1 post tagged “margo thunder”
I was given the present of a mixtape once, "Kirsty's Jazz-Funk Fusion", cobbled together from it's curator's inherited 70s LP collection, complete with vinyl scratches bubbling away in the background. It was a grey Maxwell C-90. I had the tape for years, but I've long since lost it.
It was the first place I heard Gil Scott-Heron's "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised", and served as a reliable old workhorse for college house parties and later in the car during summer road trips. The main reason I remember it though, is "Expressway to Your Heart".
Until recently, I couldn't tell you who the song was by, the handwritten inlay card that came with the cassette long since misplaced and, despite my best efforts, entirely forgotten. It occurred to me to try searching online a couple of years back, and at one stage thought I'd found it, on a greatest hits compilation by someone named Karen Young. I previewed the song, and could tell straight away that it wasn't the version I was looking for. I didn't even bother ordering the CD. I forgot about it.
A couple of weeks ago I was pottering about on the iTunes music store. I've never bought music from it because I'd rather not be locked into the proprietary format that they sell their music in, but it's fun to browse. I've never caught onto buying single songs either, perhaps the music snob still hiding somewhere within me refusing to believe (or at least resisting the idea) that the album is dead. Or maybe I just hate the concept of listening to half an album. Anyway there I was, idly flicking through the racks, and... well, you know where this is going.
I don't know why I even thought of it (I had watched an interview with Gil Scott-Heron the week before on YouTube, could that be it?), but I found myself entering the song title into the search box. No preview necessary this time. I recognised the name straight away, that part of the cassette inlay suddenly unerased from my mind.
Margo Thunder. How could I forget a name like that?
99¢. "Buy Song".
I was somehow expecting an anticlimax. Last year I bought a cheap old NES on eBay, an attempt to reverse an ill-advised sale I made as a young man, but in the end it was kind of a letdown. Fun, but (of course) not quite as good as I had remembered. It was better in my memory.
Now, Expressway to Your Heart by Margo Thunder. Headphones on, press play. And as soon as I heard the intro, a flangy bassline and offkey horn stabs, then a sharp little drum fill, and... ah yes. The main hook, a simple, straight up ascending arpeggio for the horns with the matching bassline running little riffs around it. Classic funky drummer beat. And then Margo lets it rip. It's got a neat little low-tempo middle eight section and a cool descending refrain with a high chord piano throughout. Archetypal soul backing vocals. A key change! It was all just like I remembered it. I started giggling away to myself. It was great. It made me happy.
I'm not even recommending you go seek out this song; if you did, you'd almost surely be let down. It's just a standard soul song. It's not by any means the greatest ever written. But it is a cracking, funky little number.
And for some reason, I still love it, from it's very first line.
"I been tryin' to get to you for a long time..."
