The best Meters recordings are the early instrumentals. Each one teaches new lessons, even after years of repeated listening. I’ll go through periods when I’m simply over saturated and will take a break, but I always keep a couple of these instrumentals handy.

I’m always astounded by the fact that the guitarist, Leo Nocentelli, is audibly the strict time-keeper of the group, while Zigaboo (drums) and George Porter Jr. (bass) lope around freely, laying way off the beat (I’m sure there are some outtakes of them missing it completely). When I picture them playing, I see Leo as an almost military figure, standing erect while maintaining constant eye contact with the two cadets. Art (organ), meanwhile, strikes me as the guy that floats in and out, goes out for coffee in the middle of songs, etc., without much regard for the other three young upstarts.

The experience of listening to “Sophisticated Cissy” is like watching a slow-moving train lurching along in a silent movie. About two and a half minutes in, you think it’s going to pick up speed, but it doesn’t. The train just gets funkier and vibrates more, as though it’s choking on some bad fuel or trying to spit out exhaust or something. I don’t know. I’m out of metaphors. It’s like riding in an old jalopy (there’s one more).

It’s funk minimalism. The bass hits note X in time with the bass drum, the guitar chunks on 9th chord Y with the snare drum, the organ plays a single line melody over the top, and at the end the quartet churns it up a little to keep the interest going. The whole stew is captured on tape; it rolls out of a production line onto people’s portable listening devices, and there you have it. “Sophisticated Cissy” is a strange little product, a bunch of 1s and 0s that insinuates itself. The song is certainly not the most famous or celebrated in the Meters catalog, nor is it danciest, most melodic, or most innovative. Simply: it’s the funkiest.

This reminds me of my sister, Karen, who spent a bunch of years in New Orleans and is kind of sophisticated herself…

Album info: The Meters (1969)