Got funk?

Great Ohio Players documentary, if you have 40 minutes to spare.

If not, just skip on down to the song.

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UNSUNG (documentary)- The Ohio Players



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My January 2nd post (about the infamous Ohio Players album covers) featured the fabulously-sensuous studio version of this song, which runs closer to 8 minutes... unfortunately it has since been yanked by awful capitalists.

Trying again.

Skin Tight (TV 1974) - Ohio Players



This video, introduced by Wolfman Jack, appears to be from the Midnight Special broadcast, which means it may also get yanked eventually, so LISTEN NOW! I am somewhat shocked to discover that my post of the New York Dolls on the Midnight Special is still intact. Of five songs on that post, only one has been removed since (Carole King), and that is much better odds than most of them.

Unfortunately, YouTube is constantly yanking videos, rendering many of my old posts DEAD as a DOORNAIL... and for those interested in which corporations/individuals are behind this nefarious scheme to deny us our online fun, check out the invaluable YouTomb for details.

Where do we go from here?

At left, our Occupy film series is pretty well-attended for Republican Greenville! Last Wednesday we viewed the historical account, A Force More Powerful (Part 1). This coming Wednesday evening we will be featuring Part 2... be there or be square!

These will be at the Hughes Library in downtown Greenville, SC.




Our Occupy Greenville meeting yesterday was endless. It was rainy and cold, so we went to the Coffee Underground and had one of those interminable "What Is To Be Done" meetings. (The Yippies, goofing on Lenin, used to name these meetings, What Is To Be Undone.) Although I feel that I must attend such meetings, I have never particularly enjoyed them. (Note: I described the meetings-glut period of my life in this post.) Why can't we just DO THINGS and come up with ideas as we go along? Damn, I miss the Yippies with every fiber of my being... we never had to have mountains of meetings.* We made shit up in the car, by the time we arrived someplace, we were ready. All this verbiage, all this dithering, all this arriving at consensus (sorta) and stuff, argh.

Just do it. (Apologies for stealing an advertising slogan, which by the way, they stole from ordinary basketball players and NASCAR drivers.)

Speaking personally: I would like to physically occupy foreclosed homes, something Occupy Atlanta has been doing. Others seem to eye this concept with skepticism, and would actually prefer to confront rich CEOs personally, as the Verizon strikers so memorably did. My consigliere confides in me that he is skeptical of that approach; he worries that the right-wing will successfully paint us as whiners, jealous of an individual's wealth, rather than successfully connecting-the-dots to an unfair system that denies workers the fruits of their/our labors (while making CEOs so untouchably rich). We would have to depend on the mass media to make that point. Can they do that? We have been surprised at how the media has used Occupy's talking points, for instance, the now-well-known "60 Minutes" piece on the robo-signing of mortgages would likely never have happened at all, without the force of Occupy Wall Street.

And the Beat Goes On. Please show up at the film series, we need you to get involved! (commercial) And what do you think we should be doing at this juncture? COMMENTS WELCOME!



*Yes, admittedly, this is because we were all alike and thought the same, as I said in this old comment a couple of years ago.

**PODCAST of Saturday's radio show is up, have a listen.


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Yesterday, driving down the street in the awful cold rain, I suddenly heard "Far East Mississippi" on WPCI, the most amazing radio station in the universe, and I was suddenly happy happy happy as the proverbial clam.

Last month's piece on the infamous Ohio Players album covers is here (CAUTION: they were something else). This incredible piece of music comes from Contradiction (1976) (warning: another naked lady on the album cover, feeding a horse this time).

If you listen, you can hear the Great God of Funk, who decided to come down from funk heaven (in George Clinton's Mothership, one assumes!) and consecrate this music, which is how it got to sound like this: Unbelievable!

Enjoy!

Far East Mississippi - Ohio Players

Ohio Players album covers

... were amazing, proudly artsy and pretty dirty, too. (I'm so glad Tipper Gore and the fabled PMRC wasn't around to police us in the 70s.) Did the powers-that-be know about these album covers?

Although pioneering-funk band The Ohio Players (whom I was wildly fortunate to have seen live in 75, rocking the proverbial house!) had #1 hits, these eye-popping album covers seemed to stay under the radar. I remember seeing one of them in a very conservative, old-school Midwestern drug store, another at a truck stop that sold lots of coffee mugs with Bible verses on them. You just had to wonder.

At left, the cover of PAIN, which when opened up, looked like THIS. Coupled with PAIN was, of course, PLEASURE. Finally (and what did you expect?) there was both ECSTACY and ORGASM. That last one, with the metal (is it metal?) dildo popping out of the guy's back, blew my little mind.

Enjoy the linkage-gallery of nostalgic, nasty images; beware questionable taste, probably NSFW.

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And now we go to the video!

Although we are given to believe "skin tight" refers to a woman's jeans, I don't think it does... or rather, I don't think that is the only thing he is talking about. Just a lucky guess!

I remember an interminable ride on the Interstate, primarily saved by these fabulous jams. For this reason, I prefer the long version of this funk masterpiece, which I play in heavy traffic or late at night. Therefore I insist on foisting the original long-ass version on all of you. This is what funk is supposed to sound like! (Yes, you really should listen to all eight-and-a-half minutes for the full 70s experience.)

PS: The guy making this video can't resist showing us the album cover, LOL.

Ohio Players - Skin Tight



Gone, gone, gone with your bad self.