Boz Scaggs - C/D?

The rest of Silk Degrees? Not so good.

Search especially the Silk Degrees version of later-to-be-Anne-Murray's-signature-number "We're All Alone": the original is DEVASTATING

x-post: thank you Robin!

and who could resist this man?
http://image.allmusic.com/00/amg/cov200/drd800/d809/d80945w84g6.jpg

hearing 'jojo' or
'lido' on the stereo
makes me jump around

he might, i know it was sold relatively recently (and the booking has been really bad of late).

And let's not forget the fact that he's had some kick-ass records since the early '90s...catchy songs that defy easy categorization, and the man sounds better than ever. But Beautiful, Some Change, Come On Home...and let's not forget one of the best production jobs in the 00's (especially on the DVD-Audio version) in Dig.

And Porcaro's drumline on "Lowdown" still kills me after all these years...just like his intro to "Rock With You." But this isn't a Porcaro thread, is it?

It's all about "Loan Me A Dime". Classic

(Who I wonder who) taught her how to talk like that
(Who I wonder who) gave her that big idea

Nothing you can't handle nothing you ain't got
Put the money on the table and drive it off the lot
Turn on that ole lovelight and turn a maybe to a yes
Same old schoolboy game got you into this mess
Hey son better get back to town
Face the sad old truth the dirty lowdown

(Who I wonder who) put those ideas in your head
(Who I wonder who) yeah
Come on back down little son
Dig the low low low low lowdown

You ain't got to be so bad got to be so cold
This dog eat dog existence sure is getting old
Got to have a Jones for this Jones for that
This running with the Joneses boy
Just ain't where it's at
You gonna come back around
To the sad sad truth the dirty lowdown

(Who I wonder who) got you thinking like that boy
(Who I wonder who)
(Who I wonder who said who I wonder who)
Oh look out for that lowdown
That dirty dirty dirty dirty lowdown
(Who I wonder who ohh ohh)
Got you thinking like that

So...Silk Degrees vs the 1980 Hits? Quick!

well, I'd guess that Hits would be the one for you Alfred, just from what I know about your kinda radical pop-ism - you're not much of an album-as-form dude are ye? 'cause Silk Degrees is very much in the album/auteur mode - the sequence is immaculate, the transitions weightless, the flow from start to finish as smooth as ghee. It is one of my ten favorite albums of all time.

Hits:
1) has an appalling cover vs. SD's completely bitchin' & iconic cover, but
2) has "you make it so hard to say no," which is one of my favorite boz tunes, but
3) is otherwise kinda weird - where's the stuff from Down Two, which you're also gonna need?

I say Silk Degrees but you and I disagree so often that you might accordingly wanna zag here

Silk Degrees all the way. I was just playing it yesterday. Among all the great stuff mentioned above, there's also a couple of curves, including the almighty blues-rockin' "Jump Street." Hits! always felt a little half-assed to me, particularly in comparison.

well, I'd guess that Hits would be the one for you Alfred, just from what I know about your kinda radical pop-ism - you're not much of an album-as-form dude are ye

Gee, that couldn't be more wrong! I had no idea I created tha timpression. "Radical popism" and "album-as-form" (which I do believe in) are not binarities!

Speaking of disagreeing...we can't arguge about how bitchin' Boz looks in a pink blazer, no?

It's all about "Loan Me A Dime". Classic

Incredibly accurate statement.

there was some amazing stuff on the set he put out last year, too, although the re-recorded "Lowdown" was quite poor

I'd listen to Boz sing anything though really, dude has one of the all-time great rock voices & killer phrasing

Reminds me of Van Morrison, without the listen-to-the-lion mannerisms.

anyone ever heard that first ultra-rare folkie album he made which only came out in Sweden??

he & Morrison have comparably excellent pitch, yes

"wunn moe tahm, gonna get it…wunn fo' the rohh-hoe-oh-oh-oh-ode…"

"LIDO…WHOA OH OH OH OH-oh…"

awesome keyb arpeggios floow…

"Dime a Dance Romance" off Steve Miller's "Sailor" was Scaggs, I think, and is a great song.

Total C and Silk Degrees over Hits. I've been listening to Silk Degrees, Some Change, and Come on Home off and on for two weeks.

Has SIlk Degrees had the remaster treatment lately?

A couple of years ago.

<i>Has SIlk Degrees had the remaster treatment lately?</i>

Also, Hits, last year. Black and white houndstooth blazer instead of pink :(

Black and white houndstooth blazer instead of pink

in a just world there'd be rioting in the streets over this kind of shit

I have to thank this thread and a coworker of mine for making me figure out he was the guy singing "Lido Shuffle" (and what the song itself was called) -- a mystery I rank on the level of figuring out that the one song was called "Baker Street" and was sung by Gerry Rafferty.

can I saw how great "Harbor Lights" is? Thanks.

oh HELL yes

I never did buy Silk Degrees, John: I chose the updated Hits instead, which has got his not-so-good '88 Top 40 single. I shouldn't have been so shocked that apart from the singles I knew the guy is some kind of near genius.

I can't listen to Danny Wilson again either.

there is no better amusement park song than "Lowdown"...

if all you ever did in your entire life was the 3:57 featured in this youtube clip, your classic status would be unimpeachable:

check out j. porcaro. he's probably like 20 in this.

Yes, this is an absolute classic. Love Boz's dance as he comes out on stage - folks had much better moves way back when. Also, love the reveal of the orchestra. When was the last time a band unveiled a funky orchestra in such a dramatic fashion?

note: that's new year's eve, oakland 1976. kind of the perfect storm of awesome, that show.

haha this:

nice build up. ends with what appears to be the same NYE show from above.

"Jojo"

TS: Scaggs vs. Fagen

John D's and others comments have made me resolve to pick up the two albums I constantly see by him in the used record shop down the road.

"Silk Degrees" and the other one with the white cover with the photo in the middle... 1 euro each..

I have to thank this thread and a coworker of mine for making me figure out he was the guy singing "Lido Shuffle" (and what the song itself was called) -- a mystery I rank on the level of figuring out that the one song was called "Baker Street" and was sung by Gerry Rafferty.

― Ned Raggett, Wednesday, June 13, 2007 12:52 PM Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Ha, I went through the same process right around the same time! Was one of those "what the hell IS that" for the longest time, because, I mean, who would guess to google "Lido" and not, y'know "Leo" or "Woah oh"?

Song never fails to put me in a good mood though.

Did Warren G. sample "Jojo" in one of his tracks?

the other one with the white cover with the photo in the middle

Is it Slow Dancer or Down Two Then Left? Slow Dancer's good-not-great (opening track fantastic though and more gems throughout) but Down Two is nearly as good as Silk Degrees.

"What Do You Want The Girl To Do!!!

Thanks so much, John.

It's this one which looks like Down Two Then Left..

http://img.mp3fiesta.com/covers/12/12417/alb_65400_big.jpg

Thanks John.. Will go find these two tomorrow..

Great sleeve design - which is what actually attracted me to the record in the first place..

Those two new years clips are fucking awesome. What a shit hot band Boz had.

holy shit, the live tracks on the Silk Degrees reissue smoke.

I think I'll need to get that Silk Degrees reish after having seen those live clips. It's funny, I've been meaning to pick it up on vinyl for years (rare is the used bin that has no copy), but recently chanced on the two cd anthology from '97 at an antique shop for a few bucks. It has like 2/3s of SD on it already, so my quest ended. I'd unintentionally known "We're All Alone" for years via the Rita Coolidge cover, but never linked it as the same song Boz did (and wrote). I've got the early albums on vinyl. The first few Columbia ones weren't out long on cd in the states.

gah i need to upgrade my silk degrees vinyl.. i should at least trade in my cd for the new remaster; i've heard the sound and liner notes are really top notch.

that 2cd anthology you mention is really the shit; i don't think it's available anymore, which is a shame.

his new album is a diana krall type jazz standards snoozer.. he pulls it off, i'll give him that.

I have to thank this thread and a coworker of mine for making me figure out he was the guy singing "Lido Shuffle" (and what the song itself was called) -- a mystery I rank on the level of figuring out that the one song was called "Baker Street" and was sung by Gerry Rafferty.

― Ned Raggett, Wednesday, June 13, 2007 12:52 PM Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Ha, I went through the same process right around the same time! Was one of those "what the hell IS that" for the longest time, because, I mean, who would guess to google "Lido" and not, y'know "Leo" or "Woah oh"?

Song never fails to put me in a good mood though.

― Doctor Casino, Sunday, November 23, 2008 9:45 AM (2 days ago) Bookmark

I used to sing "whoa-oh-a-ohhhhh" constantly form memmory, but couldn't figure out what it was until recently after hearing it in Ikea and going on a mad google+youtube+wiki hunt.

When I found it was on Silk Degrees, an album I own on vinyl (solely to play Lowdown in clubs), I felt ridiculously dumb.

Have always loved this album cover, but can someone explain to me what's going on? Has he gotten over his shyness (on the front sleeve) to join (on the back) the woman attached to that hand?

I've been working on trying to play the shuffle beat from "Lido Shuffle" these last few days. Let me tell ya, it's a bitch!

recently picked up his second or third album - "Moments" - from 71. could easily fit in the west coast post-country/folk thread or even the balearic beach cannon thread. pretty nice.

Got Middle Man (home of "Jojo" and "Breakdown Dead Ahead") this afternoon.

Another iconic cover:

http://img.snowrecords.com/lp/4/36764.jpg

"Look What You Done To Me" = supermarket fare for the ages

Nice guy, btw

I assumed he was a reggae artist for ages based on his name.

Harbor Lights is killing me

but seriously, I cannot stop listening to Silk Degrees.

It is perfect. It slays me every time.

His writing is great too, deceptively simple and giving you whole story arcs in a song, like Georgia...and even the phrasing, nothing seems crammed in, everything hangs together so, 'right'... He seems kind of underrated in that department.

I think he's underrated there because his writing is sometimes pretty bad, too - one misstep counts against you hard on that front, and he gets clunkers. Xgau can't stand Boz lyrically.

in 2003 i loved boz, in 2011 i still love the boz.

Silk Degrees is outright unfuckwithable. I really like Down Two Then Left too; it's not completely impeccable like Silk Degrees, but the good songs are insanely awesome ("Still Falling For You"!).

How is the first album? Duane Allman + Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section sounds pretty kickass on paper...

thank you so much, aero

man it is such a pleasure! discovering Silk Degrees in my late twenties was a HUGE revelation to me - it feels like it maps out a whole geography of emotional territory that's if not alien to pop, usually tangential to it, and just makes it the focus. and then "we're all alone" takes grown-up longing & regret and just blows it up widescreen. top 5 album for me!

I heard Rita Coolidge's version of "We're All Alone" a few days ago at the market, actually.

I love how "We're All Alone" just verges on treacle yet doesn't place a foot wrong.

total tightwire act! I think "no need to bother now" is so devastating that it sort of shores up space against any other directions the other phrases tend toward

Boz' first album is good but it didn't really grab me the way his later stuff did. the must-haves IMO are Silk Degrees, Down Two Then Left, My Time, and Slow Dancer, then a few outlier songs (Jojo!)

The wife and I are fierce Silk Degrees converts for two or three years now... I'm another one who tips my hat to aero a little whenever I kick back with this perfect beast.

I think it was the Lido Shuffle that set me off in search of Silk Degrees, but yeah aero definitely set me straight on its unfuckwithableness

Middle Man is excellent when he isn't shouting over power chords.

Xgau can't stand Boz lyrically.

^ I always was curious as to why I liked Boz Scaggs so much, now I know.

He likes SD a lot though:

Silk Degrees [Columbia, 1976]
Scaggs is criticized for his detachment, but I say it's subtlety and I say thank god for it. In the past, he's sometimes bought (not to mention sold) his own lushness, but this collection is cooled by droll undercurrents--white soul with a sense of humor that isn't consumed in self-parody. Inspirational Verse: "Gotta have a jones for this/Jones for that/This runnin' with the joneses, boy/Just ain't where it's at." A-

I see the A minus, but I have no fucking clue what the rest of it means. what does "In the past, he's sometimes bought (not to mention sold) his own lushness" even mean? I cant for the life me understand what the hell he is talking about there.

I think he's talking about to which degree Boz seems to either be immersed in his schtick or, like Bryan Ferry, both immersed in it & winking (with the listener) at it. Earlier Boz wasn't as many-levels-of-persona as SD.

Btw, genuinely nice dude.

"Isn't It Time" -- A++

"baby's calling me home" on the first Steve Miller Band album is great.

Dunno where I should rep for "(Your Love Has Lifted Me) Higher."

The live bonus tracks on the end of the Silk Degrees reissue are INSANE.

WHAT CAN I SAY

I gotta say, as perfect as Silk Degrees is, I listen to Middle Man more often. It reminds me of Roxy Music's "True to Life" or Pet Shop Boys' Please -- recordings about men in the city on the prowl, looking for kicks.

That one in particular is a bit heavier than the album version--and things always sound better sped up just a hair live. it really f-in' MOVES

xp Really? That sounds great, Alfred. Gonna try that!

Occasionally the effort to RAWK strains his vocal chords but otherwise MM is the L.A. sound at its apogee.

I'll even rep for Other Roads. I just love the hell outta Boz Scaggs.

This song is perfect. That string solo in the middle:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hO26sQ5UkiU

yeah he could get lulled by the waterbed lushness early on, but then again he could do this, which I once blogged about:
"Somebody load me a dime/So I can call my old-time/Used-to-be." Right, so Boz Scaggs sings Lowell Fulson's "Loan Me A Dime," while rising and falling in the well-fed bosom of blues orchestration. This is from the late 60s, more or less the same era as what I (with little exposure) regarded as the fat times of his fulsome Marin County homegrown elevator easy listening hippie make-out music (as I may have previously described it in terminalzine prose). But as this song begins, his almost halting eloquence always accosts me, has me floating on the sidewalk several minutes later, when Duane Allman shows up, and the whole squadron strides forth, from the pathos of the blues into its boldness, with no disturbance of the (say it) vibe. Somebody loans him a dime, he knows now he can fix things up with his baby, or maybe he buys a cup of coffee (then also a dime, in some quarters). Anyway, he's energized, but not overstating his case, at least not before the phone call, or whatever the next pitch might be. No big resolution of the story arc, but he's resolved, and going somewhere.

middle man kicks. listened to it a lot while writing a big stupid thing about how sad "we're all alone" is

i heard "what can i say" in the wild recently and man it just purely rules

What does John Darnelle mean when he says upthread, "As far as I'm concerned Silk Degrees is the Loveless of its day" ? (I've never heard Loveless)

a classic album that you can play over and over and always find something new in the experience? an album that seems, on the surface, to be similar to many other things, but for which in reality there is no substitute? i don't know. this was the only LP of my mom's that i didn't "get" as a kid (~8-10 years old, when we still had the turntable set up) ... i would play beatles, springsteen, bee gees, elton john etc. to death but this album seemed too adult for my sensibilities. the result of this is that as an adult, the album retains a certain sophisticated glamor. i think 2013 is the year to re-listen to it because a lot of these smooth rock sounds are coming back, or have started to come back over the past few years.

(my last post in response to iago)

they've BEEN back.

but welcome! And play "We're All Alone" and "Harbor Lights" loudly.

right on. do you like destroyer's album Kaputt, alfred? that was the album that made me look again at smooth rock '70s stuff.

Yep.

one of my favorite albums of all time. perfect in almost every way except, as Xgau likes to harp on, sometimes the lyrics are lazy as hell.

/It's all about "Loan Me A Dime". Classic/

Incredibly accurate statement.

one more for the road

two years ago i had a really rewarding experience just listening to "we're all alone" on repeat and trying to pull together a piece about it. no idea how i feel about that piece at this point but it was about three days of deep, meditative, mentally engaging work that of course i wouldn't have experienced without the stark landscape of that song

I'm really itching to whip out a version of Lido Shuffle next time I go to a karaoke bar

Brad! Can you post it?

please post!!

http://oneweekoneband.tumblr.com/post/14984902531/boz-scaggs-were-all-alone-final-track-from

should mention that the penultimate revelation in that piece about boz missing from the back cover art is indebted and deployed similarly to how aero described it in a video from a few years ago, which convinced me to buy the record

that's a terrific read, Brad.

thank you!

yeah great stuff, thank you so much for sharing!

anyone heard A Fool to Care?

it's pretty good!

the "full of fire" cover especially

he's been solid for a while though. Check this out:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EaQ8H729kBE

it's good, not as good as Fade Into Light though which had some utterly breathtaking classics on it

gotta say though this album is hitting the spot tonight, thanks for waking up the thread Alfred

my older son wanted me to play my LP of Other Roads, which I didn't remember as being too terrific, but wow -- really solid. wasn't ready for it when I bought it back around '98/'99. first song has a Jim Carrol cowrite credit, but it's the third song's credits that gave me a big smile: a Bobby Caldwell cowrite!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0OMzKGYLpo

the other bobby caldwell cowrite on this album:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQT3rb7h8JY

my jam:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hO26sQ5UkiU

Simone is sweet, it popped up on my spotify playlist last night

that Paich synthscape in the middle is a thing of beauty

His new album is really nice

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hmj6khcLM2Y

https://i.pinimg.com/736x/3a/81/53/3a8153d87e29d1cbc47df95598a08a23--suitcases-new-girl.jpg

reminds me of molly shannon on seinfeld. "what's wrong with her arms? they just hang like salamis."

I've never heard anyone say that about Boz Scaggs before

apparently Boz can't lift his hands above his shoulders, though sometimes he tries

https://i.pinimg.com/736x/60/dc/25/60dc253d55149627e083f0cda404eb96--music-music-music-lyrics.jpg

The shoulder pads in the suit he wore on the cover of Hits probably fucked him up.

Nice song, that new one!

even if he sucked -- which he very much doesn't -- his name is boz scaggs

Is it short for Boris?

William Royce

boz scaggs

respect

What do you need? These songs.

Nice! I liked a few recent ones, can’t remember what Xgau said.

boz scaggs

one of my hobbyhorses is that his 2004-ish iirc Fade Into Light is massively underrated, esp.the title song, one of his best.

_boz scaggs_

how do we feel about some change? i think it’s rather good. good tunes, diverse sounds, his voice sounds really cool. thumbs up. “sierra” has gotta be up there with the top boz ballads.

Prob somewhere upthread, but I was always pretty taken with this, esp. the shift (which galvanizes but doesn't bust the vibe), when Duane Allman eventually shows up (spoiler)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGGvlTXGERA

Some have wings and others sing
The rest do lazy ballets in the air

Boz rocks!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8R19JVuwmQ

Boz’s 2025 Rhythm Review Tour will feature one of the most comprehensive setlists ever and a super lineup of many of his favorite sidemen. On any given night they’ll be playing songs from Boz’s 1969 album from MuscleShoals that included “I’ll Be Long Gone” and “Loan Me a Dime” to a couple of pieces from a new album, “Detour.” Silk Degrees” will be well represented along with a broad scope of the signature blues, R&B, rock and roll and jazzy interludes that define Boz’s unique style.

The musicians include Willie Weeks on bass, Jon Herington on guitar, Jamison Ross on drums, Michael Logan on keyboards, Eric Crystal on reeds and everything else, and Branlie Mejías on percussion. It’s a rare section you won’t want to miss performing many highlights of a repertoire spanning the breadth and width of an amazing musical career- a swinging Rhythm Review.

Is this unusual for Scaggs?

can't speak to whether the lineup is unusual (Weeks is great), but the setlist does not actually seem that diff from what he's been doing for a while.