RIP Issac Hayes

I was in a cafe today eating some wonton noodles w/ my roommate and bam... during an NBC Olympic news segment, they announced Ike was indeed gone forever. We couldn't really understand what the announcer was saying (the chinese waiters said they'd turn the hearing impaired subtitles on, but 30 minutes later still no dice), but just going thru the photo/video montage of Hayes from the 60's to the South Park era of his role as Chef it was pretty sad. Rest in peace. Check out that album art tho!

His hits included "Soul Man", "Shaft (Theme Song)", "Walk on By" and later "Chocolate Salty Balls".

Dude even had a track w/ the Wu Tang Clan - "I Can't Go to Sleep"


With most famous people, I don't really have a story to go along with their passing. About 5 years ago I had the oppertunity to see Mr. Hayes preform live at the Sunset Junction street festival in Silverlake. I posted the original 2003 story here, back when I still used my Xanga account.

Here's a more updated account of that same story:

In the summer of 2003, my dating career was pretty alright for someone living in an apartment living room for the summer with 5 other roommates in a two-bedroom. I mean, it sucked ass, but this was only to last until the school year started up again. The fragrence of marijuana was seeping in from everywhere at all hours of the day and the Playstation 2 was always on with somebody playing Marvel vs Capcom 2. Not being much of a gamer myself it was annoying - yes, but aside from the mass amounts of trash everywhere and cigarette smoke in the air; beer and our supply of herbals were always fully stocked.

So being in this kind of environment with zero privacy and being an incredibly horny 20 year old college student with his own car - you seem to try to find any oppertunity to go on dates or meet up with girls you sorta know/want to date and hopefully get laid.

Aside from the underage chubby high school emo girl I met ouside a Del Taco one Taco Tuesday of a night, I ended up meeting an Asian chick outside of a club party through a friend. In a drunken haze numbers were exchanged danced the night away together. She was super intelligent, loved the work Wes Anderson, the writings of Amy Tan, a funky/sceney style, glasses, petit, from a broken home and sorta into dudes like me... but I later began to understand she was pretty hung up on an ex boyfriend. An Asian musician type and I think he played in some ska band at Disneyland like every summer or something... but anyway back to the story.

So I call her up and she tells me about some music festival called Sunset Junction where Phantom Planet was playing and admission was a steep $7.00. Being the lagger that I still am, I didn't get there till about 30 minutes after the band had finished their set. I get the call at this point that she'd already left.

After making the trip all the way from Irvine to East LA, parking and picking up my boy A$ I wasn't gonna drive back. Like true middle school G's we just snuck into the festival under the guise of pretending to admire some crappy boho glass sculptures. While walking around for about 5 minutes into the place I had this moment of realization similar to the one in Chasing Amy: the scene where Banky's at a party and looks around at gay couples kissing and realizes he's actually at a gay bar.

My first tip was the unusal amount of topless and sculpted men walking around in large packs, talking in lispy voices and constantly giving each other group hugs. The second was the unusual amount of cardboard trashcans loacated all over sponsored by the Wet Lubrication company with the tagline "Supporting our Community". Thirdly, I noticed the abundance of rainbowed objects and men holding onto each other... but don't get me wrong. I have nothing against gay people - especially those buff guys who where there that day. In a brawl - sign me up on their squad.

Anyway, walking further through the street festival and coping with the mass influx of homosexuality, I finally found a schedule of preformances and up next: ISSAC HAYES and the SUPREMES!

I wasn't really jumping for joy when I saw this, but I figured it'd a good way to up my indie cred to say I've seen some soul legends in concert. Caught the end of the Supremes set and Issac Hayes was next. Ike came out with a 12 piece band and dressed in a daisheki (a colorful african robe with matching hat), sun glasses, beard and all. They started the set preforming hits such as "Soul Man" and "Walk on By". During the entire set I couldn't help from constantly yelling "play the South Park song!" - being "Chocolate Salty Balls"

Mp3: Chef - "Chocolate Salty Balls"(PS: I Love You) (download)

After the first three songs and an nice bass solo me and A$ decided to leave* 'cause we figured he wouldn't play the Shaft theme song till the end of the set. Suddenly on our way out I heard the bass go, the lyrics "...half a stick of butter melted/stick it all in a bowl baby..." and the crowd went nuts! If there's anything I can say from my personal encounter with Ike, the man had a sense of humor: playing a song about tea bagging in front of a crowd that consisted of of primarily gay men. Fabulous.

*On a side note: I remember clearly the main reason me and A$ wanted to bounce was because directly behind us in the crowd there were two chubby computer programmer-by-day/mega-perverts-by-night looking German dudes in glasses, combat boots, silver speedos, bondage gear and incredibly obvious hard-ons... one was even wearing a leash.