Friday, November 9, 2007

Redbone - "Come And Get Your Love" (1974)

These guys totally had me fooled, and everybody else as well. With Native American band name, cover art, song titles ("We Were All Wounded At Wounded Knee") and as you can see from the video below, stage outfits and shtick, you would think this was a breakthrough Native American band.

Well, you'd be half right. While fact checking this post, it seems the two brothers who led the band, Pat and Lolly Vegas, were born Pat and Lolly Vazquez and were, in fact, Hispanic!

No matter. "Come and Get Your Love" seemed to bridge the transition of AM hit radio to FM. One of my friends even impersonates famous WABC jock Ron Lundy announcing: "Hello, love! 'Come and Get Your Love!' Redbone! "

The early 70's seemed to specialize in the killer bass hook (see "Green Eyed Lady" and Venus' "Venus") and here's yet another one. An irresistible rock song with pop overtones and a defiantly dance beat. This was just a big super hit, that was followed by one other song that charted, the minor and corny "Witch Queen of New Orleans."

As you can tell, I like finding live performance videos when I can, and this one from the old "Midnight Special" show is a tongue-in-cheek delight. Start with a Native Indian dance in full headdress and tom toms (which I don't know is real or for show), before the song kicks in with that "da-da-da-da-dat" snare intro that just stands on its own. Without the strings on the recorded version, Redbone adds a slight funk touch to the rawness of the song.



3 comments:

Anonymous said...

What a great song and video from the past - I had no idea that they were Native American Indians. Thanks for sharing - LOVED IT

Anonymous said...

your wrong,they are yaqui indians,wich are indians from mexico,they were indians before the spanish invasion and conquest of there people and there home land his-spanic is a government term to catorgorize people and remove there cultural affilations from them in order to assimulate or controll them.Indian people didnt have borders and migrate back and forth through out all the americas.If your not from england but you speak english,your people were concored.Dont deny peoples culture.You not there judge.They re discovered there heritage in the later part of there career like so many other assimulated(concored and subjicated)indigenous peoples did.Not un like the irish.Dont be a ignorant white boy

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