TomFlannery.com

There are a few things that have sounded so good for so long you don’t even notice how good they sound.

I tried to come up with better construction for that sentence but I can’t.

I’m talking about Daryl Hall’s voice.

Last night I heard two Hall and Oates songs. The two best. Sara Smile and She’s Gone (I do love One on One and Wait for Me too though….) Nobody sings these songs because nobody can sing these songs. They are perfectly constructed pop songs that only perfectly constructed pop singers can pull off. (for the record, my friend Paul Dudrich was the man singing them, solo acoustic, in a bar with maybe 5 people in it….and singing them so well I damn near cried).

Daryl Hall is a perfectly constructed pop singer. Or soul singer. Whatever you want to call him. For these two songs alone the man should be in the whatever you want to call it hall of fame. I never get tired of hearing them.

I think Hall was born at the perfect time to sell 60 million records….and the absolute worst time to be taken as seriously as, say, Smokey Robinson. Bad haircuts, cheesy 80s synth-riffs, and horrible music videos will do that to you every time. People may have snickered, but they sang along, at least to themselves. Nobody admitted to being a Hall and Oates fan, but everybody had a copy of Rock and Soul pt 1 in their closet. It was the Back in Black of pop music.

Of course these days it’s considered cool to admit that you used to like something that wasn’t considered cool at the time. That’s progress I guess. And explains lots of Rock and Roll Hall of Fame entrants.

Far be it from me to say the Daryl Hall was the equal of Smokey Robinson or The Temptations, but I will say that neither act ever did anything better than She’s Gone and Sarah Smile. So maybe that’s me saying that Daryl Hall was the equal of Smokey Robinson or the Temptations. Shit, some days I think Angus Young was the equal of Joe Strummer too. I’m a weirdo that way.

Of course the man wrote and sang some horrifyingly bad songs too (Method of Modern Love anyone?). But he also saw his “I Can’t Go For That” blatantly ripped off by Micheal Jackson for “Billie Jean”….so, you know, maybe these things even out.

What I’m thinking now is that I miss the radio. I miss that songs as good as Sarah Smile and She’s Gone could be heard on the radio. Growing up in a CD-less and Ipod-less world, the radio, especially AM radio, was all we had. It wasn’t always pleasant, but the rewards were tremendous if you had the patience. Man….you’d listen all damn day to hear a song like ‘Takin’ It To the Streets’. Come to think of it….Michael McDonald wasn’t a bad pop-blue-eyed soul singer either, now was he?

I should probably now before I hurt myself.

In a bit..

–tf