Boz Scaggs - C/D?

in 2003 i loved boz, in 2011 i still love the boz.

Silk Degrees is outright unfuckwithable. I really like Down Two Then Left too; it's not completely impeccable like Silk Degrees, but the good songs are insanely awesome ("Still Falling For You"!).

How is the first album? Duane Allman + Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section sounds pretty kickass on paper...

thank you so much, aero

man it is such a pleasure! discovering Silk Degrees in my late twenties was a HUGE revelation to me - it feels like it maps out a whole geography of emotional territory that's if not alien to pop, usually tangential to it, and just makes it the focus. and then "we're all alone" takes grown-up longing & regret and just blows it up widescreen. top 5 album for me!

I heard Rita Coolidge's version of "We're All Alone" a few days ago at the market, actually.

I love how "We're All Alone" just verges on treacle yet doesn't place a foot wrong.

total tightwire act! I think "no need to bother now" is so devastating that it sort of shores up space against any other directions the other phrases tend toward

Boz' first album is good but it didn't really grab me the way his later stuff did. the must-haves IMO are Silk Degrees, Down Two Then Left, My Time, and Slow Dancer, then a few outlier songs (Jojo!)

The wife and I are fierce Silk Degrees converts for two or three years now... I'm another one who tips my hat to aero a little whenever I kick back with this perfect beast.

I think it was the Lido Shuffle that set me off in search of Silk Degrees, but yeah aero definitely set me straight on its unfuckwithableness

Middle Man is excellent when he isn't shouting over power chords.

Xgau can't stand Boz lyrically.

^ I always was curious as to why I liked Boz Scaggs so much, now I know.

He likes SD a lot though:

Silk Degrees [Columbia, 1976]
Scaggs is criticized for his detachment, but I say it's subtlety and I say thank god for it. In the past, he's sometimes bought (not to mention sold) his own lushness, but this collection is cooled by droll undercurrents--white soul with a sense of humor that isn't consumed in self-parody. Inspirational Verse: "Gotta have a jones for this/Jones for that/This runnin' with the joneses, boy/Just ain't where it's at." A-

I see the A minus, but I have no fucking clue what the rest of it means. what does "In the past, he's sometimes bought (not to mention sold) his own lushness" even mean? I cant for the life me understand what the hell he is talking about there.

I think he's talking about to which degree Boz seems to either be immersed in his schtick or, like Bryan Ferry, both immersed in it & winking (with the listener) at it. Earlier Boz wasn't as many-levels-of-persona as SD.

Btw, genuinely nice dude.

"Isn't It Time" -- A++

"baby's calling me home" on the first Steve Miller Band album is great.

Dunno where I should rep for "(Your Love Has Lifted Me) Higher."

The live bonus tracks on the end of the Silk Degrees reissue are INSANE.

WHAT CAN I SAY

I gotta say, as perfect as Silk Degrees is, I listen to Middle Man more often. It reminds me of Roxy Music's "True to Life" or Pet Shop Boys' Please -- recordings about men in the city on the prowl, looking for kicks.

That one in particular is a bit heavier than the album version--and things always sound better sped up just a hair live. it really f-in' MOVES

xp Really? That sounds great, Alfred. Gonna try that!

Occasionally the effort to RAWK strains his vocal chords but otherwise MM is the L.A. sound at its apogee.

I'll even rep for Other Roads. I just love the hell outta Boz Scaggs.

This song is perfect. That string solo in the middle:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hO26sQ5UkiU

yeah he could get lulled by the waterbed lushness early on, but then again he could do this, which I once blogged about:
"Somebody load me a dime/So I can call my old-time/Used-to-be." Right, so Boz Scaggs sings Lowell Fulson's "Loan Me A Dime," while rising and falling in the well-fed bosom of blues orchestration. This is from the late 60s, more or less the same era as what I (with little exposure) regarded as the fat times of his fulsome Marin County homegrown elevator easy listening hippie make-out music (as I may have previously described it in terminalzine prose). But as this song begins, his almost halting eloquence always accosts me, has me floating on the sidewalk several minutes later, when Duane Allman shows up, and the whole squadron strides forth, from the pathos of the blues into its boldness, with no disturbance of the (say it) vibe. Somebody loans him a dime, he knows now he can fix things up with his baby, or maybe he buys a cup of coffee (then also a dime, in some quarters). Anyway, he's energized, but not overstating his case, at least not before the phone call, or whatever the next pitch might be. No big resolution of the story arc, but he's resolved, and going somewhere.

middle man kicks. listened to it a lot while writing a big stupid thing about how sad "we're all alone" is

i heard "what can i say" in the wild recently and man it just purely rules

What does John Darnelle mean when he says upthread, "As far as I'm concerned Silk Degrees is the Loveless of its day" ? (I've never heard Loveless)

a classic album that you can play over and over and always find something new in the experience? an album that seems, on the surface, to be similar to many other things, but for which in reality there is no substitute? i don't know. this was the only LP of my mom's that i didn't "get" as a kid (~8-10 years old, when we still had the turntable set up) ... i would play beatles, springsteen, bee gees, elton john etc. to death but this album seemed too adult for my sensibilities. the result of this is that as an adult, the album retains a certain sophisticated glamor. i think 2013 is the year to re-listen to it because a lot of these smooth rock sounds are coming back, or have started to come back over the past few years.

(my last post in response to iago)

they've BEEN back.

but welcome! And play "We're All Alone" and "Harbor Lights" loudly.

right on. do you like destroyer's album Kaputt, alfred? that was the album that made me look again at smooth rock '70s stuff.

Yep.

one of my favorite albums of all time. perfect in almost every way except, as Xgau likes to harp on, sometimes the lyrics are lazy as hell.

/It's all about "Loan Me A Dime". Classic/

Incredibly accurate statement.

one more for the road

two years ago i had a really rewarding experience just listening to "we're all alone" on repeat and trying to pull together a piece about it. no idea how i feel about that piece at this point but it was about three days of deep, meditative, mentally engaging work that of course i wouldn't have experienced without the stark landscape of that song

I'm really itching to whip out a version of Lido Shuffle next time I go to a karaoke bar

Brad! Can you post it?

please post!!

http://oneweekoneband.tumblr.com/post/14984902531/boz-scaggs-were-all-alone-final-track-from

should mention that the penultimate revelation in that piece about boz missing from the back cover art is indebted and deployed similarly to how aero described it in a video from a few years ago, which convinced me to buy the record

that's a terrific read, Brad.

thank you!

yeah great stuff, thank you so much for sharing!