If You Think You’re Lonely Now – Bobby Womack – I caught Bobby Womack at City Winery a year ago and it was immediately the concert to beat in 2013 and it wasn’t beaten. He performed this full on ballad and it is the sort of song that delves so deep into the heart of darkness and heartbreak. The song dates from 1982, a great year for disco and this was ballad was so big it booked the trend and spent a month at the top of the soul charts. The thing is, Womack uses the background singers as though they’re an instrumental and he is singing over them, around them, in the holes they leave: instead of singing directly to the beat (rap was still in its nascent state), he is singing on the room left by back up singers and when there is no room he sings over them, like they are a guitar.
You Don’t Know It Feels – Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers – A drug song, but the drug is marijuana and the effect is somewhere between tense and laid back, it is like when you’re stoned and you are concentrating on one thought, “let’s get to the point” when you are interrupted by another thought “you don’t know how it feels” and suddenly it is all you can think is “you don’t know how it feels to be me” and you are tense and you try to mellow yourself out by thinking “let’s get to the point”, but the bad thought keeps interrupting you.
It’s All Over Now – The Rolling Stones – This opened a new chapter in Bobby Womack’s career, suddenly the world noticed him again. It works so well with Jagger taking the lead because Jagger was all of 21 years of age in 1964 and he sounds all false bravado and easily cuckolded in ways Womack didn’t. The doubt isn’t in the “baby used to stay out all night long” but in the “now it’s her turn to cry”. Fabulous guitar break by the way.
Nashville Cats – The Lovin’ Spoonful – This connects the dots between Merle Haggard and the Byrds, it is why hippies loved country: because of the playing.
