First of all, I feel pretty much normal today. (Go figure.) Which is why I feel free to dump the insanity of this post upon y’all.

Behold! I have a secret!

And my secret is:

Hall & Oates.

I am totally not kidding. OH MY GOD, I was so into Hall & Oates when I was little! And when I say “into,” you should assume that I mean I was probably-not-healthy INTO them. As in, at one point I owned every single album they’d ever released (which is more than on the link, believe it or not), including bootlegs, and I actually kept a scrapbook.

A scrapbook, people! Of Hall & Oates!

I actually (and literally) wore out more than one copy of Livetime by playing it too much on my cassette player! As a matter of fact, I ruined MORE THAN ONE CASSETTE PLAYER MOTOR playing H&O. My father patiently explained to me that no one EVER wears out cassette player motors; the other parts ALWAYS wear out first. Always. Except for me, the freak who kills motors listening to H&O songs over and over and over.

Anyway. I quit buying H&O albums in the 90’s because – well, they only released two. (I bought one, so that’s 50%.) Eventually I lost all my old H&O vinyl, all my tapes wore out or got lost, my copy of Rolling Stone with them on the cover is forever missing, my copy of the biography and even my scrapbook are just… gone. Some of that shit has probably achieved collector’s status by now, but I have no idea where any of it is.

And I mean, seriously: WHAT KIND OF SELF-RESPECTING VOICE MAJOR COULD POSSIBLY CONFESS TO A FONDNESS FOR H&O PUBLICLY?!?!

I still listened to Daryl’s righteously amazing vocal performance on ‘North Star’ occasionally (off of Fripp’s solo album Exposure), because FRIPP, AT LEAST, WAS OBSURE ENOUGH that I could listen to him in public. One does not just put on some old H&O album when one’s friends are all musicians and stoners and MAJORING IN JAZZ. It just doesn’t happen, people.

I was 20-something when I quit wishing God would just give me ONE FREAKING CHANCE to FUCK DARYL HALL SENSELESS.

I would allow myself to be caught listening to Sacred Songs once in awhile, but only because it was Hall solo and Robert Fripp produced, so it was almost legit.

Not to mention that when you’re in your very late teens and early twenties, you just don’t go around telling people there’s a b&w picture of Daryl Hall, OF ALL PEOPLE, in his early 20’s, squinting, wearing a leather jacket, smoking a cigarette… and ohmygod that man’s BONE STRUCTURE… which probably taught me to masturbate properly. (I wish I could find it for you online somewhere! He really does look amazing. What could be better than high cheekbones and full lips?!)

But that was it.

In my own defense, I didn’t realize for years – until I was fronting my own band in Iowa – how very much my vocal style had been influenced by those boys of “blue-eyed soul”. But by then I didn’t have any of my old H&O stuff anymore.

So I just forgot about them, really.

But not completely. Having once majored in music, and having suffered through God knows how many hours of Sight Singing & Ear Training (known to students as ‘sight screaming and ear straining’), I can’t really NOT listen to music, any music, no matter what it is.

This means I not only hear but LISTEN TO whatever’s playing, whether I want to or no. I pay very close attention to all the music (and Muzak) I encounter in elevators and grocery stores (this is why it’s easy to startle me when I’m shopping) and lobbies. And it’s why I always, always, ALWAYS know when I’m hearing Daryl. Or John, for that matter.

In fact, I’m so attuned to them that earlier, as I was surfing for the albums they’ve released since I quit paying attention, I actually knew a lot more songs than I’d expected to.

(Holy fucking shit. Shit, shit, SHIT! They’re selling Exposure on Amazon for FORTY DOLLARS A COPY. It must be out of print! I used to have that album, in pristine condition, ON VINYL. And now I have no idea where the hell it is. Damn, damn, DAMN!)

Of my top twenty favorite R&B vocal performances of all time, Daryl probably sang nearly half of them. Seriously. And yes, I am putting Chaka and Aretha and Etta on that list. Back in the day the man could hit some high clear sweetness, I am TELLING you! He and Todd are my favorite male vocalists, even though I love them mainly for their songwriting. (But if you’d ever heard Todd layin’ it down on Healing, which you haven’t because it doesn’t get much more obscure than Todd Rundgren on an album ONLY HE IS ON singing about spiritual awakening, you’d call HIM a “real singer,” too.)

Anyway. What I’m really trying to say today is this:

1.) Weren’t they cute?

2.) I wanted to roll Daryl Hall since I was the age of 12 (before I even knew what it WAS), and that lasted until I was about 22. And I probably would have given it up without much thought for another five or six years after that, just because – hey, what the hell: he’s Daryl Hall! And even though he’s older now because it isn’t the 70’s any more, WELL, if I weren’t married he STILL probably wouldn’t have to ask more than twice. Because while gravity is unrelenting, truly fine bone structure can never be denied. I AM SO SERIOUS!!!

3.) They really did influence my singing more deeply than you’d probably expect. Everyone says I sound like Janice Joplin, but what’s really happening is I’m singing like two very different men who came out of Philly about the time I was BORN.

4.) If I still had all my old H&O crap, some of it would actually be worth money now. And THAT is the weirdest thing I’ve said in this entire post!

. . . . .

Try it, you might like it:


Song: Have I Been Away Too Long
Album: Along The Red Ledge, 1977
Artist: Hall & Oates