Featured artist: CHOCOLATE GENIUS
AIN'T THAT PECULIAR, the song playing over the closing credits of American Splendor, has kept many a movie-goer glued their seat.
With his unhurried, confident rendition of the Smokey Robinson-penned Marvin Gaye classic, Chocolate Genius (a.k.a. Marc Anthony Thompson) makes an indelible impression.
The song glides along at a seductively languorous lope, drawing the listener into an ethereal, even haunting, sonic landscape; and one of deceptive simplicity.
A veteran of numerous film
scores, notably Spike Lee's A Huey P. Newton Story, Marc
Anthony Thompson seems content to stay mostly behind the scenes.
Like Daniel Lanois or Ry Cooder before him, he lets his musical
curiosity continually guide him into new territory, even if that
means forefeiting mass-market success or rock stardom. Still,
his two solo studio ventures (Black Music and Godmusic)
have garnered much-deserved critical acclaim and the loyalty of
an ever-growing fanbase.
Listen to
AIN'T THAT PECULIAR.
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SIX DEGREES OF
BLUES: Conceived
and written by Emanuel Pordes
With
a curiosity that begins in the delta and extends to the stratosphere,
Emanuel Pordes is a blues lover for whom the addiction to 12 bar
has no downside. Where there's good blues to be had, whether it
be old, lost, neglected, co-opted, or buried under the charts,
that is where he likes to be. He
produced Six Degrees of Blues at WGRE 91.5