Sometimes?

Acid Jazz, a now completely forgotten genre of music, was a big part of helping me to survive. There was pop in it, there was funk in it, and there was always hope in it.

I tortured my parents one day, after I had just seen the lost love of my life smooching with a smarmy fellow at a bar. There was nothing new there, but it hurt so much just the same.

She was wearing that exact same little black dress she had worn when I first met her, all those many years ago, and she had on the very same boots my mother had bought for her on her birthday.

I wanted to cry, but I played my music instead. I put on the new album by the Brand New Heavies, and I forced my poor father to listen.

Like any good father, he humored me. He listened to the the music. He had grown up on old school rock n' roll, yet he always cared about what I cared about. Don't ever tell him I said it, but he was always the most patient man I ever knew.

"That's a great tune. There's only one problem."

"Huh?"

"The singer says you have to do right sometimes to be happy. She's wrong. You have you to try to do right all the time to be happy. You can't be a faithful man one day, and an adulterer the next. So play the song, but replace 'sometimes' with 'always'."

That has stuck with me, like the strongest glue, to this very day. I sat there, drinking cheap beer, and my father had the decency to teach me something I needed to hear.

Brand New Heavies, "Sometimes", from Shelter (1997)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ctC6Kl5O70

Gotta do right, you gotta do right, ah sometimes

Talking about a revolution, or maybe just a change of mind
Working on my constitution, I began to realize
I've been doing wrong forever, trouble was my favorite game, yeah
Breaking hearts I thought was so clever
But I'm the one who got hurt playing

I never could see it comin', no
Never could feel it until it's come and gone
But all of that don't mean nothin', no
When you're all alone, oh

Sometimes you gotta do right to be happy
One time you gotta believe in what you feel inside
Sometimes you gotta do right to find happiness, yeah
Sometimes, sometimes

Gotta do right, 'cha gotta do right, ah, sometimes

You're lookin' at a transformation
That's brought about a change in me
Love's a brand new situation, never have I felt so free

'Cause I can see it comin', yeah
And I can hear it callin' louder now
Lovin' is so rewardin', yeah
When you let it out

Sometimes you gotta do right to be happy
One time you gotta believe in what you feel inside
Sometimes you gotta do right to find happiness
Sometimes, sometimes

Sometimes you gotta do right to be happy
One time you gotta believe in what you feel inside
Sometimes you gotta do right to find happiness, oh yeah
Sometimes, sometimes

Gotta do right, you gotta do right, ah sometimes, sometimes