{"id":20150,"date":"2020-12-07T05:30:25","date_gmt":"2020-12-07T10:30:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=20150"},"modified":"2020-12-07T06:50:17","modified_gmt":"2020-12-07T11:50:17","slug":"album-review-the-whit-boyd-combo-party-girls-ost","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2020\/12\/07\/album-review-the-whit-boyd-combo-party-girls-ost\/","title":{"rendered":"Album Review: The Whit Boyd Combo &#8212; Party Girls OST"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-20151\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/party_girls.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"350\" height=\"350\" srcset=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/party_girls.jpg 350w, http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/party_girls-300x300.jpg 300w, http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/party_girls-150x150.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 350px) 100vw, 350px\" \/>Admittedly, it requires a certain kind of sense of humor to appreciate such a thing, but as fate would have it, I\u2019m just such a person. So as out-there as the context might be, I now count myself as a fan of what has been (somewhat arbitrarily) dubbed the Whit Boyd Combo.<\/p>\n<p>As the liner notes for Modern Harmonic\u2019s new <i>Party Girls: Original Motion Picture <\/i><i>S<\/i><i>oundtrack<\/i> helpfully explain, there\u2019s no such thing as the Whit Boyd Combo. Allow me to explain: in the late \u201860s, a low-rent smut peddler by the name of Whit Boyd made a series of what we\u2019d now call softcore porn flicks. With a total lack of subtlety \u2013 seeing as that quality isn\u2019t exactly coin of the realm in the porn biz \u2013 he titled his films <i>The Office Party<\/i>, <i>Spiked Heels and Black Nylons<\/i> and \u2026 <i>Party Girls<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p>The intrepid folks at Modern Harmonic managed to lay hands (heh) on the reels containing the <i>Party Girls<\/i> soundtrack, found \u201cin an abandoned shed.\u201d Oddly enough, if one takes the tale at facial value (sorry), what they didn\u2019t manage to locate was the film itself. In fact, they\u2019d have us believe, they couldn\u2019t even find anyone who would admit to having ever seen <i>Party Girls<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p>You know the joke about porn soundtracks: \u201cbow-chicka-bow-wow\u201d and all, right? Well, to some extent, that\u2019s what we have here. This anonymous soul jazz\/funk combo laid down a musical bed (ha! I slay myself!) for <i>Party Girls<\/i>, and that\u2019s what is here for rediscovery. The band is a small combo: drums, electric bass, gurgling organ, tenor saxophone. And absolutely nothing is known about who they were \u2026 or what they were doing. But \u2013 in the words of the philosopher \u2013 their legacy lives on, hewn in the colored vinyl of <i>Party Girls<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p>So the curators of this set decided to call \u2018em the Whit Boyd Combo. Fair enough. And the music\u2019s pretty good. The archivists also located an audio tape of a stentorian announcer teasing the film: \u201cMarried for appearances sake \u2026 but definite lesbian tendencies \u2026\u201d and so on. Those same intrepid archivists thought that rap too good to go to waste, so they overlaid it with some of the instrumental backing to create \u201cDon\u2019t Miss Party Girls.\u201d Not exactly SFW but funny as hell.<\/p>\n<p>A cover of James Brown\u2019s \u201cI Got the Feelin\u2019\u201d appears in abbreviated form on the LP; the by-definition-less-fun CD version has the uncut (ha!) recording. Liner note author Lisa Petrucci has fun with the whole affair, referring to the nameless vocalist on the track as the \u201cStepfather of Soul.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The entirety of Side Two is given over to \u201cParty Scene \/ Strip Poker.\u201d Wildly honking sax and mixed-out-front bass spar with the other musician, relentlessly playing with his organ. The music ebbs and flows, and while it\u2019s little more than a jam, it\u2019s an appealing one. The drummer in particular isn\u2019t content to stick to one beat the entire time; he inventively changes things up, and his band mates have the good sense and musical dexterity to follow him.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-20152\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/party_girls2.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"550\" height=\"362\" srcset=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/party_girls2.jpg 550w, http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/party_girls2-300x197.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 550px) 100vw, 550px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>That this even exists is amusing enough. That a label saw fit to release it in 2020 is even more so. That it\u2019s worth your time is yet more of a surprise. But indeed it is. And it\u2019s a hoot.<\/p>\n<p>To reiterate: the film itself is lost in the mists of time and sticky, darkened movie houses. But the promotional materials \u2013 a booklet and still photos \u2013 were found, and a facsimile thereof is included for your perusal. And if you go online \u2013 <i>hey, look: you\u2019re online now!<\/i> \u2013 you can watch a trailer for the fine motion picture. But trust me: the soundtrack is better. Y\u2019know that old adage, \u201cI only buy <i>Playboy<\/i> for the articles\u201d? Well, tell \u2018em you\u2019re only interested in <i>Party Girls<\/i> for the soundtrack.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Admittedly, it requires a certain kind of sense of humor to appreciate such a thing, but as fate would have it, I\u2019m just such a person. So as out-there as [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20151,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[31,40,42,65,69,70],"tags":[2973,4388,4389],"class_list":["post-20150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-funk","category-instrumental","category-jazz","category-review","category-soul","category-soundtrack","tag-modern-harmonic","tag-party-girls","tag-whit-boyd-combo","cat-31-id","cat-40-id","cat-42-id","cat-65-id","cat-69-id","cat-70-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20150"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20150\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20290,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20150\/revisions\/20290"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}