Ain't No Cure For The Summertime Blues?

Yellowman: Nobody Move Nobody Get Hurt
from Nobody Move Nobody Get Hurt (Shanachie 1984)

Marcia Griffiths: Play Me
from Sweet Bitter Love (Trojan Records 1974) also on Put a Little Love in Your Heart: The Best of Marcia Griffiths 1969-1974 (Trojan Reocrds 2001)


I don't think I'll ever get used to summer. Everything from the hot, humid and restless nights to the way the sweat makes the clothes stick to your body irritates me and makes me cranky and lazy. It's one of the reasons the updates to Filthy Choice have been sporadic lately, that and the fact that in order to beat the heat, I avoid staying inside the house for too long which keeps me away from accessing the computer and my music. During one of my crankier moments I was spinning Yellowman's Nobody Move and I gained an appreciation for it that I didn't have when listening to it in a mellower mood.

Nobody Move Nobody Get Hurt is the kind of song that can even make a cantankerous person smile. Toasting about a big middle finger to the military authority of Jamaica over a True True riddim, Yellowman rocks the song with it's thick Roots Radics bassline and heavy reverb intro courtesy of dub wizard Scientist. The life of Yellowman as a whole is like a loud "Fuck You" to the forces that would hold a person down. Living with the stigma of albinism in Jamaica (where it's looked at superstitiously as a curse) he shamelessly turned his albino features into a self-assured gimmick and won accolades and derision for his slack toasting. Later he would battle both throat and skin cancer and still go on to record songs. Of course for Hip-Hop fans the song is easily (no pun intended) recognizable from the Eazy-E song Nobody Move or from the derivative Nobody Move by Poor Righteous Teachers. If you're like me and get testy whenever the heat begins to weigh down on you and there's no relief in site, bust out this song and know that you're not alone.

Of course summer isn't all about repressive heat. Sometimes the ills of the dog days can be offset by the right, fleetingly serendipitous moment like those times when a breeze blows by and cools the beads of sweat that form on the back of your neck or when a song silently creeps out of nowhere to bring a smile to your face. Play Me by Marcia Griffiths is one of those songs. A remake of the Neil Diamond classic, this song works in a way that the original only hinted at. Neil's version is weighed down by the heavy handedness of it's melancholy rhythm and the reputation that comes with the image of an hirsute, open-shirted, mutton sideburned 70's pop star, everything that Marcia isn't. Gone is the steady, unwavering voice, and studio slick acoustics that lent itself well to the poetry-aspiring lyrics. They've now been replaced with the unsure warbling of Marcia's rendition. Her version lacks the confidence of Neil's which is actually an asset as it adds gravitas and honesty to the first verse and conveys a true sense of surprise that the lyric requires. This version is the equivalent of that cool breeze on a hot summer day, it's always welcome and it makes the intolerable that much more bearable.

The sad thing about all my griping is that I live in San Diego where the temperature is constantly in the mid 70's and anytime it gets over 85 degrees, the heat becomes intolerable for me. Compared to more uncomfortable locations where overbearing heat and humidity are a constant, I sound like a whining pussy, but hey if there wasn't anywhere to whine or anything to complain about the Blog community would never have come into existence.