Yesterday, as you no doubt know, the New England Patriots defeated the Houston Texans in an AFC Divisional game. Fuck those guys, and by "those guys" I mean the Texans, C.J. (Oops, I Did It Again) Stroud, and their whole team.
But thinking about the game got me to thinking about Houston, and to wondering if there was any good music out of Houston other than the peckerwood, honky-tonk, urban cowboy country-and-western for which they're so famous. Being an older gentleman myself, that got me to remembering "Archie Bell & the Drells of Houston, Texas," who dance just as good as they walk and boasted that "in Houston, we've just started a new dance called the Tighten Up."
Upon closer listening, the song is actually better than I remembered, and I had forgotten the syncopated hand claps toward the end, 4/4 rhythm with the emphasis on the 2s and 4s. Which got me to wondering, were the claps in 1968's Tighten Up the inspiration for the handclaps in Miles Davis' 1972 Black Satin? Listening to the two tracks 50 years later, although the songs are radically different, the hand claps certainly sound similar, and in 1972, Miles was trying to catch the interest of a younger audience.
Anyhow, that's how my monkey mind words, swinging from one thought to the next, from sports to Texas cities to 60's soul and funk to Miles Davis.
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