A Few Of My Favorite Things is a series that appears most weekends on Driven By Boredom. Each week I talk about three of my favorite things from a specific genre of film, music, or something else all together. Each favorite thing is accompanied by a video and a description of why it is one of my favorite things. Click here for more favorites.

In my life I have listened to a lot of music. Most of it is very up tempo and aggressive. I like music with great energy. I dig the anger of punk, the beat of hip hop and the dancability of electro… Once in a while though, I like to just sit back and relax. I need music to make out to. I touched boobs for the first time while listening to Bleach by Nirvana, which of course was awesome, but it’s not quite the same thing as making out on a bed listening to Marvin Gaye. I am very picky about my R&B. I am not a huge Motown fan and with the exception of R Kelly I don’t listen to any modern R&B. That being said there are a few artists, most of whom had been making hits for decades, made s super smooth seductive songs of the 70’s blow my mind. Keep reading to find out my three favorites of the decade.

1. Tired Of Being Alone – Al Green- 1970
This song is probably in my top 10 all time. I am by no means a HUGE Al Green, but I probably should be. At some point a few years someone gave me Al Greens Greatest Hits and I just completely fell in love. I really should get deeper into his music, but for at the moment I am pretty happy with one I have. I really need to get some Al Green on record. Tired Of Being Alone is the first track on the Greatest hits CD and blows me away every time I hear it. Depending on my mood I want to either make out or cry… some times both. So fucking good. Al Green’s voice gives the world a constant boner. Watch Al do Tired Of Being Along live in his finest of suits.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vg4dnFx6JW0[/youtube]

2. Bill Withers – Lovely Day – 1977
At some point I made a friend of mine 20 mix CDs of music because I found out that she didn’t start listening to music until she was in her late teens and I needed to catch her up. When her roommate was looking over the track list that I printed out, she mentioned that while I had a lot of great R&B on the mix, it was completely devoid of Bill Withers. I didn’t know his music that well, but I had a crush on the girls roommate so I immediately bought Withers album Menagerie on vinyl. I am sure glad I did. I have listened to side one of that record probably 200 times since then. The opening track is Lovely Day and if I am out and I hear that song I will immediately get up, grab the nearest girl and start slow dancing. Unfortunately the only video I could find of Withers doing it was singing on a remix of it on Top Of The Pops in 1988.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHwoEvKtZYw&feature=related[/youtube]

3. Pusherman – Curtis Mayfield – 1972
As I may have mentioned before, one of my favorite soundtracks of all time is the Superfly soundtrack. It is also one of my favorite movies of all time. The obvious choice for the #1 hit on the album is the title track Superfly, but really Pusherman is more is more important to the film and the better song. I wrote a 20 page research paper on Blaxploitation once and I quoted Pusherman in the essay. The song is the only voice in the film that does not glorify drugs. The film makes drug dealers look “super cool”, but the song rails against this idea and the Mayfield sound track is the voice of reason and morality to a film that may not be so moral. It’s also just a bad ass smooth song. Check out Mayfield jam out in one of his “live” scenes from Superfly.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPMKFxp7LGQ[/youtube]

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