The Five Stairsteps - “O-o-h Child”, 1970.
So I don’t listen much to soul. By which I could mean, depending on the circumstances, my own soul, other people’s souls, or soul music. This time, luckily for the reader, I mean soul music.
Yesterday I found myself surfing Facebook, and in my news feed pops up Counting Crows’ “Song of the Day”. These aren’t Counting Crows songs, just songs the band happens to dig on at a given moment. Yesterday’s song was “O-o-h Child” by The Five Stairsteps.
I hadn’t heard this song since age seven. Lite FM 106.7 was all I listened to back then - not by choice; my parents didn’t really present me with any other options, since music to them was never more than some kind of pleasant distraction. Seven year-old me didn’t have any way to process this song’s musicality or message; I mean, how much of a frame of reference does your average seven year-old possess?
That’s the great thing about not being seven anymore, and in fact being thirty-one: I have a hell of a frame of reference for all kinds of shit now. Let me just get this out there first, before I move on: The Five Stairsteps were some motherfuckers, and this song bubbles and pops and struts like some shit that I thought I had never heard…except that I did hear it twenty-four years ago, playing with He-Man action figures in the backseat of my mom’s Volkswagen. Pro Tools can’t swing like this.
Right. As far as the message…I’ll come back to that. There are some ugly truths about myself with which I’ve had to come face-to-face recently. You know…I was going to say more about that, but I think I’m just going to let that sit there for a second and say this instead: self-awareness is the greatest gift any of us can hope to receive, because having it means that one is able to look outside of himself and see his own faults as others might see them. More importantly, he’s able to re-imagine himself, address his faults or accept them, and begin to shape his own future to match his idea of his best self.
Meantime, he can listen to this song and maybe feel a little of that weight start to lift.
Thanks.
