Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Minnie Ripperton - Perfect Angel (1974)

Guys, it's a lot harder to regularly update my blog when I have tons of work to do and when I've been trying to spend way less time fucking off on the internet and way more time becoming good at guitar again. Metronomes, flash cards, forearm stretches...

One of the main points of this Minnie Ripperton album is that Stevie Wonder played a lot of instruments and also wrote a few of the songs. I'm not going to tell you which ones though, because this isn't allmusic.com. One of the main points is not Minnie Ripperton's Mariah Carey style party-trick vocal abilities, although those do kind of rock.

As always, the important thing here is song-writing ideas that fuel my thirst for unadulterated life. Relevant motion in phrases means a lot to me. Everyone knows how to cut out for a beat before the chorus and then everything comes in super-strong, but one of my favorite things is when there is significant motion and resolution within a verse or chorus. Not only does Take a Little Trip have a really great jazz chord progression, but the verse has a catchy little "take a little trip through your mind" which leads into the next line "and explore it" which leaves things unresolved and floating around. Then "take a little trip on a magic carpet ride" is a slight variation on the first part of the verse, but it resolves the whole section nicely into a pit of pink pillows and melting breastmilk ice cream. This sort of internal motion and relevance in parts is what is missing from the majority of pop songs that bore my ears.

Also, you know Lovin' You, whether you realize it or not. Every time we oooooh!

6 comments:

Roger Camden said...

No worries about more time between posts.
I mean, it's your blog.

This record seems like it'll be up my alley.
Something about the cover gives me that impression. Maybe I've got a thing for overalls, who knows?

lew said...

bad tube trick, dad.

it's weird you posted this-i was watching a real "loving you" video on repeat this past week:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kE0pwJ5PMDg
that video is like all about hair and fucking purity symbols.

Todd said...

Roger: Explore what you're into, brother.

Lew: That video is hilarious, because that song is so dirty.

Anonymous said...

happy birthday, Todd, Minnie's a rockin' girl

--mza.

Anonymous said...

also: breastmilk ice cream

!--mza.

Todd said...

Mario, thanks for the wishes, doggie.

And when I look at my site reports, I always expect more weirdos coming in searching for "breastmilk ice cream" or something, but it's pretty much just people looking to download Incantation records.