Keep Your Head To The Sky: The EARTH, WIND & FIRE Track-By-Track Listening Thread

"I Can Feel It In My Bones" (The Need of Love, 1971)

Another Sly Stone/George Clinton knockoff...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pD8kk4V6DkM

"I Think About Lovin' You" (The Need of Love, 1971)

A plush ballad. Not a single, but it landed on Billboard's Hot Soul Songs chart anyway.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PyUfKNdCuk

As sampled by the Fugees:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8sNnNRhQ2g

Who's doing vocals on this?

I got a little ahead of myself and am listening to Open Our Eyes.

"Everything is Everything" (The Need of Love, 1971)

Yes, it's a cover of the Donny Hathaway song "Voices Inside (Everything is Everything)", released the previous summer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hw_GtTLZs4

That's it for album #2; tomorrow, we start their Columbia Records debut, Last Days and Time. Note: that album contains three very short interludes, which we won't be bothering with.

I'm afraid I don't have much to say about the first two albums on the whole, but there are definitely rough draft sketches of "Shining Star" in that last tune.

"I Think About Lovin' You" stands out most from the last three for me. I can see why the Fugees sampled it. Other two are not bad.

hammond tone on everything is everything is A+

no Salty Peppers at the top? for shame

kidding. great thread!!

xp The vocalist and songwriter for I Think About Lovin' You was Sherry Scott. She and the rest of the band quit after The Need of Love leaving Maurice and Verdine White. They also got dropped by Warner Bros.

"Time Is On Your Side" (Last Days and Time, 1972)

They've switched labels, from Warner Bros. to Columbia, and assembled an almost entirely new lineup as discussed above, including Philip Bailey on vocals for the first time (accompanied by female singer Jessica Cleaves, who would leave after 1973's Head to the Sky). Smooth jazz saxophonist Ronnie Laws was also a member at this time. The music is still very Sly Stone-ish, though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7gdjhox3vs

One other note: the cover painting is by Mati Klarwein, who did Miles Davis's Bitches Brew and Live-Evil, Herbie Hancock's Sextant and Santana's Abraxas, among others.

Yeah, this is def my fave EWF record cover. I so wish I'd picked up the coffee table book on Klarwein's album art before it hit the collector's market.

Surprised those horns haven't been sampled!

Skipping a 23-second interlued brings us to...

"They Don't See" (Last Days and Time, 1972)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rxb4IP0vg4

Slick Philly-style soul. Their trademark style is starting to come together, but this is still pretty derivative of others' work.

Nice tune

"Energy" is definitely my favourite so far, with "Beauty" next.

"Make It With You" (Last Days and Time, 1972)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdoU_iT3Q48

Jessica Cleaves

is this the only overlapping personnel between EW&F and P-Funk?

does anything interesting ever happen in this catalog, asking for a friend

Prove it.

The vocals on this remind me more of The Stylistics than EWF. Not a bad thing.

Yeah, they were definitely doing a Philly soul thing at this point.

"Power" (Last Days and Time, 1972)

This track feels like EWF coming into their own. It's an eight-minute instrumental that starts with a spacy kalimba-keyboard intro before the guitar comes in, and when the beat really drops at 2:15, it's saxophone solo time!

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

As sampled by Organized Konfusion:

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

now this cooks

Hell yeah.

"Remember the Children" (Last Days and Time, 1972)

Is it OK if I forget this song, though?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4t-m1OqpNw

As sampled by DJ Quik:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXHeOL7_krg

Belatedly, "Power" is their first fully awesome track.

(Though I kind of like the Gratitude interpolation with "Africano" better.)

Belatedly, "Power" is their first fully awesome track.

perhaps not coincidentally, also the first one that's caught my ear and feels less derivative than other stuff (even though it definitely slots right in with similar stuff by Kool & The Gang, Cymande, Mandrill etc.) but it just sounds better thought out and composed, and the sax solo is appropriately freewheeling. Maybe I just don't like their vocals idk.

"Where Have All the Flowers Gone" (Last Days and Time, 1972)

Yes, the Pete Seeger song. Meh.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EC3VH-aAfyU

The most hysterical cut in their entire catalogue.

The vocal arrangement doesn't fit for the song. Just a bad idea all around.

Yeah, this feels like an arrangement you'd write for a college music degree assignment. Apparently Clive Davis, The head of their new label, suggested they cut this and "Make It With You". I guess you don't tell your new boss where to stick his bad ideas.

My apologies for killing this thread everybody

look if you guys can't keep this going I'm just going to start my BEE GEES thread

so this won the poll but nobody actually wanted to do it eh

Ultimately they don't have the delicate balance of ridiculousness/embarrassment/actual great material it takes to be a successful thread

yeah judging from this initial run there's a lot of middling material that is neither entertainingly and egregiously bad nor particularly deep or great

so

did you guys get to "evil"? That might be my favorite of theirs. I'm a sucker for a rainy intro.. and then when the rest of the band blasts in and simmers... oh what a beginning. loaded with hooks, incredible atmosphere and mellow low key 70s sound... ahhhh. just an absolutely superb production, performance, and song all around.

Judging EW&F from this initial run is idiotic.

yeah well that's where the thread stopped ennit

I'm not saying they aren't great, I'm saying they aren't dumb/goofy enough!

they just seem like...a really good band that had good songs, which these threads need the really weird bad/cringey moments

yeah I agree w that

well tbf I don't actually think they're that great, I think they're fine but yeah they are lacking in the dumb/goofy/terrible dept that has made these kind of threads enjoyable in the past

so this won the poll but nobody actually wanted to do it eh

― Οὖτις, Thursday, December 13, 2018 9:57 AM (forty minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

which poll?

what dedicated listening thread should we do next (the poll)

There are bad/cringey moments throughout the mid-80s and beyond, but basically the next 10 albums in line here are monolithically uniform -- whether that means, to you, middling or superior.

And the latter camp (to which I belong) hardly needs a listening thread, especially when it'll be filled with people who can't comprehend the majesty of "Be Ever Wonderful," "Fantasy," "Reasons," "Getaway," et al.

thx shakey