While Bivens’s rave that the group is like having “Donny Hathaway, Bobby Womack, and Al Green, in their prime, all in one group” would only hold sway with a generation of music consumers who have not really listened to the body of work of the aforementioned classic Soul Men, the trio of Charles “Gator” Moore, Rashawn Worthen, Balawa Muhammad more than competently update the classic Soul Man sound of the 1970s. The recordings cover art reflects this notion as it looks like a film advertisement. In fact Bivens has suggested that the recording was based on a film treatment he created which was inspired by Blaxploitation fare such as Hell Up in Harlem, Three the Hard Way, and of course Black Caeser. With their debut Back in Da Days, The Transitions recall the Harlem that Chester Himes made so famous in a string of detective novels such as Pink Toes, Cotton Comes to Harlem and Come Back Charleston Blue, the latter two of which were the inspiration for Blaxploitation staples of the same title from the 1970s. It is this nostalgia for the era when black urban communities begin to wilt under the pressure of de-industrialization, municipal collapse, and heroin addiction, that informs the debut release of The Transitions, a trio managed by Michael Bivens, he of New Edition and the creative energy behind the early career of the unforgettable Boys II Men and the more forgettable Another Bad Creation (ABC) and Subway. It is perhaps such romanticizing about recent urban history - a state that I refer to as “post-industrial nostalgia” - that allows folks to continue to have faith in the face of drug addiction, high unemployment, police brutality (it’s a damn shame what’s gone down in Cincinnati these last seven or eight years), diminishing services, etc.
Not that Biggie was mistaken, no doubt there was much luv on the planet they call Brooklyn in those days as they still luv deeply and meaningfully in most urban communities, but that don’t mean that there ain’t drama on the regular. By all accounts there was not much to celebrate back then in those urban enclaves that became synonymous with urban blight and a burgeoning urban underclass (you all have read Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire Vanities, right?). When Biggie (the late Notorious B.I.G.) waxed poetic about “back in the day” in the song “Things Done Change”, there was reason to pause - Biggie’s “back in the day” would have been Bed-Stuy/Crown Heights circa 1980, the same year Reagan was anointed President and three years after then President Jimmy Carter paid a well publicized visit to a shit-hole known as Charlotte Street in the borough affectionately known as the “boogie-down”.
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