Sticky Fingers

Ohio Players - "Honey" (1975) - Mercury Records

Listen girl,

Don't you hold on to me for the things that I've got.

Its heating up outside and its getting warm in here too!  I'll pour some cocktails, dim the lights and put this record on the turntable while you slip out of those sticky clothes!

Last year we got down and dirty with the Ohio Players' fantastic fifth record, Skin Tight, and tonight we've got their seventh record on the turntable and its almost as funktastic!

This is album oozes stickiness.  (in a good way!)

Beginning with quiet and fluttering piano notes that seem to descend to Earth from above the clouds, the sultry "Honey" gets thing started nice and easy. You so, so sweet girl, you're so sweet like honey.  It keeps me stuck on you girl.  

It almost makes me wish that the tiki bar had a lava lamp!

Hey that drum beat intro sounds familiar on the next song!  Is it Paradise City?  Nope.  It's "Fopp". As in Fopp with me and I'll Fopp with you and Fopped so hard that I lost my shoe!

Things slow down to a sensual pace again on "Let's Love" because it takes an L and an O and a V and an E. 

"Ain't Givin' Up No Ground" is insanely funky and threatens to break up the mood a little luckily the dancing fingers of Billy Beck are there to save us once again with the flittering notes of his electric piano.

Side Two is equally as hot sticky & sweet with the rather remarkable "Sweet Sticky Thing". Your beehive is full of bees, I wish you had a place for me.  Will you share your beehive with me, you sweet, sticky thing? 

Oh shit!  Things are warming up again and its time for a second wind.  "Love Rollercoaster" would be The Ohio Players' second # 1 hit and is one of the bounciest tunes in all of funkdom.  I want to ride, yeaah!

If you're not dancing around the tiki bar when this song comes on, you just might be passed out.

We're in the home stretch now girl.  This record's about to end and we've got some unfinished business.  Let's quiet things down a bit, sit back and enjoy.

Unfortunately, things get downright dark and maudlin on the closing number, "Alone".  

I don't want to be alone.  Pick me up off the floor. Jeez... you don't want to be alone? Well then stop covering your dates in honey and taking them to amusement parks!!

FUN FACT: Hey kids, did you know that there was an urban legend that the blood-curdling scream heard at about the 2:30 mark in "Love Rollercoaster" was of the LP's cover model screaming in agony as batches of hot honey were poured down her naked body?  Actually, its a scream from one of the band members imitating a scream he might have had on a rollercoaster.  As far as we know, no one was hurt, maimed or murdered while shooting the album's cover art.  

By the way, the cover model is Ester Cordet, a stewardess, who was a also Playboy Magazine's first Latin Playmate.  Here's some more of Ester.  Enjoy!

RATING: 4 Sweet Sticky Things Leaving Honey Everywhere out of 5

Having a Heatwave

Heatwave - "Central Heating" (1978) - GTO Records

Hello Friends,

Heatwave is a 70's-era disco-funk band that featured a real Benetton ad of a line-up that looked more like a Model UN meeting rather than an on-the-rise boogie band.  Their "classic" lineup featured members from Dayton, Ohio, a U.S. Serviceman stationed in Germany, guys from England, Switzerland, Jamaica, Briton & Czechoslovakia.  

Central Heating would be the band's second album and probably captures them at their creative peak.  (In 1979, founder and lead-singer Johnnie Wilder would be paralyzed in a car accident which would severely limit his ability to perform with the group he founded!)

Overall the sound of the record is pretty middle-of-the-road disco.  What's most interesting about the record is probably the fact that there seems to be one or two guys in the band who were more into early Genesis than they were, say, Donna Summer.  So you do get some weird, tricked out guitar/keyboard flourishes throughout.  (For instance, the fills on the opening track, "Put the Word Out" or the opening arrangement on the title track.)


Side Two's opener, "The Groove Line" was a big hit and probably the album's standout.


The aforementioned title track, unfortunately, sounds like it could be a poorly-produced television ad for a local HVAC company.

"Mind Blowing Decisions", "The Star of the Story" & "Leaving for a Dream" are buttery-smooth ballads with some fine vocal harmonizing making them sound closer to something by The Carpenters, Earth, Wind & Fire or even Steely-Dan-On-Downers!  In fact, at times we think this album is closer in sound to a particularly-funky Steely Dan or Bee Gees record rather than some of the grittier stuff being done at the time by The Ohio Players, The Village People or anything by Giorgio Moroder.

FUN FACT: Hey kids, did you know that Heatwave's keyboard-player and main songwriter, Rod Temperton would go on to write some HUGE hits for Michael Jackson like "Off The Wall", "Rock With You" and "Thriller"?

RATING: 3.5 better get your central heating don't get left out in the cold, no use trying to save it for later, got to turn on that old radiator* out of 5 

* these are actual lyrics

Heatwave - "Groove Line" (1978)

Hello Friends,

"Groove Line" is from Heatwave's second LP, Central Heating.  It reached as high as #7 on the U.S. Billboard charts however its probably best-remembered as Nick Andopolis's big dance number in the final episode of Freaks & Geeks.

Boogie-oogie-oogie-oogie.

Skin Tight!

Ohio Players - "Skin Tight" (1974) - Mercury Records

Hello Friends,

We've got Dayton, Ohio's favorite funk band on the turntable this Saturday night and Holy Crap its funktastic!

Skin Tight would be the band's fifth LP, their first for Mercury Records, and the first to feature more jazz-based & disco arrangements which would eventually launch the band into a much more mainstream direction.

Its a soulful and funky affair with lots and lots of layers of vocals and music which makes it a particularly good listen on vinyl.  Every time you put this record on the turntable, you're almost guaranteed to hear something you haven't heard before!  (Not to mention, it continues the tradition of the Players' super sexy and risque album covers!)

The title track gets things started and the Vinyl in the Valley headquarters is rockin'.  Its officially our favorite funk song of the moment.

Check out those capes!

Things get turned up even higher on the next song, "Streakin' Cheek to Cheek" featuring a driving wah-wah, some killer Fender Rhodes soloing & a right-up-in-your grill horn section to really get your juices flowing.  The layering and complex, but accessible, arrangements in a song like this would lay the groundwork for everything Prince would revolutionize within the next ten years or so! 

Side One winds down with the oozing, sexy, soulful ballad, "It's Your Night / Words of Love" that ends with a minute-or-so long piano interlude that could have been written by Gershwin (or Vince Guaraldi). (Plus we really, really like the muted guitar fills in the chorus!)

Flip the record and we're off to the races once again with the amazing "Jive Turkey", a funky kiss-off anthem to end all funky kiss-off anthems!  One of the guys singing even sounds a little like Fozzie Bear... Waka Waka!

Things get a little schmaltzy and lovey-dovey on "Heaven Must Be Like This".     


The record's sixth & final song is the ballad, "Is Anybody Gonna Be Saved?"  It starts out dark & menacing (like a foggy night under a street lamp) and builds up to a full-blown gospel-funk epic!  Damn!

Dayton, representin'.

RATING: 4.5 Bad Bad Missus in those Skin Tight Britches out of 5