uHollywood

You had to be in a coma while growing up in the 70′s and not know “Kool and the Gang”. They had something just a Littledifferent. Like the secret spices your grandmother would put on a wonderful dish, Kool and the Gang took what was happening in music at the time and, well, funked us out, man!

Listen to them again. You can hear the influences they latched on to; James Brown’s, end-o-the-beat funk, and hidden somewhere underneath that, if you listen really well, you find a Miles Davis from the back ally sort of scene. These guys weren’t just a bunch of thugs, taking music someone else laid down and using it to make a few bucks by laying clever rhymes over the top of it. They were, and are, the real deal.

When I hear “Jungle Boogie”, I can still remember the first time I heard it, and what I was doing at the time-and with who! It’s like that, you see, these guys leave an impression like a shovel to the head: you don’t forget it. “Funky Man”, “Funky Stuff”, “Hollywood Swinging” and “Let the Music Take Your Mind”, were the hot stuff of high school proms and parties. Put one on and everyone started bouncing, even those of us that were white, as if we were on one of the round dance platforms under the lights of Soul Train!

Of course, as Disco, that dreaded machine that put so many musicians out of work with a mechanical beat box and all that repetitive drivel came into form, Kool and the Gang were right there mixing it up as well. Even the most die hard Disco haters (yours truly included) has to admit that Ladies Night, and Get Down On It were great songs.

Let’s face it: These guys were icons of The Day; Old School in ever sense, but still as prevalentThis day as they were thirty years ago.