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Tower of Power - Stranger In My Own House

Tower of Power - Stranger In My Own House Lyrics and Youtube Music Videos

Album: The Oakland Zone
Released: 2003

Stranger In My Own House Lyrics

Stranger In My Own House

Emilio Castillo is one of the founding members of Tower of Power. He produced the album and wrote many of the tracks, including this one. Says Castillo:
"I wrote that song with a friend of mine, his name is Leo Sacks. He lives in New York City and he's a journalist. He wrote the NBC Weekend News for Garrick Utley, but he's especially into song music and he left that profession and started doing reissues for Legacy. He's in charge of all the reissues for Earth, Wind & Fire, The O'Jays, Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes, and The Isley Brothers. He pulls out stuff from the vaults and remixes it and he does all the liner notes. He's really into music that way. He asked me, 'You know, I've produced a lot of things now on these reissues. Could I produce a track for you guys?' And I said no. He goes, 'Oh, you answered me pretty quickly there.' I said, 'Leo, I'll be honest with you, man. I'm looking to work with producers on the caliber of Quincy Jones, somebody I can relate to musically. You don't know music at all. You've done these great productions for these reissues but Tower of Power is a whole different animal and I'm not looking for that type of thing for Tower of Power. But I will write songs with you.' And he goes, 'What? I don't know how to write songs.' I said, 'Well I'll teach you.' And what I told him was, 'You've got to come to me, I'm not flying to New York to teach you to write songs. But if you can come to my house, you can stay there for a few days and I'll show you how to write.' He says, 'How do you know I can write?' I said, 'You're a journalist, you're into Soul music big time. We're going to sit around and talk and we're going to write songs.' He came to my house, we wrote three songs the first time he came and then he came back when I was demoing the three songs and we wrote another one. Out of those four songs, three of them got used. Two of them made the record: Happy About That and Stranger In My Own House. Nothing Like It was a bonus cut in Europe."

Castillo: "As far as the story about Stranger In My Own House, there was no story. It is absolutely made up. I came up with a chord progression - that sort of minor sound - and to me it sounded like something ominous, and I came up with that hook, 'I feel like a stranger in my own house,' and then we wrote a story based on that. But there's no truth to it, there's no real life bearing in it at all." (Check out our interview with Emilio Castillo. You can learn much more at his website, towerofpower.com .)

Tower of Power - What Is Hip?

Tower of Power - What Is Hip? Lyrics and Youtube Music Videos

Album: Tower of Power
Released: 1973

What Is Hip? Lyrics

So you want to jump out your trick bag
And ease on into a hip bag
But you ain't just exactly sure what's hip
So you start to let your hair grow
Spend big bucks to cop you a wardrobe
But somehow you know there's much more to the trip

[Chorus]
What Is Hip?
Tell me, tell me if you think you know
What is hip?
If you was really hip
The passing years would show
You into a hip trip
Maybe hipper than hip
But what is hip?

So you became part of the new breed
Been smokin' only the best weed
Been hangin' out on the so-called hippest set
Being seen at all the right places
Being seen with just the right faces
You should be satisfied
Still it ain't quite right

[Chorus]

Hipness, what it is!
Hipness, what it is!
Hipness, what it is!
And sometimes hipness is
What it ain't!

You done even went and found you a guru
In your effort to find you a new you
And maybe even managed
To raise your conscious level
As you striving to find the right road
There's one thing you should know
What's hip today
Might become passe

Writer/s: S. KUPKA, E. CASTILLO, D. GARIBALDI
Publisher: BOB-A-LEW SONGS
Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind

What Is Hip?

Tower of Power sax players Emilio Castillo and Stephen "Doc" Kupka wrote this song. In our interview with Castillo , he said: "I would give most of the credit for that concept lyrically to Doc. He said he wanted write a song about being hip and I said, 'About being hip?' He said, 'Well, what I mean is being hip is so short lived. You can be hip by wearing your hair a certain way today and then in three months that style's gone and you're as unhip as you could possibly be. I want to write a song about that.' It's saying what's hip today might become passé."

The group's drummer, David Garibaldi, helped out with the rhythms. Castillo told us, "It was his idea to get Rocco to play those sixteenth notes on the bass. There was a song out at the time called 'Going Down' by Freddie King and it had that bass line. Girabladi's idea was to hit those sixteenth notes and then rather than hitting a big one, you know one, two, three, four, one... He says, 'We're going to push it one sixteenth in front of the one every time.' So it'd be, one, two, three, four, boom, two, three, four, boom... and that sort of prevailing thing throughout the tune is what made that song drive. And then on top of that we had the classic horn arrangement and Lenny Williams singing it."

Sheila E. intended to cover this tune on her 1991 set, Sex Cymbal, but TOP's horn section was unavailable. She opted to redo Labelle's "Lady Marmalade" instead. (thanks, Faundell - Brooklyn, NJ)