Sex, Drugs, and Well. . .

One of the ways that music—not always rock and roll, but for many of us, it or some variant—can change your life is when it works as a catalyst: There is a certain someone, you, and the music. At the point when these are mixed together, it doesn’t matter if you are in a concert hall or the back seat of a borrowed Buick: It is all that matters.

Throughout time—yes, I’m guessing that our Neolithic forbearers and firebearers were rhythmically beating sticks or rocks or blowing through marrow less bones and bopping around the flat dirt outside the cave—this has been the case. Although there is probably a tendency nowadays to think of music/dancing/sex in the context of today (I suspect that many of us are time-ists, thinking ours is the pinnacle while a minority believes “they don’t make ’em like they used to”—regardless of what “’em” may be), one of the wonderful aspects of the film Amadeus (1984) is when Constanze, played by Elizabeth Berridge, is chasing Tom Hulce’s Wolfgang around: his music may be mannered, but the catalyst still kicks in. There has always been a whole lot of shakin’ going on.

Back in the late 1970s, one of the bands that many a dance bar DJ played when they wanted to “slow things down”—which is not to overlook this band’s up-tempo numbers—is Earth, Wind & Fire. Which, like many bands that wore clothes that looked funny then and which continue to look funny now, pretty much dropped off the screen (and turntable). Maybe it had something to do with the Phil Collins/Philip Bailey collaboration.

But like many things from then, they are back in now. Earth, Wind & Fire is touring.

The band, of course, has a sponsor. Viagra. Apparently, Pfizer isn’t merely going to put up banners, but will actually have booths at the venues so that guys can get their, er, health checked.

Imagine: “Excuse me, honey, I have to go see a health paraprofessional about my, ah, about some, umm, equipment. . . . Want me to get you a wine cooler on my way back?”

Maybe this gives EW&F’s “After the Love Is Gone” a whole new meaning.