Want to feel you're in a Quentin Tarantino movie, but don't want to turn to a life of crime? Who wants to pull heists, since that involves (yuck!) group activities? But we dig the Tarantino type music.
This record will set you up, featuring well known and more obscure soul and funk hits of the seventies. Lots of dancing for today's discerning Hepcat Hermit, solo or perhaps with a special Cool Chick.
We're first treated to a truncated, Listener's Digest version of the familiar Isaac Hayes tune, "Theme From Shaft." He's a complicated Hepcat Hermit, no one understands him but his Cool Chick, or at least his precooked chicken.
Moving along, we've got the Staples Singers "Respect Yourself," featuring some wonderful spare percussion and sardonic verses filled with admonishments we may at least be saying in our minds to Eschewed Personality Types as they come along. Other treats include Detroit Emeralds "Baby Let Me Take You", the opening of which is sampled in De La Soul's "Say No Go."
The first side closes out with the mostly instrumental, funky "Why Can't We Live Together" by Timmy Thomas.
Second side has a lot going on, opening with the Chi-Lites' "(For God's Sake) Give More Power to the People." We come along to one of the most danceable tunes of all time, James Brown's "Good Foot Part One" and then a song which is actually featured in Reservoir Dogs, Joe Tex's "I Gotcha". Another favourite turned out to be Honey Cone's "Want Ads". I don't know why I liked the song so much, as it's about a topic alien to my experience, ie advertising to find a boyfriend, but it's just a nicely delivered tune.
This record has found its way permanently into Hepcat Hermit mythology. It makes a brief appearance at the beginning of the following wonderful Filmation style video, which is a nice retelling of the basic Hepcat Hermit Hero monomyth. An HH-er is digging his tunes in his Groovy Pad and enjoying activities such as working on an Austin Powers impression when suddenly he realizes in a moment of weakness he has lent a favourite record, perhaps to an unappreciative Regular Person, and must don a favourite, empowering article of clothing and venture into the Outside World in quest of it. Here he encounters many perils such as fresh air, and a seeming Cool Chick who turns out to be an Eschewed One in disguise. Then our hero is in a situation where he must imagine he is Indiana Jones in order to survive. Good thing for the Hepcat Hermit's constant fantasy life. It's how we survive outside. Let's watch, shall we?
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