No Longer Live or Local

I haven't said anything about the late Rick James here yet, mostly because I don't have much to add. James was always more famous for his legal troubles than for his music, although "Super Freak" (which hit the Top 40 23 years ago this week) will probably endure. It wasn't his first hit, though. That came in the summer of 1978 with the excellent "You and I," featuring his backup singers delivering these immortal lines:

Some people might say I'm infatuated with you
I don't care 'cause they really don't know
They'll never see or hear the things I do
So far as I'm concerned they all can go to hell

The best bit of James trivia is, of course, that he was in a band with Neil Young for a while. Now that's super freaky.

Also, a friend sends me notice that the Chicago Radio Hall of Fame will induct a new class this fall, including Chicago radio legend Larry Lujack, Detroit radio legend Dick Purtan, and Clear Channel CEO Lowry Mays. The irony of Mays, whose corporation has done its best to render the DJ extinct, being inducted at the same time as Lujack and Purtan, two giants of the trade, is painful. As the radio joke has it, what's the difference between your local McDonalds and Clear Channel? The voice on the microphone at McDonalds is live and local.