Five Years And Still Going Strong

Tommy Mcgee: Come On and We Ought To Be Together

From: Positive Negative [MTMG, 197?]

In our typical understated and in no way unorganised manner, Ear Fuzz actually passed the five year anniversary over the past week. It seems like only yesterday when I closed down my own blog and moved here but over that period we’ve had numerous site breakdowns, been taken offline for a month, made lots of friends, had some harmless ebeef, changed colour and style about thirty times and also, with any luck, shared some great music with you all.

I don’t want to go all Gwyneth on here but I do feel that the following people have to be acknowledged as without them the site wouldn’t be where it is today. So shouts out to those who have since moved on including the originator DJ Maru (who has his own site now in case you haven’t checked), Killermike, dtglass, MattW, floodwatch and G10947. Also thanks as always to those who are still contributing, btieman, chuckdafonk, dane, Independent J, Kevin and of course Still Life who has been here since day one and is still going strong.

Damn it, I promised myself I wouldn’t cry.

Anyway, I don’t want to waste any more of your time reminiscing so how about some music to reward you for sitting patiently through my ramblings? Kind of appropriate that I won’t even try and pretend that I have ever even been in the same county as the record I posted today but I just feel like I have to share its brilliance with you.

Tommy McGee is a total enigma to me regarding where he came from, what he did before this release, what he did afterwards, and where he is now. I’ve been unable to find out anything about the guy beyond this one album and can only think that if you were told you had just eight tracks to leave an impression on the msuical world you’d be hard pushed to top this.

As readers of the site will know (and my lastfm profile will confirm) I’m a big sucker for falsetto soul especially when it’s entwined with lush string led southern soul production that wraps you in aural silk.

Come On is a fantastic slow burner with Tommy delivering a lyrical seduction over a hi-records style mixture of strings and slightly urgent percussion. One of those true growers where you only realise quite how good it is when it ends and you click play again, and again, and again.

We Ought To Be Together is even more southern with a lovely descending bass line and great use of hand claps. As with Come On and, in fact, the whole album, I love love love the understated nature of these tracks. There’s no in your face look at how great I am showboating, Tommy’s vocals down this is all abouty the art of seduction in the sweetest style imaginable.

All the above helps explain why this album goes for such serious loot, last check had it going for well over $1000.

Shout out and eternal gratitude to DJ Supreme for sharing this album from his personal crates.