January 1, 2010
No Time Like the First Time
In my mind, there are a handful of the moribund hits of the 1970s that, because of situational associations, give me the creeps.
One of them is Roberta Flack’s “Killing Me Softly With His Song,” the title track from her fifth LP. I was probably eleven years old, reading a House of Mystery comic book story about a guy who gets shipwrecked on an island populated with an intelligent colony of ants that spell out “EAT US” while he’s delirious from starvation, spurring his mutation into a helpless half-man half-insect. As my skin crawled at the big reveal in the final panel, the clear, otherworldly, deliberate voice of Roberta Flack was flowing brightly from the next room. It was cold and irresistible. That song gave me nightmare flashbacks for years. It’s okay now, of course; in fact, I frequently like riding the time machine and replaying those forgotten shudders.
Instead of that, let’s hear “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” from Roberta’s exquisite First Take debut LP.
If you ask me, this song was the blueprint for Angelo Badalamenti for his synth-weirded “Mysteries of Love” in the movie Blue Velvet, sung by Julee Cruise and a military-grade reverb generator. This fact is at least as obvious to me as the classic “My Sweet Lord” kerfluffle. But one can’t blame the guy. Both are beautiful in their own way. Listen and see.
Roberta Flack – “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face”
Angelo Badalamenti – “Mysteries of Love”
Rick at 6:43 pm
2 CommentsÈ
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A girl once gave me a mix tape with this Flack tune on it. I like the song a lot, but was a bit horrified that maybe she was sending me a message. She most likely was not. Man, you called it on the similarity to the other tune. At some points you think it’s an exact duplicate, but then the B.V. song doesn’t round out to a complete song structure, although it is a nice tune.
It reminds me of a song that i liked in the Lynch movie LOST HIGHWAY. i bought a used copy of the soundtrack just for that song, to see if i liked it outside the movie context, but it was not on the CD! But check it out, it was the song Lynch had wanted for Blue Velvet but couldn’t get the rights, so he had Badalamenti write Mysteries of Love.
Comment by Rico Rodini Ñ January 5, 2010 @ 7:08 am
Gosh, I wish I could remember more songs like killing me softly—those ostensibly “nice” songs that are so, so creeeeepy.
As soon as I post, I’ll remember one.
Welcome back!—Ivan
Comment by Ivanjski Lernerovski Ñ January 5, 2010 @ 9:46 pm