Four Strings

I’m sorry, but I’m just a flat-out sucker for late 70s private label homemade soulful garage funk, and I’m not going to apologize for it. OK, fine, I will apologize if asked nicely, but I’m still going to boogie to the groove. And do it at such neighbor-enmity volumes that the dog will be forced to flee beneath the red couch once again, the low-slung mid-century one that it has to flatten its spine in a skeletally improbable fashion to fit beneath, but which also must possess frequency-dampening properties, since there are easier and closer retreats. Just how hot is Charles Pryor & Kream Band's 1979 Detroit funk opus "Skin Hot"? Well, my friends, it is scorching. Now hold on, just hold on a minute here, you might say, what is its degree of relative hotness again? Skin Effing Hot. Wait a minute, wait a minute, you could reasonably interject, are you telling me it’s as overheated as any random exposed thigh or neck or décolletage rolling down a city sidewalk on a really very unpleasantly piping summer afternoon? Yes. It’s that hot. But how can I be certain, you’ll no doubt want know. It's like, exactly what court-admissible proof is on offer here? Well, just turn your gaze to the bottom of the cover itself, where, in verbiage legally binding in over forty countries, sub-regions, territories, and protectorates, it says, "This Album Is Hot. Skin Hot." Are we done here? Of course, the record owes a lot to Funkadelic, and in many ways its karmic wah is entirely beholden to the many nasty basslines (minus Bootsy‘s ever-present warble) beneath the otherwise fairly pedestrian post-disco pre-Sugar Hill Gang tropes, but it more than holds its own. Febrile. Flushed. Pyretic. Oh, yes.