In the end you’re seduced by the quiet storm, but it’s the storm of a loner either scowling at relationships, or begging for reconciliation. Even the obligatory white-boy cover (Todd Rundgren’s “Hello It’s Me”) is chosen and molded to fit this mood. ![]() Live It Up might seem at first listen like a replication of the 3 + 3 formula, but beneath the heady funk jams which open both sides lurks an ocean of lust, sadness, and bitterness. ![]() The blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice, but let’s not forget Ernie Isley’s lava-seam of guitar pyrotechnics. This was an exuberant album that cartwheeled across your Sunday-morning sunbeam den (unlike their late ’70s LPs, which crawled between your sheets round midnight). ![]() Live It Up was released just 10 months after the eternal 3 + 3, which transformed the band from a trio to a sextet (thus the title) and was keyed with the astonishing single “That Lady”, plus a superior cover of Seals & Crofts’ “Summer Breeze”. You can have your Watergate, just gives the Isleys some love (plus a clavinet) and they’ll be straight. That’s the insistent refrain of this classic Isleys title track, and you gotta wonder whether this hedonistic guilt acquired a shady significance when the LP dropped into racks one week after Nixon’s resignation.
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