Africa, "Paint It, Black"

Yesterday's post, I mentioned listenting to the Aquarium Drunkard show on the satellite radio as I was driving back home from Raleigh. Folks, they were on a roll; in the time I was listening, there were at least two, not one, two funk/soul covers of British white boy music that reached down the song's throats, fumbled 'round a bit and then came back up with fistfuls of something nobody else knew the tunes had swallowed. This is a thing apparently. I hope I'm not bruising toes mentioning ethnic dimensions here, by the way; this is always awkward to me because while music reflects the cultural and social experiences of the musicians, always, the music itself is something that exists in this whole other space where that shit basically doesn't matter. Consider it some sort of koan or something, that culture is inseparable from music and irrelevant to it, all at once. Oh hell, this is all another reason writing about music is like dancing about--you know the rest; a lot of what you could possibly say about a song doesn't mean a damn thing and the art speaks for itself, so you should be listening to the damn song if you aren't already.


A sort of postscript: poking around a bit to find out what I could about the band responsible for this brought up this interesting entry on the album on the blog Record Fiend. Apparently Africa was something of a supergroup, though this appears to be the only album they recorded. Check out the post, anyway; interesting stuff.