Who are some of your musical heroes?
I have many, and while he's maybe not at the very top of a very long list, it's Curtis Mayfield who kinda prompted me to start this thread.
I was listening to/watching this...
... and yeah, I know, they substituted the awesome horn section with synths. Sacrilege, but it was the 80s... what can you do? Even with that ill-advised substitution, it's still an incredible song - one of my favourites ever - performed by consummate musicians and an aging but no less vital Curtis Mayfield. Watching the performance, it's hard not to be won over by Mayfield's infectious enthusiasm, earnest positivity and stylish cowboy boots. It's nothing short of what you'd expect from a guy who nobody ever had a bad word to say about... ever, a guy who was a funk and soul pioneer, a civil rights hero, a social activist, community leader, and all around bad-ass.
But then I was reminded that all of that ceased to matter when a lighting rig collapsed on him mid-performance, paralysing him from the neck down, ultimately leading to his death in 1999. A life cut short way too early in the most tragic and unfair of circumstances. And it really bummed me out for about half an hour while I let this performance cycle in the background. But such are the redemptive qualities of Mayfield's music - this song in particular - that I pretty quickly came round to thinking of his life and music not in terms of tragedy, but colossal bad-assery in the face of adversity (even paralysis didn't stop him from writing and recording music, painstakingly recording vocals a line at a time and composing the music from his bed), overwhelming positivity (his impact on the civil rights movement has been compared to that of Martin Luther King and his social activism and charity work is still positively affecting people's lives even today), and a legacy that's always gonna be revered no matter what. His music has inspired and enriched the lives of millions upon millions of people - black, white, male, female, rich, poor, young, old - and will continue to do so until the Earth drifts into the sun. And I think that's pretty fucking cool.
And he really did rock the shit out of those cowboy boots.
I have many, and while he's maybe not at the very top of a very long list, it's Curtis Mayfield who kinda prompted me to start this thread.
I was listening to/watching this...
... and yeah, I know, they substituted the awesome horn section with synths. Sacrilege, but it was the 80s... what can you do? Even with that ill-advised substitution, it's still an incredible song - one of my favourites ever - performed by consummate musicians and an aging but no less vital Curtis Mayfield. Watching the performance, it's hard not to be won over by Mayfield's infectious enthusiasm, earnest positivity and stylish cowboy boots. It's nothing short of what you'd expect from a guy who nobody ever had a bad word to say about... ever, a guy who was a funk and soul pioneer, a civil rights hero, a social activist, community leader, and all around bad-ass.
But then I was reminded that all of that ceased to matter when a lighting rig collapsed on him mid-performance, paralysing him from the neck down, ultimately leading to his death in 1999. A life cut short way too early in the most tragic and unfair of circumstances. And it really bummed me out for about half an hour while I let this performance cycle in the background. But such are the redemptive qualities of Mayfield's music - this song in particular - that I pretty quickly came round to thinking of his life and music not in terms of tragedy, but colossal bad-assery in the face of adversity (even paralysis didn't stop him from writing and recording music, painstakingly recording vocals a line at a time and composing the music from his bed), overwhelming positivity (his impact on the civil rights movement has been compared to that of Martin Luther King and his social activism and charity work is still positively affecting people's lives even today), and a legacy that's always gonna be revered no matter what. His music has inspired and enriched the lives of millions upon millions of people - black, white, male, female, rich, poor, young, old - and will continue to do so until the Earth drifts into the sun. And I think that's pretty fucking cool.
And he really did rock the shit out of those cowboy boots.
