Tuesday, October 26, 2010

AARON NEVILLE - Tell It Like It Is / Why Worry - Parlo-101 - 1967

I had the great misfortune of renting Pirate Radio this week, primarily on the strength of it's soundtrack and it's trailer (better than the feature.) I have no delusions of being a film critic, but goddamn what a sack of shit. I have to assume they spent the bulk of their budget on Philip Seymour Hoffman and licensing for the songs (which were all pretty great) and couldn't afford to hire anyone to write a decent, or even coherent, screenplay. It sucked in a very serious way. As I mentioned, the soundtrack is excellent, but the official release left off some key tracks. Most notably absent is Aaron Neville's 'Tell It Like It Is.'

I grew up relating the man's name to warm 101.3 (Rochester's soft rock radio station) and commercials for cotton, which didn't inspire much confidence when I saw this single in a thrift store, but in the spirit of binge-buying and shit-collecting, I bought it.

I guess 'Tell It Like It Is' was quite a major hit in '67, but I wasn't around for that and was therefore unaware. I dropped the needle on 'Why Worry' first and pretty thoroughly neglected listening to the A-side for ages. These things happen when you buy too many records to digest at once. As it turns out, both sides are top notch.

On a side note; Am I the only one who thinks it's strange when there's commercials for naturally occurring things like cotton?


Tell It Like It Is



Why Worry