In one of the semesters of my junior year of college, I had to take a graphic design course as part of my core art curriculum. We had an adjunct instructor that semester (I’ve forgotten her name since then) that would often put on music after her demos while we worked on whatever assignment that was given. One day she put on an album—it’s the only one I remember—that was an instant hit. That album was A Little Bit of Somethin’ by Tommy Guerrero. I’d never heard of him before, but I loved his fusion of Jazz and Funk. It was the perfect music to groove out to, and it still is for me. I remember walking down to (I think) Sam Goody that day and buying the CD, but it was one they didn’t have in the store, so they had to order it in. Once it came, I listened to it non-stop. Every song was a “banger.”
Despite my obsession with that album then and for just over two decades since, I never did go in search of more of his albums. I never even looked to see if he had any others. I purposefully kept myself ignorant. A Little Bit of Somethin’ had so effectively knocked it out of the park for me that I didn’t think anything else by Guerrero, if he had anything (spoiler: he did have more and would release more albums in my years of self-imposed ignorance), could be as good. I know. It sounds rather dumb to not want to listen to more music by a certain artist, view more photographs by a certain photographer, paintings by a certain painter, read more poems by a certain poet, view more ballets by a certain dance company or choreographer because the one singular experience with that artist was so good that you would deny yourself any other experiences with them. But that was the state I kept myself in until a few months ago when I decided it was time to branch out, and added two more albums to my library. It was true that neither quite met the mark of A Little Bit of Somethin’, they were still really good albums. They were still just as suitable to groove out to while developing film, or working in Photoshop or Lightroom, or preparing carbon tissue and prints.
So a couple weeks ago I got the rest of his oeuvre (thank goodness for an Apple Music subscription), and I still regard that first album as the best, but I still thoroughly enjoy every single album—all thirteen of them.
On the one hand, I feel like I needlessly deprived myself of so much really good music. On the other, maybe I needed to deprive myself in order to really appreciate the rest of what Tommy has made in his career. At least that’s what I’ll tell myself now to make myself feel better about my delusional choice.
It would only be appropriate to include some music in a post about music, so here are some of my favorite Tommy Guerrero songs, and I’m restricting myself to just 2 off of A Little Bit of Somethin’.