just wanta say a belated bye bye to charles smith, the guitar player of kool and the gang. i saw the band, let's see, 1983, at the "laurel super music fest" at laurel racetrack, md, with, among others, chaka khan and marvin gaye. i was covering the show for the baltimore city paper. it was afuckinhundreddegrees, and people were literally dropping and getting ambulanced off. but anyway, kool and the gang - at that time riding very high in the jt era ('get down on it' etc) was the straight-up tightest band i ever saw (and i saw everybody). they were fucking amazing, with the full horn section, giving everything on every song, playing with a kind of absolute improvised perfection. it was just one of those things you remember a quarter century later, when you've forgotten everything else.
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