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I own this CD version and I do have a few favorite standouts the title track ( in its entirety) plus two instrumentals " Off Broadway" and "Dinorah Dinorah" although I do enjoy most of his vocal hits I was more of A Fan of His Instrumentals after this release almost every other album Benson made had fewer instrumentals and eventually none by the end of the decade. But then in 1993 came "Love Remembers" which was more of A Return to form".Working from home today...so the tubes are warming up to this one:
Sadly it's the original CD version, one of the first three I bought back around 1982-1983-ish. Needs a bit of a remastering. I don't think it's ever had another release past this one! Wish I still had my original vinyl on this one.
Still, it's a Quincy Jones production, so it has a certain vibe to it I've always liked. Very much in line with what he was doing around the time this was released. Stylistically this is just prior to Benson going to his full-on R&B/pop mode. In addition to the title track, "Love Time Love" and "Star of a Story" had a lot of local airplay on the R&B stations.
My most recent favorite Benson goes a little further back with his 1993 release (the aformentioned " Love Remembers") which has a few vocal tracks and mostly instrumentals up to that point it was the first time in years since he included any instrumentals on his albums I have the deluxe edition of Breezin CD with the bonus tracks Shark Bite and an early studio version of Down Here on The Ground ( which he would cover later on "Weekend in LA" WHICH I also love) When he allows himself to Benson can Really go go go on his guitar.i first heard him when his version of"On Broadway" was getting tons of Radio airplay in 1978 I really liked his style of guitar playing especially scat singing with his guitar notes in unison which has been His Trademark. Still awesome after all these yearsI wasn't a fan of Benson's albums that were primarily vocals--not that he was a bad vocalist, but I tended to listen to someone like, say, Luther Vandross because he was primarily a vocalist. And some of Benson's material was lightweight at times in the vocal department. I saw Benson in concert on his tour for the Tenderly album, where he sang pop standards--he still played a lot of the old tunes like "Off Broadway" and the encore was of course "On Broadway" (completely with a little rap section he threw in for humor).
A compilation of his instrumental tracks from those years might actually be a cool idea.
I think my most recent favorite was his Absolute Benson album, which brings to mind something like a modernized version of Breezin'. He only does a few scattered vocal parts on a few tracks, and the rest is all instrumental.
As I spin this again, I should say that the music here is some good old-fashioned honest music-making. There's just something here that is missing in much of the new music being released today. Maybe an authenticity of sorts? I can't put my finger on it. I won't say it's stuck in the past, but I would say that it easily could have been recorded in the 60s or 70s and fit right in perfectly. This also doesn't suffer from "digital-itis". It's not the overly pristine and sterile sound we associate with recordings from the past couple of decades, and it's also not brickwalled to where everything is the exact same volume level throughout. There is just that tiny bit of noise or "grit" that adds warmth to these records.Got this truly excellent slab o' wax spinning at the moment. It's got a strong soul/blues vibe that throws back to the 60s in terms of feel. This is the good stuff--if anyone doubts there is any good music being recorded today, this record is just the ticket.
Still, it's a Quincy Jones production, so it has a certain vibe to it I've always liked.
Michael brought the perfoming talent; Quincy provided the much-needed polish.Critics always gave Michael about half the credit for the way his records sounded, but I think Quincy was more than 50% responsible -- you can tell just by listening to the post-Jones albums.
A total about-face. Someone asked me if I had the recent Kraftwerk "3-D" box set. No, not here. But it made me dust off my copy of the Computer World record. The tracks "Pocket Calculator" and "Numbers/Computer World 2" (featured below, courtesy of our YouTube pal Slayd5000) received a lot of airplay here back in the day. It's about as "electronic" as music can get! But if you know Kraftwerk, this is totally their sound.
Of all the stations we had, this one played heavily on the dance/funk station we had in town (WLBS). I have to say that their program director really liked to mix things up. Heck, if it weren't for that station, I probably never would have listened to The Police, as they played "Voices Inside My Head" in regular rotation there for a month or two.I remember Kraftwerk's" Pocket Calculator" which I first heard on ( of all places") The Doctor Demento show but I liked the song and some of their other songs interesting listening to be sure.
Of all the stations we had, this one played heavily on the dance/funk station we had in town (WLBS). I have to say that their program director really liked to mix things up. Heck, if it weren't for that station, I probably never would have listened to The Police, as they played "Voices Inside My Head" in regular rotation there for a month or two.
Between WLBS and WJZZ, we had a lot of good music in town. Slayd5000 is "slaying" me right now, in fact. This one was a popular dance tune LBS played heavily back in the day:
And on JZZ, this Ronnie Laws track was a constant on their playlist (a few times per week, even long after the record was released):
Lots of good memories. And I get the feeling Slayd5000 is one of my brothers from another mother.