Mr. Dead-Centered, an old BarNone and plenty of, IF (I love music part 2)

Mr. Dead-Centered, an old BarNone and plenty of, IF (I love music part 2)
By Jon Slone






Easy question time…you ready?

Here we go.

Look at the picture above, which one do you think is the lead singer?

Yep…

The dude dead-center rockin’ the paisley shirt with the jean collar right?

That’s what I thought too…

Like, for twenty years!

Guess what?

I was wrong.


As a music-loving kid in the 1970’s, I, like every other inquisitive scavenger my age, stumbled upon this invaluable cache in my parents vast album collection. By cache, I mean the wonder band called, Bread. Within the four slices, what comprise this loaf of awesomeness is the chief song writer and lead singer, a man by the name of David Gates.


Hear me people who still rock a lunch box or a meal ticket…..this David Gates has the best falsetto voice on the planet bar none (Hey that was a yummy candy bar wasn’t it!)


















Just how good is Bread you ask?


The band, Fleetwood Mac garnered 17 top 20 hits inside of thirty years. Bread nabbed a whopping 10 in a career that spanned only 31 months. Imagine if Bread had stayed fresh for thirty or forty years?


If for some outlandish reason you are not familiar with their body of work, by all means, partake of these sumptuous bites straightaway:


Baby I’m A Want You
It don’t matter to me
Everything I own
Make it with you


And


Wait for it…


IF


You knew that was coming, didn’t you?


Ah,……….IF.

Just two little letters and a paltry two minutes and thirty-six seconds long and yet still, its unadulterated brilliance with regards to its overall angelic sound and ocean-deep lyrical content. (It’s pure poetry people)


Check out these words:


And when, my love, for life is running dry…
You’ll come, and pour, yourself, on me.


AWWWWWWWWW!

Are you frickin’ kiddin’ me?! This is the substance of baby’s farting in church and tiny tea-set parties and forlorn little puppies.


Jane Austin has this song on her iPod for cryin’ out loud!


This is what butterflies and rainbows and Amish people neck to!


A Krispy Kreme Buffet and a Coca Cola IV ain’t got nothin’ on this song!


If your first kiss or your first grass stain or your first Stretch Armstrong were magically pooled with all the glory days of recess’ gone by and millenniums’ spent trick-or-treating….if you could melt all of that down into a song and then sprinkle it atop your doughnut heart like it was snowy droplets of powdered sugar………those syrupy flakes of ear toffee would be the song, IF.


Put it to you this way, between the years of 11 and 22, I serenaded roughly 10 women with this buttery gem.

I closed the deal on all 10.


By closed, I mean we either dated or became boyfriend/girlfriend.


Little known fact: Women dig men who dig Bread enough to sing Bread to said women…..wait, what?


Let’s review:

David Gates = Angel
David’s voice = Angelic
The sound of the song, IF (instrumentation and all) = Heavenly
The words = Poetry


The mentioning of DG brings me back to the beginning of this post.


It was and still is a weird feeling to love and listen to a band for as long as I have and to furthermore, gape at the most famous picture of that band and to suppose you’ve locked in on the lead singer, only to find out, a buh-jillion years later, that you have instead been looking at the disgruntled and green-eyed guitar player, one by the name of Mr. James Griffin, the late Mr. Griffin I should add (Actually, for that matter, all but the lead singer have passed away now).


But getting back to the famous photo and my innocent blunder…..

Come on people, really?!


To those, ‘horrible, position-the-band-for-a-famous-album-cover-picture-people’ I offer this quote:


Don’t fall victim to classic blunders. The two most famous are, ‘never get involved in a land war in Asia’ and ‘never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line’….but only slightly less known is this, ‘never stick the lead singer behind a weird looking guitarist in a paisley shirt with a jean collar.’



Now go have fun storming the castle. And take your Bread with ya!


Jon



By the way, David Gates, for those that don’t know, is the one with the shortest haircut.