All the Good Times I’ve Been Misusin’

The Wonder Band “Whole Lotta Love” – This is the A-side of Stairway to Love (Atco, 1979); the B-side is a whole lotta “Stairway.” It’s about as disco as Nazareth’s Expect No Mercy or Ram Jam’s “Black Betty,” which is to say there’s plenty of trouser-cuke buttrock boogie and poly-pantsuit-wedgie boogie in each. This would still get a teenager pantsed in most American high schools, but even with a Love Boat beat and some fem-vox behind it you can’t get more Neanderthal-jock than asserting you’re gonna give a girl every inch of your love.

Thelma Houston “96 Tears” – I haven’t heard Aretha Franklin’s version of the ? and the Mysterians cover-band stalwart, but I love her early-‘80s bubblegospel take on “What a Fool Believes”. Thelma’s “96 Tears” eats at the same table, but forsakes some of Aretha’s multi-voiced camaraderie and party-jam looseness for the dinky artifice of low-budget fuzo-disco circa 1981. She doesn’t have a lot of momentum for her voice to ride on here; the song unpacks at a relaxed midtempo and not much happens. The real money is the lyrics. All good soul girls have schadenfreude and instant karma in their library of stock emotions, and Thelma, world-class pro that she is, works it. (Click here to buy the Aretha album. The other two records are currently out of print.)



(Jody Beth Rosen is the author of Freezing To Death In The Nuclear Bunker and is the editor of Southside Callbox, which is currently on hiatus.)