Random Tunes posted by O.W.

Bobby Byrd: I'm Not To Blame
From 7", B-side of "It's I Who Love You" (King, 1970)

Billy Preston: The Same Thing Again
From Encouraging Words (Apple, 1970)

It's always been a personal philosophy that the risk in getting paid to do the things you would otherwise do for free out of love isn't as win-win as it sounds. Turning a labor of love into work is a good way to lose that love.

I don't make money off of Soul-Sides.com directly (but it is nice when ya'll buy my mixtapes) yet, the last few weeks, I've felt like blogging has been more like "work" insofar as I'm trying to keep up with covering reissues and comps that are out. And on some level, that makes good sense - it's always nice to have something to write about that's timely and given my professional alter ego life as a music writer, it's also nice to write about things you want to help support.

But it can make posting feel more like "work" than I want it to and it's an odd feeling when I feel compelled to apologize for writing - gasp - a personal post that's not necessarily tied to a new release (though, doubt not, there's an avalanche of those too). Note: I'm not writing any of this to fish for sympathy or be validated. I just like to kvetch once in a while and what better space to be so navel-gazingly self-indulgent than a blog? But yeah, here's some random stuff I'm listening to and want to write about.

The Bobby Byrd song is something that I had forgotten about until I was reading Just Blaze's tribute to the late star and was reminded, "oh yeah, Blaze looped this track up lovely for 'U Don't Know.'" And so I took a few minutes to really listen to Byrd here rather than sample-spotting and I was struck by how great a ballad it is - so dramatic and passionate. (I didn't want to hotlink it back to Just's site so I'm essentially reposting it from his site).

The Billy Preston...I thought I posted this song a year ago when Mark Anthony Neal wrote a memorial for Preston after he passed last June. As it turns out, I had forgotten: I've never posted this song and in fact, made mention of that very fact in my year end post. Funny too since this song has stayed on constant rotation in that intervening year, all the while I was trying to track down a copy of the original album (thank you Record Surplus).

Did I mention "The Same Thing Again" is one of the best things ever? Yup, I took it there.