Think Twice
Donald Byrd
Stepping Into Tomorrow, 1975
This song has been getting a lot of run recently between Erykah Badu covering it with Roy Hargrove on Worldwide Underground (I guess that wasn’t that recently), the disjointed “Think Twice (Mizell 2005 Remix)” on this year’s Mizell compilation, as well as the well-intentioned if slightly disorganized night-ending tribute cover of it at “Gilles Peterson presents ‘The BBC Sessions Live!’” at the Canal Room last month with Larry Mizell (the original producer) in attendance. The original reigns supreme over all of those versions so I thought I would put it back out there for anyone who hasn’t heard it.
I don’t pay much attention to lyrics but am I the only person who doesn’t understand what this song is about?
“Maybe we ought to think twice / before we start something nice / no need to sacrifice the spice in our lives…oh oh // Your love’s like fire and ice / that’s why we ought to think twice / before we start something nice, oh oh.”
Sacrificin’ the spice don’t sound nice. I can understand hesitance about some hot-n-cold love but in my mind, that kind of situation, with all the requisite second guessing and interpretation usually makes things more, rather than less, spicy. Not to mention that to tolerate the cold, the hot has to pretty hot.
Someone put me on if I’m missing something but the lyrics are definitely secondary in judging the greatness of this song. My favorite thing about it is that there are dueling melody lines going during a large portion of the song. Sax behind female vocals, trumpet in between male vocals, sax and trumpet, female vocals behind sax, male vocals behind trumpet, trumpet alongside female vocals (yes, in that order, i’m that much of a geek).
Don’t miss the big Tribe sample at 4:57.
>> songs are available for two weeks [8.5 MB]
November 30th, 2005 at 9:13 pm
I’m dying to hear this song! What’s up with the download?
November 30th, 2005 at 9:22 pm
my bad! it’s fixed now.