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Artist:
Roy Hargrove & The Rh Factor
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Track:
Juicy
Since I am traveling on the Sabbath, and I am just finding out about this Sunday Under the Covers phenomenon, I have to drop the needle early on my selection.For me, Sunday always has been a serious music day, since all the best underground clubs traditionally have presented their best material on Sunday. (I've written about this before, so see
here for some context.) I always have been a “second shift” kind of guy: walk in the spot at about 7:30 AM, and groove until about 2:00 PM. Then, the
Body & Soul parties forced me to recalibrate my program, because those were geared toward Sunday afternoon and evening. (To be fair, I can roll like this only on
select occasions nowadays. I’m like the wily veteran pitcher: I can only throw the complete game with divine intervention and extra Vitamin C, and don't even consider sending me out to the mound on three days’ rest.)But there's this whole other side to Sunday: it is the Booty Call, and Roy Hargrove has captured that so sensuously well in "Juicy," my inaugural SUC selection. Grown folks know all about booty calls, but the Sunday Booty Call (aka the SBC) is particularly satisfying, especially if it follows a morning of great music at the club. Typically, the post-club SBC happens in the afternoon, four- or five-ish (or, for those keeping score, sometime during the second quarter of the NFL's 4:00 games). Correction: the SBC doesn't happen so much as evolve in three separate phases. The first phase actually is somewhat painful, right around the time you get in. The ears still may be sensitive to 7 or so hours of high sound pressure levels, and the legs and joints are sore, seemingly asking their owner if he has lost his mind for staying on the dance floor so long. You probably have a crick in your neck from extensive and vigorous head nodding. In other words, you feel good spiritually, but your body’s a mess. Hargrove captures this heightened state of physical awareness during Juicy's first 70 seconds, with wild flourishes of trumpet and lots of effects provided by master engineer Russ "The Dragon" Elevado.The second phase begins when you roll into the bathroom to take that nice warm shower. The water envelops your skin in a warm blanket, cascading down from above and massaging away soreness and fatigue. (If you’re fortunate, you can even go with the full scale bath here, rubber ducky and all. You know, “Calgon, take me away.”) Lock in bodily moisture with a nice, light scented oil, and slip into a favorite pair of sweats. Hargrove captures these moments over the next 90 seconds of “Juicy,” switching the music from raw urgency to a softer palette of rhythmically-based, soulful jazz that is accented with minor chords.The third and final phase usually happens when you and your partner finally settle on the couch, Sunday paper strewn all over, remnants of coffee or tea left in strategically convenient places, blankets covering limbs, and cell phones set to stun. You get reacquainted with each other intimately in the slowness of Sunday (and hopefully don’t have to suffer that corny guitar lick from the Cialis commercial). The SBC may be drawn out and extensive, or brief and intense, but it is always,
always funky. And that’s how Hargrove and friends drop the beat for the remaining four minutes. Slow, simmering heat, just like a good SBC should be.
Baby you set me freeI say you’re beautiful, and I like itJuicy like a tangerineYou just trapped me and I won’t fight itMaybe I will give you a callI got this thing and I want to use itJuicy like a Georgia peachYou got me open and I’m fiendin’P&L,Soultronica
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