Am I tempting you?

The response to Friday's show was stellar. For some reason, on the masslive.com Soundboard, I was singled out as having played particularly tasty guitar that evening. Strangely enough, while watching a snippet of the show from a videorecording, it occurred to me how snappy Brian's playing was. And I also felt that I stumbled out of the starting gate- my guitar solo and leads in "Photobooth Curtain," the second song in the set were rather ropey. I suppose it improved from there. The really cool thing about that compliment is that I don't believe I was doing a lot to show off and still people noticed and appreciated what I was playing, which makes me really happy. I'm not a flashy player and I don't try to call attention to what I'm doing. I'm aiming to color in the song and if people appreciate how I do that and remark favorably upon it, then I know I'm playing well.

I did have a feeling Friday would be a good day, though, for me personally. When I hopped into my truck to head off to school at 6:50 A.M., the opening to The Temptations' "I Can't Get Next To You" was beginning on my CD player. The clapping and intro gospel piano chords lasted from shifting into reverse and backing out of the driveway so that the arrival of the drums starting the song proper coincided with me throwing the truck into drive and accelerating down the road. Like as if if the sound editor of my life arranged the soundtrack perfectly. I started singing along to the tune and I noticed that I could sing along to every part. For those of you that don't know, I suffered some sort of voice malaise all last fall where I lost a significant part of my vocal range and I basically couldn't sing. Gradually my throat healed and Friday showed me that it's back to normal. You see, in that song, each Temptation takes a line in the verse. Dennis Edwards starts off with his raspy tenor "I can turn a greyish sky to blue," followed by Melvin Franklin and his deep bass voice "I can make it rain whenever I want it to," then Eddie Kendricks lifts of with his feathery falsetto "I can build a castle froma single grain of sand," then Paul Willimas weighs in with his smooth baritone " I can make a ship sail, HUH, on dry land." And I can sing each part. I'm not suggesting I'm as good a singer as any of them- far from it- but still- I can hit the parts in thsoe lines, which cover a wide range of notes.

I love YouTube for this reason:

My favorite Temptations song (I've written about it once extensively here before) features Eddie Kendricks:

Just My Imagination

Here's Paul Williams on lead doing a smooth cover of a Stevie Wonder gem:

For Once In My Life

I can't seem to find a good original version of my favorite David Ruffin lead on "I Wish It Would Rain" but here's a medley in which David sings lead on three tunes:

Medley

Finally, here's I Can't Get Next To You after Dennis Edwards replaced Ruffin.