High Fidelity: selected tracks

On February 14, 2020, High Fidelity, a new series of ten episodes, landed on Hulu. Adapted from the eponymous novel by British author Nick Hornby, also executive producer of the show, and published in 1995, the story is set this time in New York City, in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn. Rob (Robyn) Brooks, 29, played by Zoë Kravitz, is the proud owner of Championship Vinyl, a struggling independent record shop. Simon Miller and Cherise, played by David H. Holmes and Da'Vine Joy Randolph, also work there, a way for Rob to help out her two friends. Simon is actually her boyfriend n°3, they got along really well, but it turns out that Simon prefers boys. Cherise is a budding artist who is trying to find herself, as so she has her moods and appears whenever she feels like it. Funny, full of vitality and wit, Randolph is incredible in this role.

Rob also has a brother, Cameron Brooks, played by Rainbow Sun Francks, who is about to become a father for the first time. All these characters constitute her close entourage. And then there's Mac (Russell McCormack), played by Kingsley Ben-Adir. Originally a friend of her brother, they formed a happy couple until their painful breakup a year ago. We let you watch the trailer.

As one can imagine, music holds an important place for Rob, it echoes every moment of her life, and it is a way for her to express what she cannot describe in mere words. As Keith Richards puts it so well: “Music is a language that doesn’t speak in particular words. It speaks in emotions, and if it’s in the bones, it’s in the bones”.

With a most eclectic soundtrack and no less than 150 songs, we have selected for you about ten of them.

EPISODE 1

It's been a year since Rob and Mac split up and apparently Clyde, played by Jake Lacy, is her first serious date in all this time. As they are quietly having a drink in the back room of a bar we can hear Otis Brown's song, Somebody Help Me, playing in the background. The choice of this title is quite funny and lends itself perfectly to the situation, since Rob, unable to take it any longer, pretends to go to the bathroom just to sneak out before realizing, once in the street, that she forgot her cell phone on the table. She then goes back there like nothing happened.

Otis Brown was born in 1942 in Memphis Tennessee. Due to an asthma condition, his family moved several times before settling permanently in Chicago so that Otis could receive a treatment there. He grew up in the then bustling neighborhood of Englewood, where he made his debut.

Somebody Help Me can be found on the Southside Chicago compilation album, released in 2018.

During the episode Rob goes through a list of her desert island top five most memorable heartbreaks. Simon is on the list, which didn't stop them from remaining very good friends afterwards. Unsurprisingly, Mac was her most difficult breakup. At the end of the episode, we learn that before joining Clyde, she unexpectedly ran into him in the street when she thought he was still living in London. A rather embarrassing moment. The episode ends with the song I Can’t Stand the Rain by Ann Peebles. It's raining outside. Rob is sitting in her living room remembering the old sweet days she spent with Mac. Mac was/is the “fucking” deal, he seemed to be the one. Why did it end badly? She wonders herself.

I Can’t Stand the Rain is featured on Ann Peebles' album I Can’t Stand the Rain released in 1974 by Hi Records, a soul and rockabilly label based in Memphis Tennessee.

Written and recorded a year before, it was said to be one of John Lennon's favorite songs.                  

Peebles, born in 1947 and originally from St Louis Missouri, was going to experience at the age of 27 one of her major successes. The song even ranked at the 38th place on the US Billboard Hot 100 at the time.

EPISODE 4

Rob is at a point where she wonders how she managed to end up here, alone. Is she doomed to be rejected? During the episode, she'll try to reconnect with her exes, her infamous all time boohoo list, in order to understand why her old relationships turned out badly. Not such a good idea. The episode ends with David Bowie's song, It Ain’t Easy, quite an understatement.

It Ain’t Easy by David Bowie is part of the album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders from Mars, released in 1972 in the UK by RCA Records.

5th studio album by the English musician, the track will stand out a bit from the rest since it is the only cover of the album. Originally a song by Louisiana artist Ron Davies, released in 1970, on the LP Silent Song Through the Land.

EPISODE 6

Rob may be lost in her love affairs, but she's still a trendy girl, who goes out almost every night. No wonder she meets tons of artists and ends up spending the night with one of them. It's in the morning, she wakes up at a rock star home ten years her junior, he's 19, she's 29. As they are drinking coffee, the song Sheebeen Queen by Rikki Ililonga rings out softly.

Born in 1949, Rikki Ililonga was 15 when Zambia accedes to independence in 1964. He made a name for himself in the early 1970s with his music band Musi-O-Tunya before pursuing a solo career. Pioneer of Zamrock, funk and psychedelic rock sounds associated with African traditional rhythms, his influences range from Jimi Hendrix to James Brown by way of the Rolling Stones.

Sounds arrangements that can be found on Sheebeen Queen, a song from the LP Zambia released in Zambia in 1975.

EPISODE 7

Rob is in a bar celebrating the last Hurah Party of her brother, soon to be father, who thinks simply put that his life as he knew it is just over. Cameron is a real party animal and finds himself a little confused by the new role that awaits him. So he decides to celebrate it as it should, a farewell ride with all his friends. Mac is here, Clyde is here; soon the all thing is going off tracks. As Rob tries to reason with her brother, we can hear Sam Dees and the song Claim Jumpin'.

Originally from Birmingham Alabama, Sam Dees is alternately a soul singer, songwriter and music producer. The song Claim Jumpin' was first released as a single in 1972 by ClinTone Records, before appearing on the album The Show Must Go On, released in 1975 by Atlantic Records. This album will mark a turning point in Sam Dees’ career.

EPISODE 8

In this episode, it's Simon's turn to list his top five most memorable heartbreaks. You will see the list is quite surprising. During his story, a thunderous When I Get Home, from the band The Innocents, comes to strike us.

Power pop band originally from Hobart Tasmania and formed in 1975, they first got themselves known under the stage name Beathoven before becoming The Innocents. They would rise to some prominence at the end of the 70's in Australia, but that never crossed the borders of the country, the band having not released any album internationally. It was taken care of in 2000 with the compilation No Hit Wonders From Down Under released by Zip Records. On it, the track When I Get Home.

EPISODE 9

As they usually do, Rob, Simon and Cherise are going for an after work drink. Rob has been acting weird all day. Sitting at the bar, Simon and Cherise suddenly realize that they forgot to celebrate her birthday. Her thirties! All under the instrumental Try Me by WITCH.

Another prominent representative of Zamrock is the band WITCH, which stands for We Intend to Cause Havoc.

Try is an instrumental featured on the album Introduction, their first studio album, released in 1973 by Zambia Music Parlour. The band was then one of the most popular in Zambia, but it will not withstand the country's economic and social difficulties, the AIDS epidemic and an increasingly authoritarian government. Like most musical bands of the time, it slowly falls into oblivion.

EPISODE 10

“You fucking asshole!…” Rob's brother shows up at Championship, he looks more than pissed off. At this point, we already know the ins and outs of her breakup with Mac. Nina Simone's Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood resonates here like a foregone conclusion.

Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood is featured on the album Broadway – Blues – Ballads, recorded in New York City in 1964. At this date, Nina Simone already has ten albums to her credit, her first album Little Blue Girl, has been released in 1958. Born in 1933 after the Great Depression, she grew up in North Carolina, a segregationist Southern State of the United States. Eunice Kathleen Waymon dreamed of becoming the first black classical pianist. She played Bach, Rachmaninov, inside out. She auditioned for the prestigious Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, but was refused, unfortunately, in all likelihood, because of her skin color. Never mind, Eunice becomes Nina Simone and builds on her success. 1964 marks a turning point in her career. She moves to Philips Records and is campaigning more and more openly for the Civil Rights movement. She rubs shoulders with Bob Dylan, Martin Luther King or Malcom X. America is a bloody battlefield. President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was just murdered in Dallas Texas a few months earlier on November 22, 1963, and white supremacists think they are allowed anything.

Broadway – Blues – Ballads follows Nina Simone in Concert, a live album recorded at Carnegie Hall in New York City, in March and April 1964. For the first time, Nina Simone will address the issue of racial inequalities in the United States in the song Mississippi Goddam. It was her response to the June 12, 1963 murder of Medgar Evers (an American Civil Rights activist in Mississippi and a World War II veteran) and the September 15, 1963 bombing of a Baptist church in Birmingham Alabama, who killed four black young girls and left a fifth partially blind.

Mississippi Goddam was released as a single and was boycotted in some Southern States. Promotional copies were even smashed by a Carolina radio station and returned to Philips. It is in this strained context, that in the wake of it comes the album Broadway – Blues – Ballads, with so, this wonderful Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood, song written by Bennie Benjamin, Horace Hott and Sol Marcus.

That's it! The Brooks family is growing. Rob goes to the hospital to meet her new-born niece. The emotion is even more palpable with the title Baby Where You Are by Ted Lucas.

Ted Lucas was a mainstay of the Detroit music scene during the 60's and 70's. At the root of multiple music bands, he happens to open for the Eagles or Frank Zappa among others. Unparalleled musician, he also participates in the recording of numerous Motown Sessions as a guitarist or harmonica player and thus appears on the albums of the Temptations or the Supremes to name a few. In 1975 he self-produced a solo album, Ted Lucas, which received little attention at the time. Reissued in 2010 by Yoga Records, here is Baby Where You Are, one of the tracks from the album.

Just this once, it's Cherise's turn to close the shop when she receives an unexpected delivery from Rob; a gift to “reinvent herself” and fulfill herself as an artist. Will she succeed? The Funkadelic also wonder with the track Can You Get To That. Us, we have no doubts!

Funkadelic is an American funk band formed by George Clinton in 1964. Maggot Brain is their third studio album, recorded in Detroit and released in 1971 by Westbound Records. In 2003, Rolling Stone magazine will include Maggot Brain in its list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. The song Can You Get To That, featured on the album, contains elements of folk blues and gospel music, notably due to the participation of Isaac Hayes’s backing vocal group, Hot Buttered Soul.