War

The other day, on the Smokey Robinson post, Erik mentioned the Temptations’ Psychedelic Shack, an album I’d personally never heard. I gave it a listen and it turns out the Temptations were the original singers of the Edwin Starr classic “War.” I never even realized that was a cover. Who knew.

Also, I listened to that Smokey Robinson album and realized that Swiss Family Robinson was not actually about a family named Robinson — they were just a generic Swiss family with no surname, and “Robinson” was the genre of book, like a shipwreck-away-from-civilization story, as in Robinson Crusoe — which also has a ridiculously long actual title: The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner: Who lived Eight and Twenty Years, all alone in an un-inhabited Island on the Coast of America, near the Mouth of the Great River of Oroonoque; Having been cast on Shore by Shipwreck, wherein all the Men perished but himself. With An Account how he was at last as strangely deliver’d by Pyrates.

Also, I forgot that at the age of 83, Smokey Robinson released an album called Gasms… ughhh.