Greg Kot, a noted music critic, once wrote one of my favorite lines in music criticism when he stated "disco was the worst thing to happen to soul music."
In writing that line, Kot reminisced about the salad days of soul music where artists actually played instruments and had phenomenal voices. Essentially, soul music wasn't simply "Black" music but music that told a story from the heart. And to this end, soul music came in a variety of shapes and forms ranging from the soulful voice of Marvin Gaye, the manufactured pop styling from Motown, to the gut-renching, hard driving sounds of the Stax label, to Philadelphia sound. The common denominator of 60s music was the fact it had a story to tell. With true vocals. And real instruments.
The advent of disco make the record producer the main force and with that musicians and "vocalists" became similar to the cotton gin: interchangeable parts.
Sure, the disco era had its stars but the music was lifeless. And, as Kot so greatly pointed out, Black music became mechanical. It was all too easy to push a button and to manipulate a voice so everything sounded just right. The strings which made the Philadelphia sound so memorable became nothing more than the touch of a keyboard on the latest 12'' record spun at your local disco.
By the early 1980s, video killed the radio star. Disco killed great Black music.
I tell you this because this morning I was cruising along the Garden State Parkway listening to what passes as "morning drive" radio. Flipping the station to Power 105.1, I head the final minute of Jodeci's "Stay". For a second, I couldn't help but get lost in memories of my youth. Ah, to be young and carefree in the early 90s. One can't help but realize that the song could be deemed a modern-day, New Jack Swing classic.
Yet at the end of song I heard something as glaring as a needle scratching a record. (Remember that sound?) It was the sound of Cedric Hailey (loved and known to millions of young girls as "K-Ci") crooning and extending the song's final notes. The rest of the members would soon join in.
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