Love Possibly the Best Song Ever Recorded
posted by on January 2 at 17:09 PM
While I’m at it, can we love the Bar-Kays a little bit?
“Soul Finger” was first used in Spies Like Us to great effect:
Austin Mllbarge (Dan Akroyd), listening to faint music: It’s… ”Soul Finger” by the Bar Kays.
Emmet Fitz-Hume (Chevy Chase): They must be having a hard time getting gigs.
It’s possibly the best party-starting track of all time, mostly because the party is right there in the track. If the Ruskies can dance to it, then anyone can dance to it. “Soul Finger” appears in Superbad in all its proto-funk/horn-soul glory, unblemished by time or trend. For full flavor, check out this vid of the Bar-Kays, circa 1967 when the song came out. What you see here is the very definition of “classic for all time.”
The Bar-Kays, of course, backed Otis Redding as his live band, and mostly perished in the same 1967 plane crash that killed Redding. The two surviving members reformed the group afterwards; the retooled Bar-Kays continued the band’s innovative soul-funk explosiveness, this time with a greater emphasis on hard, big-drum funk. They eventually backed Isaac Hayes on his legendary Hot Buttered Soul album.
From this period comes the song “Holy Ghost,” off the album Money Talks. With a glossy, Ohio Players-ish bounce, “Holy Ghost” is miles away from “Soul Finger.” It features the best mega-funk drum break ever recorded, matched up with an inhuman electro-synth bass line and a human-after-all cowbell. Seriously, its freakin’ huge. It comes in around the three-minute mark of the eight-minute banger and it’s worth the wait. Nothing anymore rips like this shit:
Curtis Mayfield? Seriously? OTIS REDDING. You can't spell Eddy Grant's first name, you like LFO and now this. You're KILLING me, man.
megan (not seling): this is how you know line out is not written by robots. and this is how i know that hardcore music geeks continue to read line out. thx for the catch.
JEEZ-US!
Go back and change that you dipshit!
LORD! Please let the Stranger get a decent Music Editor.
Thanx!
Damn you guys are mean! It took all of 15 seconds to get straigtened out on wikipedia after I read that, so no BFD.
That second song is FILTHY!!! And it's also way better than LFO, way better.
"For God's sake, show some balls."
"I think it's too late to try to impress them."
All downhill for Ackroyd and Chase after that one.
"Soul Finger" is awesome, but "Green Onions" is better.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czuKJeH-t84&feature=related
thanks for mentioning 'holy ghost'. that's one of the essential breakdancing songs that somehow gets overlooked time and time again. HUGE DRUMS.
i love me some booker t, but "soul finger" gets the nod merely bc of the party sounds in the background. and their outfits are way tighter.
cosby, thanks for focusing on the important shit here. those drums are indeed hugeness incarnate.
JZ - Nice Post! "Soul Finger" is a classic track! I love it.
"LORD! Please let the Stranger get a decent Music Editor."
seconded.
ahaha uhm. (anyway)
let me introduce you to the Mayfield Players:
http://www.soulclub.org/stream/The_Mayfield_Players_-_Don't_Start_None.ram
that drum break - sounds like the one used in "pump up the volume". "put the needle on the record/put the needle on the record" - that part. word?
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