The Sound and Soul of Philadelphia

On this day in 1974, "TSOP (The Sound of Philadelphia)" by MFSB featuring the Three Degrees hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100—brought to my attention by this A.V. Club article written by my good friend Kate. You know, the theme song from the television show Soul Train that's also played at CBP before the start of every home game? Yeah, this jam:


After reading Kate's description of the tune, it's hard not to draw parallels between Philly soul and our current team of Fightin' Phils:

Though vocals appear on the track twice—The Three Degrees sing “People all over the world!” a few times near the beginning, echoing “Love Train,” and then chorus “Let’s get it on/It’s time to get down” during the fadeout—the focus is clearly on the instruments, which is exactly what made Philly soul special. The lack of a standard frontman crooning in the spotlight was a microcosm of the scene at the time—its strength was cooperation and collaboration.

While mathematics predicts that we will have one of the best four-man pitching rotations in MLB history :(=, recent history suggests that "Chooooooooch is clutch," and my memory tells me that Ryan Howard looks awesome in these goggles, it's difficult to come up with a "standard frontman" for the Phillies. Pretty much everyone has been important so far. The focus is clearly on the instruments, which is exactly what makes our current Phillies team so special.

That's not to discount the role of the city in helping produce a groove that works - like what the Funkadelic talk about in their One Nation Under a Groove album, which even ends with a song called "Cholly (Funk Getting Ready To Roll!)." (It's like George Clinton foresaw the makeup of Uncle Cholly's present day Phillies!) While sitting outside a coffee shop in my neighborhood the other day, I overheard an interesting conversation about just this point—cities, like people and Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes, have soul too. This is all secondhand coffee talk, but I couldn't help but be intrigued by this dude's theory that how much soul a city has depends on two things: how many people from a city still live there to have memories about the city and how neurotically-obsessed people are with their city.

The fact that the Sound of Philadelphia is still honored on CBP's speakers taken with the current paranoia brewing among Phillies fans about when it's okay and not okay to boo can't help but make me think that Philadelphia has the most soul of all.