Monday, March 11, 2024: It's SUNSHINE WEEK on CSOTD!

 

If you live in the Great Ol' Unites States Of America (excluding Hawai'i and most of Arizona), then you lost an entire hour of sleep on Sunday. 

That would be because of Daylight Saving Time.

From Wikipedia, "Daylight saving time (DST), also referred to as daylight savings time, daylight time (United States, Canada, and Australia), or summer time (United Kingdom, European Union, and others), is the practice of advancing clocks to make better use of the longer daylight available during summer, so that darkness falls at a later clock time. The typical implementation of DST is to set clocks forward by one hour in spring or late winter, and to set clocks back by one hour to standard time in the autumn, (or fall North American English). Hence the mnemonic: "spring forward and fall back".

This gives me an excuse to bring back one of my favorite features of CSOTD, the THEME WEEK!  It's where I choose some kind of theme, or uniting idea, and choose a whole week of cool songs around that theme or idea.  For example, CALIFORNIA WEEK was one of my favorite weeks ever.

And what's cooler than THE SUN?

I mean, well, you know what I mean. 

With their first hit single, and winner of the "World's Greatest Earworm" award, let's let Katrina and The Waves kick of this tribute to everything solar.

It's also a great way to kick off your Monday Morning Mix Tape!

Friday, October 15, 2010: The Fifth Dimension - California Soul

When you think of California, a lot of things jump to mind. Soul music, unfortunately, is not near the top of that list.

And that's a shame, because California has made some tremendous contributions to Soul Music; Tower of Power, Santana, Sly and The Family Stone and Shuggie Otis, just to name a few.  It's about time that inequality is addressed, and CSOTD is right on doing it!

Originally written by Ashford & Simpson, covered by Marlena Shaw, and later as a duet by Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell, California Soul is one of those rare songs from the late 60's that successfully combines elements of soul, pop, and hippy-dippy peace and love without watering down the message or pumping up the cheese factor. The relatively understated mix between the vocals, strings and that outstanding horn section helps a lot.

The 2008 remix of Marlena Shaw's California Soul by Philadelphia-based Producer and DJ Diplo, was a hit in Fashion Week this year, and I was very tempted to make that the official CSOTD selection.

In the end, however, I just can't get over those angelic 5th Dimension harmonies.  When they kick in singing the "California Soul" chorus, it just feels like the sky will rip open and peace, love, joy and good grooves will rain from the sky.

I dig California Soul, this truly is a great, great record.