Straight outta 2008, via 1968, here's some old school Psychedelic Soul from Berlin-based (via Quebec, Canada) garage rock band King Khan and the Shrines.
This is proper Friday cool. Not torture. Trust me, the Jacksons know about proper Torture.
But why? What is the purpose of music? Especially when it's everywhere?
And I mean everywhere. Remember when it was just in elevators? Now whole shopping districts have loudspeakers pumping out tunes for the masses.
Seems to me like music is a means to an end, rather than and end unto itself.
Today, music, even more than being a commodity in and of itself, is mostly used to push other commodities. Products, sure, but people as well. The curse of "branding".
For me, music should transcend the normal, and transport the listener into something other. Not even "higher", whatever that means, but just other. Takes the listener to a place other than where they are. Whether telling a story, making a statement, or just evoking a mood.
It sill looks strange. Having being born in 1968 and graduated High School in 1986, the very idea of 2011 still seems distant and vaguely trippy.
Remember the film Back To The Future II? Doc Brown and Marty McFly travel 30 years into the future (30 years!) to 2015. Guess what...that's now less than four years away.
And we still don't have flying cars. Or Hover Boards.
In fact, the future is looking less and less like what we were told it was going to be.
I believe the internet is the greatest development in human achievement since the printing press. Past that, though, there seems very little to shout about.
However, maybe that's not a totally bad thing. At least we know there are things we can see within human behaviour that are fairly constant: People will still be greedy and selfish, the pure and the honest will continue to get the shaft, The Dodgers will continue to screw up any chances to ever get back into the World Series, and we will always need smooth love songs to make a Saturday night magical.
And, hopefully, from here until the sun turns to dust and humans leave this frail orb for the vast glories of space (and time?) travel, people will always know that Chaka Khan is supremely cool.
