Good Morning to you! This is Jacob Braybrooke, of course, and the time has come to revisit one of the seminal sounds from the past as ‘Way Back Wednesdays’ headlines yet another daily track on the blog, not forgetting that it’s always been my day-to-day pleasure to write up about a different piece of music every day! A band who transcended cultural and racial barriers with a diverse multi-ethnic line-up, War were scoring top ten hits on the US Billboard charts long before my mother was changing my nappies (and just about when my grandmother was changing her’s) as the Funk band from Long Beach, California continued to find success through the 1970’s and 1980’s. Known for exploring elements of Funk, Rhythm & Blues, Latin music, Reggae, Psychedelia and early Prog-Rock music genres, War were called “one of the fiercest progressive Soul combos of the 70’s” by Martin C. Strong. Their 1973 album – ‘The World Is A Ghetto’ – was also Billboard’s best-selling album of that year. Although Leroy “Lonnie” Jordan is the only original member who remains in War’s current line-up, their energy has been sustained by The Lowrider Band that was formed between four of the other members in the 1990’s. Their seventh studio album – ‘Why Can’t We Be Friends’ – is sadly not their most well-remembered today, but the title track has been used in film and TV productions like ‘The Simpsons’, ‘Bridge To Terabithia’ and ‘Wild Things’ to notable results. It was also a top ten hit in the US, where it reached #6 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the summer of 1975. War wrote the track after a fight broke out at a festival they were playing in Japan, and so they turned it into a clever tale conflating post break-up reconciliation with a really humanitarian plea for racial harmony that is ultimately a call to quell post-Watergate paranoia. Today’s post also ties into recent releases, as War released a ‘Greatest Hits 2.0’ compilation featuring the song as recently as November 2021. Check out the remastered music video below.
The title track of the album that it also closes, in a unique choice of placement, ‘Why Can’t We Be Friends’ also made history as a track that earned the distinction of being played in outer space as NASA beamed it to the linking of Soviet cosmonauts and U.S. astronauts for the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project in July 1975. It kicks off immediately with the chorus, as bright Brass punctuation combines with a jaunty lead vocal that comes off as a little rakish in delivery to form an infectious chorus of steady, but celebratory in texture, drum hooks and a contagious Reggae beat that forms a catchy groove. The lyrics, like “I’ve seen you round for a long long time, I remembered you when you drank my wine” are full of overtly political calls for peace and unity. Hooks like “I paid my money to the welfare line, I see you standing in it every time” are also rooted in economic equality, while short sequences like “The colour of your skin don’t matter to me, As long as we can live in harmony” are urgent calls for a sense of racial integration, while the soulful delivery of the track’s title hook in the chorus poses, what would have been, the question of the decade. I feel the song’s structure is unique in how various members of the group trade short verses between each other in the chorus, but the layout is still simple as the main hook of “Why can’t we be friends?” is proudly sung four times after each two-line verse, which actually amounts to over forty times in under four minutes, which is an intriguing fact in itself. Although it touches upon significant racial themes, it is very feel-good and light-hearted as a complete package, boasting some punchy Reggae-driven melodies that form non-confrontational arrangements. The vocals have a swift air of ‘unpolished’ to them and the groove is a little sloppy around the edges, but somehow, these technical flaws come across like a part of the point being made by War in the lyrics. There’s a hearty stew of Jazz, Funk and Latin music to the track and although some underdeveloped musical ideas rear their heads a tad, the main groove is still very uplifting and the sentiments of the lyrics are still valid, as well as coming across as before their time in terms of the songwriting themes. A track that displays a laudable devotion to unify the different ethnic minorities of the world, during the 70’s and beyond, ‘Why Can’t We Be Friends’ used tried-and-tested Funk rhythms to get a poignant message across.
That brings us to the end of the post of the day. Thank you for accepting my friendship by reading your daily post today, and I will be back tomorrow to shine a spotlight on some soulful new music from a Minneapolis-based and Chicago-raised Alternative R&B singer-songwriter of Venezuelan and Guatemalan heritage who has worked with producers like Sen Morimoto and Luke Titus. She is signed to City Slang.
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