The Power of the Swailes' Road Floating Cube

What does it all mean? Can locals inform me if this spins at night, year-round, and not just during the holidays? I should know more about this strange, mysterious, Troy, Ohio, USA landmark. What does it all mean?

Late Night with Sade (Pronounced SHAY-day)

Sade hasn't released an album in a decade. Somehow, after looking over her astounding statistics as a platinum artist (every one of her five studio records was a top ten), I doubt the prolonged absence will steal her thunder. Who hasn't been enraptured by "Smooth Operator" once in their life? She is the ultimate quiet storm, but also a force on the pop charts, and bigger than life outside of the states. Why has it taken so long for me to realize the power of this luxury music. It may be the preferred luxury music for luxury people (imagine Tiger Wood's lover's suite), a smooth jazz staple, bourgeois exotica, but the force of her voice and the function of that voice to transport any listener to North African opium cabanas and Bangkok moonlight is something we need to reconsider as a cultural touchstone. Especially considering she's survived for decades and doesn't seem to age. I'll admit the "Soldier of Love" single is a tad out of touch, but I likely thought that the first time I heard "No Ordinary Love" (shit's like Tricky for your dad). Enjoy a tiny retrospective.









And now I've discovered her videos were as ambitious as Bjork's. W.O.W.

Late Nights with Maxi Priest

With the seasonal closure of the Poolside clubhouse, it's time to move on to Late Night -- the imagined soundtrack of a 2 A.M. rendezvous in the penthouse jacuzzi. This might pertain to smooth jazz or adult contemporary deemed too "fatherly" for the hipster contingent, but I assure you, there are some gems Late Night. Just give me a minute to find them.

Recently I was fortunate enough to find Maxi Priest's "Close to You" 12" for a mere $.50. A bargain for the dub mix alone. Maxi started his career as the "king of lover's rock" -- and lover's rock is to reggae as smooth jazz is to jazz. Basically it's reggae completely stripped of sunshine and replaced with moonlight, gentler rhythms, and endless proclamations of midnight booty calls. Maxi has taken the lover's rock one step further, stripping it of any remnant of reggae and injecting it with a soaring and catchy chorus -- a little infectious rap and this thing's a number one hit (no lie). This was a ubiquitous single in the summer of 1990, a period in music when any fringe genre could be compartmentalized into a pop song. Keep in mind this was a year when Glen Medeiros, Wilson Phillips, Tommy Page and Nelson all had number one hits. So in comparison, "Close to You" was golden in it's purity. For some reason I can't relate this to any scorching sunlight, only suburban darkness and island breezes. I'm sure I had this on a mixtape en route to Clearwater Beach.