Repetune - The Songs of our Heads

Boz Scaggs - Lowdown

Writing by Segal on Wednesday, 10 of October , 2007 at 9:25 pm

Lowdown literally comes out of nowhere. For those of us that still listen to records and cassette tapes, you’ll know what I mean. Being the case that this song is the first song on side two, it holds a special place in the audiophile’s heart. It’s the great return to sound from the engineered silence that breaks up the two halves. With Lowdown, beginning with a snare and hi-hat combo, the sudden incidence of percussion gives way to a bassy, snazzy saunter. If melting butter could sing, it would sound like this.

The most glorious aspect of the song, and the one that keeps it forever slipping and sliding in my head, is Scagg’s vocalization. Is mellifluous too SAT a word to describe it? Fifty cent values aside, the word is apt. At times, he sounds like a cross between Mel Torme and Kermit the Frog, but for a sizable portion, he manages to make that velvet croak float along like the feather in Al Jarreau’s pimp chapeau. For the first verse, Scaggs appropriates the 70’s song trope of the removed narrator. However, just as the backing girls make their presence felt, Scaggs comes back into focus with maybe the most subtly erotic couplet ever recorded:

Taught her how to talk like that
Gave her that big idea

For a song admonishing a woman for hanging around with the wrong crowd, the way he delivers those two lines one minute into the song, takes the song to a whole ‘nother level. His voice curls, darts, and sneaks up behind the listener. I’m completely surprised nobody’s sampled this into another song. It’s that good. And, with those two lines, he opens up his emotions. He’s not mad at the lady for whoring herself out. He’s mad because he hasn’t had a chance to taste that sugar. The reserved fury, half disgust, half self-flagellation, is matched by the blazing, all-to-short guitar section later in the song.

This is a song that could have only been made in the 1970s. The porn flute, the over-the-top string section, the bassline so fat-bottomed Robert Crumb once wrote a whole comic based on it.. this is quintessential sex funk. Hell, your parents probably made out to this. They may have even conceived you to it, and guess what? They were really into it. When it was all over, laying back in the soaking sheets, all your dad could say to your mom was “Who taught you how to talk like that?”

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Category: Boz Scaggs

What is a repetune?

It has happened to us all. For any reason, and sometimes for no reason at all, some obscure song we have heard but try to avoid manages to sneak itself into our head. It does nothing but repeat in our head over and over until one day, we realize it is gone. Then it only comes back again. These are those songs. These are repetunes.