...no one understands him but his woman.

He probably should've just brought his band, but for some reason Middlebury wanted him to speak at Mead Chapel... Issac Hayes was supposedly there to speak about social issues. Instead we got aimless, sometimes unintelligible, reminiscing. We heard about Stax back in the day, what went platinum, what they played for an encore one night in 1971, how he wrote the theme to Shaft (it, like the lecture, took a little over an hour). Highlights included Tim Spears' introduction ("please welcome this baaad motha"), Hayes' greeting to the crowd ("Hello Children"), stories about his childhood in Tennessee, his response to a question about his decline in popularity ("I never lost my groove."), and watching a camo and Carhartt clad family approach him afterwards to declare their love for his work. I love Vermont.

csl