Unbest

Evan Minsker on The Gap Band’s Gap Band IV (1982)
(iTunes, Rdio, Spotify) 

I had a sense of pride when my brother showed interest in owning records. I was collecting vinyl years before he started actively perusing record stores, and today, the man’s collection is awesomely baffling. He’s got some jazz and soul classics, but also, Mr. Mister, Slippery When Wet, and Whitesnake. He’s not huge on hair metal in a non-ironic way, so it doesn’t make a ton of sense, but that shortlist should give what little insight there is for why a copy of Gap Band IV has been on his wishlist.

Let’s just bask in that album title alone for a second: Gap Band IV. IV! You know who else has IV in their album titles? To name a few: Winger, Godsmack, and Led Zeppelin. And ’80s R&B Oklahomans The Gap Band, apparently.

But I get it. It’s the album with “You Dropped a Bomb on Me”—a total party song. I’m sure that’s most of the appeal right there. And whatever, in ‘82, that album was #1 on the Billboard R&B chart, so I have no room to judge. But I never really asked my brother why he wanted it quite as much as he did. His resolve and clear-headedness regarding the album was pretty unswerving, so I never thought to ask. Every time I’d go to a record store with him in the recent past, he’d head straight for the “G” section of the soul racks and face disappointment. People apparently do not resell their copies of Gap Band IV.

His Christmas list last year was short, but included a section called “Music” that I decided to tackle on my own: Pacific Ocean Blue by Dennis Wilson, If I Could Only Remember My Name by David Crosby, and unsurprisingly, Gap Band IV.

One day after dinner, I walked over to Encore Records in Ann Arbor, which is almost exclusively used records. There’s a good amount of elbow room if you’re looking through the rock records, but in the back, the aisles that hold jazz, soul, blues, hip-hop, classical, comedy, novelty, and country are pretty cramped, which is why if you spend the time, you can find some excellent stuff back there. On this particular night, I started in the comparively open-air rock section and found the Crosby album, no problem. Back in the soul section, I walked past all the Aretha Franklin records, stopped when I hit Isaac Hayes, took a step back, and there, in pristine condition, was Gap Band IV. Actually, there were three pristine copies of Gap Band IV. I was easily too excited about it. I’ve had numerous experiences geeking out over rare or just great records. But I think I was even more excited to find this, a record with probably one good song that would be traveling to Texas within the month.

Smiling notably too much, I took the records to the counter. The gentleman behind the register took the Crosby record, rang it up, and with enthusiastic sincerity said, “This is a great album.” He’s not wrong. It’s also teeming with at-the-time California mainstays (Neil Young, Jerry Garcia, Phil Lesh, Joni Mitchell, Grace Slick, David Geffen), making it a supremely Ann Arbor-y record. He flipped over Gap Band IV, checked the price, and said, with as much fake enthusiasm as he could muster, “Two great albums.” I don’t know why, but I could not stop laughing at the notion that this man thought Gap Band IV was as good of an album as Remember My Name. This man, who was probably stoned in a cooperative in 1971 when he first heard the opening strains of “Music Is Love,” obviously did not have a similar experience with Gap Band IV. I doubt anybody has had that sort of experience with Gap Band IV. The other alternative to his comment: He thought I needed to be reassured about my decision to purchase Gap Band IV. 

On the drive home, still laughing at the idea of that man thinking Gap Band IV was “great,” my girlfriend made it clear that she had never heard “You Dropped a Bomb on Me.” I pulled the song up on Spotify and we listened to it. Actually, I remember that drive pretty vividly—the awful faux-DeBarge dance I was doing in my seat, the rain on the road, looking at the album cover and making fake backstories for each member of the Gap Band, my stomach full of Mexican food. It was probably the most fun I had listening to or thinking about a song in 2011.

Evan Minsker is a writer based in Michigan. He blogs and tweets.