Blue Magic, "Sideshow"

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i usually find these big-metaphor ballads too silly to adore, but even while paying only the barest attention to the lyrics, i find this song stirring strange depths of emotion. for some reason i think a crucial part of that is how eagerly the record apes the delfonics' sound.

― amateur!st (amateurist), Sunday, 20 June 2004 04:27 (twenty-two years ago)

part of what fascinates about the songs of this era of soul music is how much the productions banish all the sounds that seemed to signify "emotion" or angst in 60s soul, and yet sometimes still manage to come across with a concentrated intensity, that seems if anything more powerful for being offset with such unperturbed arrangements. (the downside is that the baseline of "modern soul"- (i.e. thom bell/gamble & huff/etc.) style productions seems much lower to me than that of, say, that of much 60s and early 70s southern soul.)

― amateur!st (amateurist), Sunday, 20 June 2004 04:32 (twenty-two years ago)

let us now praise the falsetto. Something about that kind of singing introduces all kinds of unfixed and uneasy readings. Nobody ever actually talks in a falsetto, you see. I don't know this record. I will check it out. the Stylistics' "I'm Stone in Love With You" pretty much rules the genre for me.

― Broheems (diamond), Sunday, 20 June 2004 04:40 (twenty-two years ago)

i swear i've heard a reggae version of "sideshow," sometime way back in the virtual prehistory of my musical appreciation, like high school. perhaps that accounts for the feelings, in part. i wouldn't doubt there is a reggae version, because there is a jamaican version of just about every song,ever.

― amateur!st (amateurist), Sunday, 20 June 2004 04:47 (twenty-two years ago)

for a great critical appreciation of 70s vocal soul check out George Pelecanos' novel Soul Circus. The detective character Derek Strange defends his somewhat retro tastes in music quite eloquently. It's a good crime novel too.

― lovebug starski, Sunday, 20 June 2004 13:24 (twenty-two years ago)

I thought this song was by the Stylistics for many, many years.

And my favorite full-song falsetto goes to the Moments' "Love on a Two-Way Street."

― Joseph McCombs, Monday, 21 June 2004 03:16 (twenty-two years ago)

it sounds more delfonics than stylistics to me, but that's admittedly not a great stylistic divide.

― amateur!st (amateurist), Monday, 21 June 2004 03:24 (twenty-two years ago)

Love this song. There are a bunch of other great Blue Magic tracks on the Philly Soul comp "Creme De La Creme". Anyone know if their albums are worth investigating?

― Michael F Gill (Michael F Gill), Monday, 21 June 2004 13:59 (twenty-two years ago)

seventeen years pass...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_XITeM2DAI

― Jimmy Jimmy Loves Mary-Anne Mary-Anne (James Redd and the Blecchs), Wednesday, 15 June 2022 14:43 (four years ago)

i swear i've heard a reggae version of "sideshow," sometime way back in the virtual prehistory of my musical appreciation, like high school. perhaps that accounts for the feelings, in part. i wouldn't doubt there is a reggae version, because there is a jamaican version of just about every song,ever.

yes, Barry Biggs did a cover version, which was a big hit in the UK (and here in the Netherlands as well) in 1977:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gjZa_yEizw

― butt-mooning is a polysemous word, hoss! (breastcrawl), Wednesday, 15 June 2022 16:09 (four years ago)

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