too clear on the other thing. She said that she needed to make a decision but didn't know what to do. I had no insight into the matter. A few days later, we had switched places. A cloud of uncertainty hung over my head and she, on to other matters, had no counsel. The situation displeased me--not the fact that neither of us could make up our mind, exactly, but the fact that nothing matched. She was up, I was down. I was up, she was down. I spun the dial and landed back in 1988, with the Bar-Kays.
The Bar-Kays, of course, were a Memphis soul band that recorded the immortal "Soul Finger" in 1967, weathered a major tragedy when three members died in the plane crash that also claimed the life of Otis Redding, released a number of solid singles in the early seventies, and survived to become industry veterans despite steadily diminishing artistic returns. In 1988, they put out an album called Animal. If you haven't heard of it, then you belong to the vast majority of humanity. The best song on the album is the only good song on the album, and it hardly sounds like the Bar-Kays at all. That song, "Just Like a Teeter-Totter," was created in collaboration with Sly Stone, and from the first, it sets out to destabilize: It's just as easy to see as it is to say
It looks like it's free but you will have to pay And then, later: You remember the prayer but you forgot how to pray
When you learn how to swear you got less to say
It can't be wrong when it's right
When you lie in the day you lie awake at night The writing is typical of Sly's work during that period, deceptively simple and ultimately maddening. As the title suggests, the song is broadly concerned with not being able to make up your mind, and the music falls in line behind the lyrics. "Just Like a Teeter-Totter" shudders and judders. It lurches through time, both thwarting and enabling perspective (the "see" and "saw" that keep surfacing are not just two halves of the same word, but also the same verb in different tenses). The arrangement is bare-bones in the most frightening sense; it feels like a ribcage that has yet to be covered by flesh, or has recently been uncovered. The chorus is where the Bar-Kays meet Bartleby, and the song not only dramatizes the problem of equivocation but locates the solution in annihilating all choice: Just like a teeter-totter
Don't know if you oughta A few days after my friend and I were out of sync, I called her. I had resolved my problem and she had dealt with hers, too. "Not sure exactly why it gave me so much trouble," she said. I had no insight into the matter. I asked her if she knew the Bar-Kays song. "Nope," she said. "Send it to me." I said I would. I didn't.Labels: ben, funk
posted by Ben
LINK |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
