Today’s smooth and spreadable Lazy Sunday Afternoon post is smothered thickly on toast by guest blogger Martpol…
In recent years there has been a proliferation of products that you didn’t know your body needed (or more specifically, that women didn’t know their bodies needed). Barely a week goes by without the discovery that yet another lowly fruit or veg has previously undreamt-of properties: if it isn’t breadfruit body scrub, it’s eyeliner with cabbage essence or prawn-shell hair conditioner. And if there’s one product that all and sundry will end up in, it’s that alluringly named tub of goo known as body butter.
Body butter nourishes the skin, makes you happy and gives you the scent of an angel (unless of course you chose that cabbage variety). Today, however, I offer you one better, and ask you to sit back, close your eyes and indulge in a medium-sized tub of soul butter. I’m afraid there is no Isaac Hayes, who famously released an album titled Hot Buttered Soul. This type of soul isn’t the outwardly erotic, dancefloor-as-metaphor-for-bedroom variety. Instead, its soft strings, enticing harmonies and hypnotic lyrical conceits are there for inner nourishment. You can absorb it just as well by yourself as with a loved one; doing so will, though, deny you the complementary pleasure of a foot massage.
All four of these songs are from the 1970s, which was the greatest decade for soul and my favourite musical period of all. The first two are both cover versions, though I didn’t realise it when I first got to know them. Summer Breeze isn’t even a proper soul song, but a soft rock classic turned into a real slinky beauty by the Isley Brothers. The album version has added axe-wizadry.
Al Green is almost certainly the king of soul butter, and here he is with a reading of a Bee Gees song I haven’t heard but surely cannot beat this. How Can You Mend a Broken Heart appeared on the album Let’s Stay Together, the title track of which is another pocket of enveloping warmth. There is a horn-driven live performance here, but I suggest sitting back, closing your eyes and simply enjoying the original studio version, film or no film…
RAMP’s Come Into Knowledge is apparently one of the most sought-after ‘rare groove’ records from the 1970s, but luckily it’s now around on CD for all to luxuriate in. The key track is Daylight: sampled by A Tribe Called Quest and, jarringly, background music to many a murder and car chase since featuring on the Grand Theft Auto IV soundtrack. Unfortunately there’s no decent video around for this, but instead I offer you Everybody Loves The Sunshine, which features that wonderful conceit: the fan video, complete with album covers, free-to-download video effects and, of course, some very literal cut ‘n’ paste images.
Our final slice of butter comes, perhaps surprisingly, from Chic, they of Le Freak. It is long, repetitive and drowsy, and received wisdom from some fans is that this song spoiled an otherwise excellent disco/funk album. I love it and think it ideal for a Sunday afternoon. Anyway, here they are, still going after all these years, and making the thing even longer with a sax interlude. You can, if you like, skip the first minute of encouragement to hug random strangers.
Thanks for the sunday ramble down memory lane Martpol – I enjoyed Chic after the introductions and, for my sins, I had never heard of them before, nor Le Freak.
One of my daughters is in what might be loosely called the beauty business, and years ago she brought home a tub of body butter for my delectation noting, as daughters are wont to do, that my aging dead-sea-scroll skin could do with a bit of a boost. Being open to just about anything (I recently had my first colonic, but today is sunday, and I have been brought-up properly) I slathered it on just about all over (!) – but I discovered that it just lay there like oil on water, and refused to ‘sink in’, leaving me like a beached suppository.
Current flavour of the month, in case you and other dabblers may be interested, is the humble acai berry, available in handy tablet form at about £18.00 for 120. Since recently being ‘featured’ on Oprah as a three shilling pill that will reduce your belt size by 25% in three weeks, it has gone viral and, all over Latin America acai palms are being planted by the acre, to cash in on the fever. What a world we live in.
Very smooth, Martpol – ideal Sunday wallowing. That Al Green could sing a bit, couldn’t he?
And Mahlerman, frankly I’m amazed that you managed to get both your colonic and the acai berry past our spam filters…
nice!
as Marley once put it, come rub upon me belly like Guava Jelly.
One thing, as they say, leads to another and the other is the inevitable result of lazy Sunday afternoons spent doing tantric things with the Kerrygold, illuminated by the odd teatree. Personally I prefer Ellimans rub and the toenails cut followed by a spot of pruning.
As for the Isleys, conjures up Starsky, Hutch and Huggy Bear, here is one of their gooduns’……………….
Hey, girl, ain’t no mystery
At least as far as I can see
I wanna keep you here layin’ next to me
Sharin’ our love between the sheets
Ooh…baby, baby
I feel your love surrounding me
Whoa…ho…ho…ho…hoo…ooh…baby, baby
Makin’ love between the sheets
Ooh, girl, let me hold you tight
And you know I’ll make you feel alright
Oh, baby girl, just cling to me and let your mind be free
While makin’ love between the sheets
Ooh, girl, I’ll love you all night long
And I know you felt it comin’ on
Ooh, darlin’ just taste my love, ooh you taste so sweet
Sharin’ our love between the sheets
Ooh…baby, baby
I feel your love surrounding me
Whoa…ho…ho…ho…ooh…baby, baby
We’re makin’ love between the sheets
Hey, girl, what’s your fantasy
I’ll take you there to that ecstasy
Ooh, girl, you blow my mind, I’ll always be your freak
Let’s make sweet love between the sheets
Ooh…baby, baby
I feel your love surrounding me
Whoa…ho…ho…ho…ooh…baby, baby
Makin’ love between the sheets
Ooh…baby, baby
Feel your love surrounding me
Whoa…ho…ho…ho…ooh…baby, baby
Makin’ love between the sheets
Enough of the singin’, let’s make love
In between the sheets
Oh, I like the way you receive me (Receive me, receive me)
Girl, I love the way you relieve me
I’m comin’ on, comin’ on strong (Comin’ on strong)
{Sweet darlin’} In between the sheets
Oh, I like the way you receive me (Receive me, receive me)
Girl, I love the way you relieve me
Comin’ on, comin’ on strong (Comin’ on strong)
{Sweet darlin’} In between the sheets
You got me moanin’
Girl, you got me groanin’
I’m comin’, comin’ on strong
{Sweet darlin’} In between the sheets
Let’s get all the way down
Turn it over
I’m comin’, comin’, comin’, comin’ on strong
{Sweet darlin’} In between the sheets
Da da da da da da
Da da da da da da da
Da da da da da da
Read into that what you like.
Well Brit, your spam filters must be in meltdown after the moanin’ and groanin’ above; I think I slipped through the net because I still have some of that pesky butter clinging to my skin. Is it me, or has this ‘culture’ blog missed a turning somewhere?
I blame Martpol for kicking the whole thing off under the guise of 70’s soul; I think we all know the real agenda…
There’s a wonderful cover version of “At Last I Am Free” by that lovable old Stalinist Robert Wyatt.
malty, that made me laugh! Nothing like seeing song lyrics ‘au naturel’ to make them seem really really banal!
Great tunes Martpol, these are all staples in the worm household!
Ahem, Malty:
“This type of soul isn’t the outwardly erotic, dancefloor-as-metaphor-for-bedroom variety.”
Now you’ve gone and sexed the hell out of it all. Ah well. This clearly gives the lie to the line I once heard that “soul is about love, funk is about sex”.
The Isley Brothers – a perfect choice for any afternoon. Malty, have you heard the words to Mission to Please You? Pure cocoa butter to any girl’s ears…
Prefer the original Mr Ayers… who once made me a very curious offer.
Apologies for pooping the party martpol its just that the seventies linger on in the remembering head as an erotically charged, substance fuelled, pre Thatcherite, Capri driving, disco dancing, family expanding, sliding rapidly towards the abyss kind of epoch, ending in the rise of Pettyism
Well, she moved down here at the age of eighteen
She blew the boys away, was more than they’d seen
I was introduced and we both started groovin’
I said, “I dig you baby, but I got to keep movin’ on”
Keep movin’ on