I was flipping through channels on the TV recently [how did we ever live with just four channels and (gasp!) tuning KNOBS?] and caught a few seconds of an infomercial for one of those compilation records. Number one songs from the ’70s or something like that. One of the songs they played a snippet from [before I clicked away] was Kiss You All Over by Exile.

This is another song that was controversial in its time though I never understood why. The most provocative lines are in the chorus:

I wanna kiss you all over
And over again
I wanna kiss you all over
Till the night closes in

Pretty tame stuff really even compared to what was out at the same time. But it was a big hit.

I saw Exile in concert once. I think they were the opening act for Journey. In the late ’70s, that was pretty hot stuff. [As much as I love music, I hate big crowds even more. So I haven't been to a huge number of concerts. But even so they tend to blur in my memory. And I wasn't drugged up at any of them. Go figure.] A few years later I saw them playing in the lounge at a bowling alley in Lexington, KY. The music business has its ups and downs, after all.

But the band had started as a group of high school kids in the early 60’s in the town where I would later go to college, Richmond, KY. They played with the Dick Clark Caravan of Stars in the late 60’s and were a big regional band in central and eastern Kentucky. After their precipitous rise and fall they morphed into a country band. There have been myriad changes in the band membership, but they’ve enjoyed pretty consistent if less conspicuous success over the years.

So anyway, in the late ’70s I was going to school in Richmond, KY and saw a local band hitting it big opening for Journey [I think] in Lexington, KY. And a few days ago I heard a few bars of a song that transported me back there. That was a cold winter… but that’s another story….

Posted by Tim