I can honestly say that I never really considered my
parent’s music to be “cool” or really good for that matter (Granted, this was
before I really knew what music was and what was good. A lot of kids go through
this phase and it’s pretty bad at times. You might miss some stuff early on and
then kick yourself later). Granted, they do listen to some awesome stuff and
are willing give anything I throw at them a listen, as long as it isn’t hip-hop
(although both my parents have admitted that they think that Macklemore is
pretty entertaining). However, I never really thought that I would call any of
their music cool. Granted they listen to stuff like Bruce Springsteen, Steely
Dan, and various other artists that I they consider to be cool and took me a
while to admit it too, but if you asked me that question years ago, I would
never consider anything that the listened to really be cool. That was until I
listened to this album.
Now let’s hope into a time machine for a minute and get a
better understanding of what’s going on here. It’s the early 70s, Freddie
Mercury is still alive and just starting to make waves with his music, New York
City is just starting to change music from sounding the same to having unique
sound all its own, and two guys who were attending college in Philly, who met
when the show that ended up when gun fire erupted and they escaped in the same
service elevator, are just putting out their second album. The duo, who would
later call themselves Hall and Oates, are just called Daryl Hall and John
Oates, haven’t found the success that they will find in the 1980s (for some odd
reason, the fact that were willing to plug the Pontiac Fiero, the most 80s car
besides the Trans Am, is pretty much as 1980s as you can get without doing an
insane amount of coke or crack), for some odd reason they had started to build
this fan base.
While I didn’t entirely think that album would be one of the
albums that my parents had in their collection that I would eventually consider
to be cool (it would take a soundtrack with I will be discussing later to
convince me that Hall and Oates are pretty damn awesome), after a while I just
realized that this album was really one of the few albums that I could say that
it’s one of the few albums in their collections that I wouldn’t mind borrowing
for a while, mainly because they would never miss it.
I really don’t know what it is about this album that
attracted me to this album in the first place. I’m not really a big fan of soul
music (Sharon Jones and the Dapkings are the group that I really enjoy in this
genre), but there’s just something about it. I guess that the fact that my
father makes reference to the title track whenever he sees someone washing
dishes when we’re at family gathering, peaked my interest (apparently he had a
roommate at one point who believed he made up the lyrics ‘He was the
dishwasher, busy in the back/his hands covered with gravy’ for years) or the
fact that most of the songs tell stories, but whatever it is, I’m still trying
to figure out why I decided that it was the first album that my parents had was
cool.
Maybe it’s the song She’s
Gone, which is one of the most notable songs on the album, which was
written when both Hall and Oates where going through ending relationships
(Oates would later say in a 1985 interview with Rolling Stone that the song was
about Hall’s divorce from his first wife) and also is said by both artist that
it might be the best song that they’ve written together. The song might just be
the ultimate breakup song that forces you to realize that she’s walked out the
door and no matter how much you try to convince everyone that she will be back,
there’s no way in hell that she’s coming back. It’s just one of those songs
that takes a few listens to figure out what’s going on. The lyrics weave an
interesting web, telling you that once she’s gone, she’s gone for good.
Although my favorite song on the album has to be Las Vegas Turnaround (Sara’s Song),
which is about Sara Allen, who is Hall’s song writing partner, who would
eventually become his longtime partner (they were together for roughly 28 years
before they broke up in 2001 due to undisclosed reasons). I guess that to this
day, if you are a musician and you really want to impress a girl that you are
madly in love with, you write a song about her. Hall would do it twice, first
with this song and then later with the song Sara
Smile, which would become their biggest hit.
I guess that you could say that while at first I thought
that my parents didn’t have anything that I would ever thing was cool, as it
turns out, I was totally wrong. While I do like most of the stuff that they
listened to growing up, I really don’t consider any of it to be cool. However,
after listening to this album, I think that I will decide more carefully which albums
that my parents have are cooler than I originally thought.
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