I recognise the points made upthread about the direction in which this took the Commodores’ and Lionel Richie’s career a few years after the splendidly spicy “Machine Gun”, but taken in isolation this is a lovely piece of work. It makes a virtue of its simplicity, and sometimes that’s the hardest thing to do. No unnecessary frills, no excessive yelping, no overdose of slush. Beautifully simple and simply beautiful. A bit like one we’re coming to in three summers’ time which is the artist’s simplest and for me his best. More anon.

RIP big man.

RIP

For me, this was a landmark record. I had left school and having been cruelly prevented from taking my appointed place in higher education by the slight matter of acquiring a talent for failing significant exams, I entered the world of work as a tragic little office boy in the Ministry of Defence in Whitehall, where my immediate superior was the absolute spit of Mrs Slocombe from “Are You Being Served?”. She spent all day wandering around with a fag hanging out of her mouth, continually (and I mean CONTINUALLY) humming the refrain from “Peter and the Wolf”. I have cursed Prokofiev ever since. Despite being a pitiful, snivelling, uber-nervous, low-down, amoeba-like, unclubbable, insignificant, entirely dispensable, sad, unwanted, virginal, teenaged piece of flushable shit, my duties actually involved me handling documents of alarmingly high classification, being seconded as I was to an office serving the Assistant Chief of the RAF. This put the fear of Christ in me, quite frankly, and I never understood how it came about that I should have such easy access to Secret and Confidential papers on things like the Tornado F2 and Cruise Missiles at a time when the world was still very twitchy to say the least and I was all of seventeen with the confidence of a dead stoat.

Whilst all this shit this was going on, “Three Times a Lady” was number one and for this reason alone it remains special to me. It was to become the standard slow song played last at discos, providing the opportunity for lads to try to pull the girl they had been eyeing up all evening. It was in addition a nice, sincere and well-constructed love song and stays well clear of the syrupy line, the overstepping of which necessitates a request to Alice to pass the sick bag. This was very much a boy to man record for me, although the Waldo kirsche was to remain intact for another year.

Happy Days!

Reasons by Earth Wind and Fire (preferred the studio to the live version)
Sweet Thing - Rufus and Chaka Kahn -absolutely heartbreakingly beautiful
You’re Still a Young Man, Tower of Power
“Firefly” by some obscure, late version of the Temptations was nice. Not special, I guess…
oh, and there was something great by the Isley Brothers… what was it…? From Fight the Power or the album after that. “Harvest For the World,” maybe, if that counts as ballad.

The Commodores arc was more or less like Kool and the Gang’s, although “Jungle Boogie,” and “Hollywood Swingin’” don’t actually hold up all that well, I’ve found, they’re better than the lite-brite pop they had big hits with later. What was it, “lady’s night?”

are you thinking of Heinlein’s All You Zombies where the protagonist turns out to be his own father AND MOTHER

got no problem with this song at all. it’s uncomplex and direct, and, if you like gloopy. as if gloopy is a bad thing. more like a 6 from me.

You mean they’re all the same person? Funky!

the key 70s element is the use of airbrush-as-medium to get the metallic feel

(i straight away thought BOSTON, though it is strictly speaking on a flying object usually — ditto osibisa)

I can’t imagine Lionel came up with it.

“Can’t we have a rose, instead?” he (probably) simpered.

To a five year old anyway.