New Edition was the first (and really only) group of black American kids making music in the public spotlight during the early and mid-Eighties. I spun my “Is This the End” and “Popcorn Love” 45s like they were going out of style and looked up to Ronie, Bobby, Ricky, Mike and Ralph like big brothers. By the time I was a teenager, although I was still a huge N.E. fan (Heart Break is an amazingly underrated album from the New […]
Blerd Appreciation
Blerd Appreciation: Nile Rodgers
They say that you should give people their flowers while they can still smell ’em, and I agree with that adage 110%. What’s the point of explaining how much someone meant to you after they’re gone? Last week, singer/songwriter/producer/guitarist Nile Rodgers announced that he’d been fighting an aggressive strain of prostate cancer for several months. His blog , entitled “Walking on Planet C”, recounts his recent struggle with the illness. I, like many others around the world, have confidence that Nile […]
Blerd Appreciation: Teena Marie
Teena Marie, soul legend, passed away on Sunday December 26th at the age of 54.
Blerd Appreciation: “A Song for You”
The first time I heard “A Song for You” sung by anyone was some time in the late Nineties, or it might have been 2000. I’d met some guy at a bar, and the ensuing seduction was a little more dramatic and drawn out than the average hook up. We got to talking about music, and I remember several things about the night. 1) He had a 200-CD changer (something I STILL want, even in the age of iPods), and […]
Blerd Appreciation: Kashif
Somewhere over the course of the hour and twenty minutes that me and my friend Jimmy blabbed (don’t worry, we taped the results and called it Blerd Radio Episode 8…posting soon) on Sunday night, the name “Kashif” came up, and I immediately resolved to do a piece on one of the most popular (and influential) producers of the early Eighties. Although he recorded five albums for Arista Records over the course of a decade (and scored a handful of R&B chart […]
Hump Day Flashback: Cause and Effect
Before I got to high school, I thought Depeche Mode was a one-hit wonder act. “People Are People” was a Top 40 hit in 1985, and then they disappeared, or so I thought for a few years. Without exposure to modern rock radio (or knowledge of what modern rock radio even WAS at that point), how the hell was I supposed to know that DM was still kickin’? My entrance into high school in 1989 broadened my world in many […]
WTFF: Alan Thicke’s “Grandma”
There are tons of “I love you, mom” songs out there, right? Especially in hip-hop and R&B. Don’t nobody love Ma Dukes more than black folk. There’s even a few “I love you, dad” songs out there. But how many songs are there that show love to the grandmothers? Just one that I know of-and boy it’s a doozy. This gem from the early Eighties was recorded by Alan Thicke. No, not Robin Thicke the perpetually bedroom-eyed soul singer. Robin’s […]
Blerd Appreciation: Breathe
For most of the Eighties, the popular music that came out of Great Britain was either new wave influenced or it was based on smooth soul music. In the former camp, you had bands like The Human League, Depeche Mode, The Cure and Duran Duran. In the latter camp, you had bands like Heaven 17, Simply Red, Spandau Ballet, Sade, and one largely unheralded group that scored one of the biggest hits of 1988, Breathe. Breathe formed in England in […]
Stephanie Mills Returns with "Yesterday" Cover, New Album
You always remember your first crush… Mine was Stephanie Mills. I was 3 when “What’cha Gonna Do with My Lovin’” came out back in ’79. “Sweet Sensation” came out the year after, and I was smitten. There was something about the voice and the attitude that caught my interest. Granted, you can’t have much of a crush when you’re a toddler, but I wanted the little lady with the big voice to be my pretend girlfriend. We could sit around […]
Blerd Appreciation: Georgio
You remember Georgio? Of course not. Even if you were listening to R&B or dance music in the late Eighties, this guy was probably the blippiest of blips on your radar screen. Nevertheless, I’m here to give the guy some long-belated props. For what, you might ask? Well, for a brief moment, this dude released some of the pumpin’est dance music of the day. I was way too young to get into clubs at that point, but I was blessed […]
R.I.P. Lena Horne
There are very few living ties to the older era of black entertainment-a time when our people struggled for respect and equal pay instead of getting locked up every three days and degrading ourselves with lyrical filth. We just lost one of those ties with the passing of Miss Lena Horne at the age of 92. She was an actress, a singer and an activist, boldly jeopardizing the advancement of her career in order to bring attention to the political […]