#grantland

[mywifeleftme]

338: Maze featuring Frankie Beverly // Inspiration

Inspiration Maze featuring Frankie Beverly 1979, Capitol

Back in 2012, Maze (always) featuring Frankie Beverly were honoured with a BET Lifetime Achievement Award, which is sort of like a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award for a universe where New Edition were practically the Beatles. (With the death of strictly regimented radio programming, this phenomenon doesn’t really exist anymore—the Babyface/R. Kelly era of R&B was probably the last of it.) I was an avid Grantland reader at the time, and I remember Rembert Browne doing a funny breakdown of Maze featuring Frankie Beverly’s performance that piqued my curiosity:

“This was Maze featuring Frankie Beverly’s first nationally televised performance, ever. To some, that will make sense because you’ve never heard of them until just now, but to many that will come as a shock, because they were (and still are) one of the most popular Black acts ever. I often hesitate to throw around the possessive pronouns ‘we’ and ‘our’ as recklessly as BET does, but using those terms to describe this act seems pretty appropriate, seeing as they have widely been this Black hidden treasure for more than 40 years. If you need proof of this, go to a concert, or just watch this performance.”

I can’t link you to that performance because BET were notoriously averse to posting the shit you’d want to see on YouTube (see also: BET Awards cyphers), but you can simply throw one of Maze featuring Frankie Beverly’s hits on, close your eyes, and imagine like 2 Chainz, Omarion, and Taraji P. Henson grooving happily in loud formal wear. Maze featuring Frankie Beverly are so dope. At first, I thought their blazingly psychedelic/New Age sleeves (and that incredible seven-fingered, double-palmed hand logo) were kind of a mismatch for their laidback, romantic sound, but after I let them roll over me for a while, following the bass and keyboard licks around started to put me in mind of an endless, colourful labyrinth.

Inspiration isn’t their best album, and contains none of their most recognizable songs, but it’s the one I have and is a Perfectly Good Maze featuring Frankie Beverly record. None of the songs are in any hurry to get where they’re going (all of them top the five-minute mark), and none of them deviate from their core sound—no disco strings here, no lame rock covers, just good musicians putting in work. If you like your soul raw, this isn’t gonna do it for you, but if the notion of a less crossover-oriented Earth, Wind & Fire or Commodores appeals to you, keep a look out for buddy with the extra digits.

338/365

[archivist-dragonfly]

Book 158

Grantland Quarterly #1

Bill Simmons, Ed.

McSweeney’s 2011

It’s too bad Grantland didn’t last longer. It was filled with some excellent writing and illustrations about sports and pop culture, and, like most McSweeney’s publications, kind of a pretty thing.

[eosphoroz]

Ehm... has anyone seen this before or am I just uncovering the bowels of the internet for everyone to see?

From Grantland's "The Golden Globes After-Party", (January 13, 2014)

[heybelinda]

[redpenblackpen]

Who wants to go there with me!!!???

[wordfromoursponsor]

Grantland Rice: “I thought I knew the score on breakfasts....” (1941)

[jarrettfuller]

One thing that I tried to do in criticism was bring an empathy for the difficulty of being creative in general. You know, nobody wants to make anything bad. So I tried to be considerate of people's intentions as much as possible, and of the difficulty in getting anything made. Also, you know, TV in general is just—and this is one of the reasons why I like it—it's just sort of an imperfection machine. It's impossible deadlines and outrageous levels of collaboration. So many people involved in making anything, and then you get up the next episode or the next season and you try to do it again. I definitely in my criticism tried to bring a broader awareness of the industry and the market forces that affected every decision.

Andy Greenwald, in this interview on his transition from television critic to television writer, on writing television criticism. He's talking about television but I think this also works for graphic design.

[heybelinda]