The shampoo I’m currently using is a type I don’t think I’ll ever be getting again. Just to clarify, I’m not currently using it. I’m not showering right now. Electronic devices and water aren’t really a recipe for harmonious living. But the shampoo bottle I’m halfway through in those times when I do cleanse myself of the day’s accumulations isn’t very great.
On the plus side, it does what it’s supposed to do; it cleans hair. It (the shampoo) even did it (cleaned the hair) well when I had loads of it (hair). That was before I took a pair of scissors to that whole top-fringe thing I had going on. Short at the sides, long on the top is an okay look, I suppose, but there are limits as to how long the top can be. Excessive sweeping in a backwards motion has certainly given my hands something to do in idle moments of stress or whenever the hair has gotten in my face. This seemed to be all the time, which is unsurprising when you consider, if pulled forwards, the length of hair covered the length of face, leaving tips to burst the chin. I didn’t mean to get here; I was on about shit shampoo.
The key down-side comes in a more obvious way – how it smells. It’s difficult to describe scent. You need something else to compare it with. In this case, I’ve managed to smash two things together in the hope that it somehow describes what the top of my noggin has smelt like for weeks. Imagine (if you will) the cross between an old leather jacket and a wet newspaper. That’s probably the closest you’ll get.
Not only has the smell been off-putting, but it’s been following me around everywhere I go, every bloody day, because it’s ingrained in my own head. Even the towels I use regularly have started to carry the scent, but with an after-aroma of a hairdresser’s burning to the ground in flurries of singed hairs and exploding hairspray cans. And that’s even after multiple machine washes.
The main problem I face here is whether to throw away a perfectly good half-bottle of shampoo, thereby wasting product and money in the process. Alternatively, I could just keep begrudgingly using it. I could have the smell follow me around until the bottle has squozen its last squeeze. I could make sure I use the lot because then I won’t have to buy a new one straight away; I can make the most of this one. And I’ve always been taught not to let things go to waste, simply because there are starving kids in far more deprived areas of the world who’d love to eat what I’m throwing away.
Do I really want to keep using this? Do I really want to spend money on a new kind of shampoo. Am I really that frugal with my money that I’d allow myself to go out in public with a terribly smelling head than simply put a stop to the situation? Am I really a monster for not letting some poor, impoverished soul eat the remainder of my shampoo? These are all hypothetical questions, by the way. I’m not actually trying very hard this week, sorry. It’s actually been quite warm out (read, “fucking stifling”) and I have a growing sense of lethargy that just seems far too much to overcome. I’ve just got out the shower and all I really want to do now is just eat crisps and play video games, so why the hell am I still writing this?
Not many musicians have had careers spanning several decades. For starters, you have to live long enough. It generally helps to start early too, that way you don’t necessarily have to live as long to reach your goal. This is getting morbid. Sorry about that. Why don’t we get back to joyfulness as we focus on what a funkalicious tune this is, eh?
Exuding all the old-man swagger of Tom Jones if he was an African-American soul singer instead of a white Welsh bloke, Charles Bradley manages to make something new that actually sounds like an old classic of the soul/Motown era. There’s also a bit of growling in this like somebody’s just stepped on the unmentionables of a non-domesticated cat. If you think that’s an unpleasant criticism, you’re so totally incorrect and you should feel mighty foolish for it.
Charles Bradley – Ain’t It A Sin
Jamie Walsh 
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