For as long as I’ve lived at my current spot I’ve lacked any real storage system for my records. I’ve been content keeping them in stacks and piles, leaning up against what little furnishing I have in my bedroom, or crammed into, onto and in-between make-shift shelving comprised of milk-crates and such. Well, if not content then too thrifty to shell out money for proper shelving, and not very concerned with the “energy flow” of my living space.
My care-free attitude about this over-abundance of untidily stored records is not however shared by the female cohabitating with me of late. She’s often made the suggestion that I visit a store and buy some shelves. She’s also made a habit of subtly rearranging my stacks of records, replacing outward-facing album jackets she finds disturbing for some reason with ones she deems more aesthetically pleasing. This recently resulted in MFSB, The Gamble-Huff Orchestra, a 1978 LP from Philadelphia International’s in-house symphony MFSB, making an appearance at the front of a pile of wax in my living room.
I’ve been staring at the album’s cover for most of the week now but was struck by the thought that it’s a subtly sexy image only this morning. I own a lot of albums with naked or half-naked women (some of them doused in liquid of one sort or another) on them. This isn’t such an obviously sexual visual as all that though. Its sexiness isn’t about what you’re seeing at all, but what you’re not seeing. Sure, anything could be going on outside the camera frame. But that means anything could be going on outside the camera frame… If you know what I’m sayin’? Then again, I might just be a pervert.
Setting aside my ribald imaginations I decided it’d probably be a good idea if I took the album, an admittedly infrequent visitor to my turntable, out of it’s possibly provocative sleeve and gave it a spin or three. I wasn’t at all surprised by what I heard; slick, symphonic Disco with a soft edge and a polished shine that underscores both the class and sophistication of MFSB as the preeminent Disco orchestra of the era and the then-imminent commercial collapse of the Disco genre under the weight of it’s own sparkly-sequined, gold-lamé, candy-coating.
Like I said, the songs on MFSB, The Gamble-Huff Orchestra are slick. Sometimes a little too slick. But when done right they come off like a cross between Mizell-era Blue Note, the smoother side of the CTI/Kudu catalog, the cinematic cosmopolitan Funk of guys like Isaac Hayes & Willie Hutch, and Philharmonic Classical. The synth-n-strings strutter “Dance With Me Tonight,” the diaphanous mirror-ball twirl “To Be In Love,” the tough-guy take on pre-Yacht-Rock soulful-Pop “Let’s Party Down,” the pretty-but-menacing “Redwood Beach,” and the Blaxploitation-soundtrack-ready “Is It Something I Said” for example all have their moments.
Some other moments however cop a more generic mood that verges on muzak, canned TV tunes, and “Smooth-Jazz,” which play up the weaknesses of late-era Disco.
- El Keter