JNez@thirtydaes.2010

boy do i remember this day. in fact, i’ve been waiting all summer for today, september 7 2010…it’s been 25 years (!) since i took a tumble from one of our backyard trees and fractured my right wrist in two places.

oh the pain! but not at first. see one of my buds and i were playing daredevil and swinging from branch to branch on the trees in the backyard of our home court. i’m an army brat so part of my youth was spent on an army base: fort bragg, north carolina. in september 1985 i was 12 years old and entering 8th grade at albritton middle school. i was excited because this was a brand new school on the base: everyone wanted to go there but since it was zoned by address, everyone from my previous middle school wouldn’t be going. still, everyone in my neighborhood was going and we were all so stoked!

anyway…so my best friend…dan. daniel hubbard. he was a white boy lol who was down with the black kids in our court. actually, everyone got along. lol we had asians, blacks & caucasians from all over the states living on the army base. we all played together with absolutely no issues.

so yeah, it’s a saturday…early evening around 7 or so. dan and i were the only ones from our crew hanging out that particular time for some reason…we were bored and decided to play tarzan. we had swung and jumped from several branches in this tree already so we were fearless.

it was my turn…dan had already propelled himself nearly a foot ahead to the next branch and waited for me to catch up. i swung from the branch he’d just left on and prepared my body to swing to the next branch by catching it in mid-air. i’d done it before…

…but somehow i miscalculated and ended up on the ground. it was so immediate i didn’t really understand what had happened until i was picking myself up off the ground looking up into the tree at dan’s aghast expression. ‘dude, look at your arm!’ he shouted. i looked down at my right arm and saw that my wrist was totally misshapen. ‘omg’ i thought. ‘what the hell happened to my arm?’ up until that point i hadn’t felt any pain. but then, all at once, it came.

the agony. i rushed the few feet into the backdoor of my house and greeted my mom with my broken & contorted wrist in my hand. ‘oh my god!’ she echoed. ‘we have to go to the emergency room!’

mom didn’t drive then and dad wasn’t home so dan’s mom ended up driving us to the hospital, womack army hospital emergency room. it was there that they x-rayed & informed me of my broken wrist. i was not prepared for the pain when the doctor had to manipulate my wrist back into alignment before my arm was cast. i thought i was dying. i thought he was killing me…..lol i screamed so loud my mom had to cover her ears all the way down the hall in the waiting room.

it turned out that i needed 3 casts to heal the fracture. the first was an ace bandage wrapped in plaster that stayed on for one week. then on september 13, friday the 13th, i got fitted for a full arm length plaster cast. yep. past the elbow. oh my god it made my arm itch so severely…this was just as bad as the pain from healing! i needed 3 weeks in that cast before my arm was x-rayed again and fitted for a shorter cast. this cast was finally removed on halloween, october 31 1985 and i was pronounced healed.

lol what a peculiar event to remember so vividly, huh? well not necessarily..it was and remains the most traumatic emergency to happen to me. but what i really remember about this is…

…that i learned how to masturbate first with my left hand. lol yep. i was 12 in the fall of 1985 when i discovered self-pleasure & orgasm, quite by accident.  subsequently, stroking myself was initiated with my left hand and not my dominant but at the time, useless right hand lol.  even when my arm healed i continued to masturbate with my left hand before i introduced my right hand to the pleasure…

soooo…so many songs recall fall 1985 for me: alexander o’neal: if you were here tonight; kool  & the gang: cherish; teena marie: out on a limb; doug e. fresh & slick rick: the show/la-di, da-di… i could go on and on. but my broken wrist & discovery of masturbation turned out not even to be the most significant events of fall 1985. that was to come after halloween when dad got discharged from the army after submitting weed positive urine…

…to be continued

omg. i am stricken. first the catastrophe in haiti and now this!! oh the black community mourns & weeps…teddy p was the man. he was a king of r&b during the late 70s. he was the first male r&b artist to have his first four solo cd’s go platinum. yep. in just 3 years too, 1977-1980.

mom was a huge teddy pendergrass fan so that meant we all definitely were. omg he’s like family. listening to his songs now…but you know, he survived long after the accident. he’s been in a wheelchair for the past 28 years. still he’s toured and has remained vibrant. i caught him in concert in brooklyn at wingate field in ’02 and he looked & sounded great. what a huge loss for r&b music.

so yep…know your history. teddy pendergrass’ success as king of r&b with those 4 back to back platinum albums preceded rick james & even michael jackson.  teddy p was the prototype for the male r&b artists that would follow over the last 30 years. before lionel richie, before charlie wilson, before luther, freddie & alexander o’neal; before keith sweat, before bobby brown, before johnny gill, before r kelly, before aaron hall, before brian mcknight, before joe, and before usher, ne-yo, bobby valentino & trey songz, there was teddy p.

love you teddy! i’ll be making sure your legacy is preserved by reminding e’erbody about where you stand in r&b music history. you are a legend! rest in peace.

bathing in teddy p’s soft philly strings

the sound of tsop if u know what i mean

an r&b king is gone

oh why would this be

but you’re resting in peace

man we love you teddy p

check out these lyrics from one of my favorite teddy pendergrass songs. he’s talking about the richard nixon era but they speak of today, too.

teddy pendergrass: bad luck: 1974 (this was my jammmmm)

people of the world….out there

i know none of yall satisfied, satisfied

the way prices have been going up

on things

i could barely buy a mornng paper

we gotta cut down on smoking

gotta cut down on drinking

early one morning

i got me a paper

i sat down

on my living room loor

opened it up

opened it up

guess what i saw

i saw the president of the united states

the man said he was gonna give it up

he did resign yall

but he still turned around

and left all us poor folks behind

they say they got another man to take his place

but i don’t think they mean

to satisfy the human race

bad luck, bad luck, bad luck

the only thing that i got

that i can hold on

is my god

my god

jesus be with me

jesus

give me good luck

good luck

help me jesus

man oh man! you all can’t imagine the spell stephanie mills’ first album, whatcha gonna do with my lovin’ put on a 7 year old me back in 1979 every time moms would play it on the stereo lol. this album (along with michael jackson’s off the wall of the same year) probably has as much to do with my same sex attraction as anything poor dad did or didn’t do lol! see, moms was luxuriating back in 1979-80 when dad joined the army and left her, my sister & i to love & honor each other in the absence of his violence. this gem, stephanie mills’ debut album, was a huge part of our soundtrack of that wonderful year.

the huge r&b hits “whatcha gonna do with my lovin,” “deeper,” “put your body in it,” “you and i,” “feel the fire,” and “starlight” ensured that this was an album of amazing longevity. mom made sure that first album was always included when she played records for the next 5 years. we knew 30 years ago stephanie mills had a magical voice…and though her musical peers (teena marie, anita baker, phyllis hyman) and descendants (angela winbush, miki howard, mary j. blige) are gifted and sometimes even adequate, i always return to the original.

lady mills collected her biggest pop hit one year later when “never knew love like this” from her second album reached the top 10 on billboard’s hot 100. she kind of faded into a strange post-disco funk with her next few albums until 1986′s #1 r&b hit “i have learned to respect the power of love.” stephanie mills then returned to the forefront of r&b with two subsequent platinum albums, 1987′s if i were your woman & 1989′s home.

ms. mills’ career spans over 3 decades and she still tours regularly to sold out audiences across the united states & europe. she is indeed a modern r&b legend.

i awoke out of the blue tuesday afternoon from a nap with this song from the color purple on my mind. i had to seek it and post it. the message is so hopeful…i think i’d better listen. maybe you’d better listen too:

you’ll never find a politer kiss off to a stale relationship than this number one hit for johnny mathis & deniece williams 30 years ago in 1978.

(written by Nat Kipner and John McIntyre Vallins)
[Johnny:]
Guess it’s over, call it a day
Sorry that it had to end this way
No reason to pretend
We knew it had to end some day, this way

[Deniece:]
Guess it’s over, the kicks are gone
What’s the use of tryin’ to hang on
Somewhere we lost the key
So little left for you and me and it’s clear to see

[Both:]
Too much, too little, too late to lie again with you
Too much, too little, too late to try again with you
We’re in the middle of ending something that we knew

[Johnny:] It’s over

[Deniece:] Oh, it was over

[Both:]
Too much, too little, too late to ever try again
Too much, too little, too late, let’s end it being friends
Too much, too little, too late, we knew it had to end

[Deniece:] And, it’s over

[Johnny:] It’s over

[Deniece:]
Guess it’s over, the chips are down (whoa)
Nearly all our bridges tumbled down

[Johnny:]
Whatever chance we’ve tried, let’s face it why deny
It’s over (It’s over)
It’s over

[Both:]
Too much, too little, too late to ever try again
Too much, too little, too late, let’s end it being friends
Too much, too little, too late, we knew it had to end

[Johnny:] And it’s over

[Deniece:] And it’s over

[Johnny:] And it’s over

[Both:]
Too much, too little, too late to ever try again
Too much, too little, too late, let’s end it being friends

wow. short, honest, and to the point. it’s over. too much, too little, too late to ever try again.

hard to believe it’s been 20 years since slick rick’s classic debut album, the great adventures of slick rick dropped. set 1989 off properly with a trifecta of hit singles “teenage love,” “children’s story,” & “mona lisa.” storytelling rap was put on the map and many followed in slick rick’s wake. so strange how his personal life ended up mirroring what he rapped about in children’s story but then again, that’s the way rap songs go, isn’t it?

listening to this cd 20 years later you’ll find the origin of many of the 90′s most successful sampled hits in “hey young world” & “lick the balls.” essential for any hip hop/r&b fan of the 80′s & 90′s.

slick rick also had a duet with doug e. fresh, ‘the show’ (6 minutes, 6 minutes, 6 minutes, doug e. fresh & you’re on) that was one of the first rap songs to top the billboard r&b charts in 1985. the show still holds up today as an r&b/rap hybrid classic.