Let’s begin with the facts. Motown: The DVD contains 18 vintage clips of Motown artists performing some of their best known songs. Only five of the 18 are actually live performances. Of these, Gladys Knight and the Pips’ performance of “Grapevine” at the 1972 Save the Children Concert and Smokey Robinson & the Miracles doing “Tears of a Clown” on the Andy Williams Show in 1971 stand out. The rest of the clips have been gathered from a variety of U.S. and overseas sources including the Ed Sullivan Show, the Mike Douglas Show, Hullabaloo, and Live from the Bitter End.
Interspersed between the songs are excerpts from interviews with Motown artists. These include Mike Douglas speaking with Smokey Robinson, Motown-founder Berry Gordy on a local Detroit show called Teen Town, and some thoroughly cringe-worthy shtick featuring Lloyd Thaxton with the Temptations. Bonus features include previously unseen footage from the Motown Picnic, circa 1970. Basically it’s the company’s home movies. There are a couple of poignant shots of a young Michael Jackson in this footage. The complete Gordy Teen Town interview is here, as is a 1959 featurette about what was going on in the world in the year that Motown was founded. A Maypo commercial and a trailer for a Brigitte Bardot film are fun, but that is no reason to buy this DVD. Sadly, the 1959 newsreel is the most interesting thing in this package. The accompanying booklet features a nice essay by Stu Hackel. (more…)
Folks, I’ll be the first to tell you that our last CHART ATTACK! was just a little depressing. Marky Mark? Ugh! Color Me Badd? Ugggggh! Bryan Adams? Uggggggghhhh! Good news, though: I’m pleased to report that this week’s Top 10 is much, much better — sure, there are some mild clunkers, but the majority of these songs are absolutely fantastic. See if you agree as we attack November 3, 1973!
10. All I Know — Garfunkel
9. Space Race — Billy Preston 8. Let’s Get It On — Marvin Gaye 7. Ramblin’ Man — The Allman Brothers Band 6. Heartbeat – It’s a Lovebeat — The DeFranco Family Featuring Tony DeFranco
5. Paper Roses — Marie Osmond 4. Half-Breed — Cher 3. Keep On Truckin’ (Part 1) — Eddie Kendricks 2. Angie — The Rolling Stones 1. Midnight Train to Georgia — Gladys Knight & the Pips
Following the breakup of Simon & Garfunkel in 1970, Art Garfunkel removed his focus from the music business; for three years, he focused on his acting career, appearing in Mike Nichols movies such as Catch-22 and Carnal Knowledge, taught mathematics at a private school in Connecticut, and studied classical music in Europe. Finally, in 1973, he assembled a group of songwriters (what, you thought he was going to write songs himself?) and recorded songs for a new album, entitled Angel Clare. The first single, “All I Know,” was written by Jimmy Webb (the first of many Garfunkel/Webb collaborations) and was his first solo entry on the Top 10 — and by “first,” I mean “only,” though he did have three #1 hits on the Adult Contemporary charts. The song is exactly what you’d expect: musically, it’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water” minus the bridge or troubled water, and lyrically, it’s deep into Mellow Gold territory. Art’s voice sounds a touch creepy here on the original, especially any time he gets near a low note. Still, it’s quite pretty, and you really can’t go wrong with songs like these, especially ones that feature Webb’s beautiful piano. The only thing I don’t understand is why, for his first few albums, Art was only billed as “Garfunkel.” Was he concerned that if he added the “Art,” people wouldn’t know who he was? How many Garfunkels are out there, really? If he wanted to capitalize on familiarity, perhaps he should have billed himself as “& Garfunkel.”
I found a nice video of Art Garfunkel performing “All I Know” on Saturday Night Live, but it’s on a Chinese website and I can’t figure out how to embed it. Still, it’s worth a watch; the song is much more effective in this stripped-down incarnation.
9. Space Race — Billy Preston
I personally had never heard “Space Race” before this week, but if you watched American Bandstand regularly, chances are you’ll recognize it as the music played during the mid-show commercial break, from 1974 until the show’s end. It worked great for that purpose, too — a sequel of sorts to 1972’s “Outa-Space,” “Space Race” is a thick slab of instrumental funk with a fantastic groove. But here’s the thing: on American Bandstand, you never got to hear more than a few seconds of the song. At around a minute and a half, it becomes pretty clear that a better title would have been “Holy Crap You Guys, I Just Got a New Keyboard and Look at All the Cool Sounds I Can Make, Wah Wah Wah Wah!” I can’t help but wonder if this song is what inspired Daryl Dragon to buy a Casio, and that just breaks my heart. Still, I can’t give Billy Preston too much grief. Apart from having theworld’sgreatestafro, the man was an unbelievable talent. And who doesn’t love the hell out of “Nothing From Nothing”?
It’s been an arduous couple of weeks for me in terms of my music listening. Do What You Want, Be What You Are: The Music of Daryl Hall and John Oates, is the third four-disc box set (after Big Star: Keep An Eye On the Sky, and Where the Action Is! L.A. Nuggets 1965 – 1968 ) that I’ve reviewed in that period. I don’t know if this is true for other writers, but reviewing large collections like these is more difficult for me than reviewing single albums. You are forced to stay focused on one artist or genre for an extended period of time. My attention span just doesn’t work that way naturally. But enough bitching about my relatively minuscule concerns.
I am tempted to compare Hall and Oates to another band that I wrote about recently: the Four Seasons. This may sound somewhat dubious at first, but bear with me. Both groups were singles-oriented, and had multiple hits. Neither group ever got much in terms of respect from the musical tastemakers. I’m sure this didn’t make a damn bit of difference to them as they were cashing their royalty checks. My point is, do we really need a four-disc career retrospective from a group that lived and died on their single releases? Wouldn’t a two-disc greatest hits compilation do the trick? The answers aren’t all that obvious. In fact, it’s a tough call.
Daryl Hall and John Oates had six number one singles. In addition to these, they had 10 Top 10 hits. You know these songs, and yes, you probably love them. For people of a certain age, these songs are a soundtrack to their lives. I’m talking about songs like “Rich Girl,” “Kiss on My Lips,” “Maneater,” and my favorite of the number ones, “Out of Touch.” There are the early jewels like “She’s Gone,” and “Sara Smile,” and later hits like “Everything Your Heart Desires.” They are all included in this set, and I’m happy to hear them again. (more…)
One of my brother’s infamous parties was going on downstairs in the basement. He didn’t have to return to Columbus for a couple weeks, so I guess he felt one more bash was justified before he left for college. In the past, I had sat upstairs and watched a video while the music thumped through the basement door, but this year was different. I was a freshman in high school and I knew some of the people downstairs. Furthermore, I was deemed old enough (not “cool enough,” mind you) to join the older kids in the basement.
I may have been the youngest person in the room, and I didn’t care. Sitting on the second-hand, musty green couch, located right next to the stereo, I stared as the few girls I knew (just a year ahead of me) made out with guys two or three years older than them. I studied the techniques of concealing alcohol in plastic cups in case my parents decided to make an unexpected visit. Mostly, though, I just listened to music and got to play DJ. I was spinning The Big Chill soundtrack, that collection of ’60s hits that started the Hollywood trend of marketing movies to the sound of nostalgia and oldies. I hadn’t seen the movie yet; it wasn’t on my list of must-see videos — it didn’t have blood and guts or lowbrow humor. But I loved the songs compiled by writer/director Lawrence Kasdan. While I tapped my foot and did some dorky air drumming to Marvin Gaye and The Rascals, I felt the couch shift as someone sat down next to me. (more…)
The career-spanning, four-disc box set Do What You Want, Be What You Are: The Music of Daryl Hall & John Oates comes out October 13, and in anticipation of its release, the 1980s pop superstars recently made a special stop in Bootleg City for an interview. (Okay, so their tour bus caught a flat. They were reluctant to talk at first, but once I proposed an alternate option — community service — they perked right up.)
Me: You two have been making music together for nearly 40 years. What do you consider to be the secret to your success?
Oates: Well, Daryl and I have a healthy balance of give and—
Hall: (interrupting) Take one-fourth of John and three-fourths of me and you’ve got the winning formula. We’re the Beatles of the post-Woodstock generation, no question. It was the same with them in their day: three-fourths Lennon and McCartney, one-fourth George, and one-fourth Ringo.
Oates: I’m pretty sure that adds up to—
Hall: The most successful rock ‘n’ soul group of all time, right after the Beatles. Exactly.
“In the style of the boy-band vocal bands of the time, Human Nature became Australia’s most successful pop group of the ’90s and beyond,” according to their Allmusic.com biography, “outselling their international contemporaries Backstreet Boys, *NSYNC, and Boyzone.”
Up until a few weeks ago, I’d never heard of these guys. Then again, what I don’t know could fill a warehouse.
And after listening to Reach Out (Sony/RED), I could swear that the vocal group’s introduction to American audiences will be filling warehouses for months to come, but Human Nature are multiplatinum artists Down Under — they transitioned from boys to men in the past decade by ditching dance-pop and embracing, well, dance-pop from an earlier era. In 2005 they released Reach Out: The Motown Album, followed by Dancing in the Street: The Songs of Motown II in ‘06, and by the time of 2007’s Get Ready, they were enlisting guest appearances by the Temptations, the Supremes’ Mary Wilson, and Smokey Robinson, who’s “presenting” their current “Ultimate Celebration of Motown” stage show at the Imperial Palace in Las Vegas. The back cover of the Reach Out CD booklet even advertises the show, which I have to assume, based on the contents of the album, is the main event.
The American version of Reach Out takes songs from all three of Human Nature’s Motown albums and erases any telltale copyright dates from the liner notes. In other words, “it’s new to you!” And if you’ve never heard the originals that are being covered by the Aussie quartet (brothers Michael and Andrew Tierney, Toby Allen, and Phil Burton, all of whom have been singing together since high school in the ’80s, when Motown nostalgia was first becoming a booming business), you might think the melodies are pretty catchy, with a good beat you can dance to. In other words, if you’re under ten years old, this is a serviceable introduction to Motown, but if you’re in double digits, Reach Out comes across as professional karaoke — the only acknowledgment of any Fauxtown backing band is “the gifted musicians who helped create this record.” Might one of those musicians be named Mac, and is it possible another one goes by the initials “PC”? (Allmusic.com does in fact list the musicians who worked on the threeAustralianreleases, but their instruments still sound canned either way.)
I love soul music in each and every one of its glorious permutations, so it’s been gratifying for me to listen as a new generation of soul masters has taken the spotlight in the last few years. For me it seemed to start with that first Joss Stone album, but then she seemed to lose the thread as she moved forward. Into her place stepped artists like Sharon Jones, Ryan Shaw, and Eli “Paperboy” Reed, among others. Meanwhile, the great Al Green kept the fire burning, and Raphael Saadiq provided a new soundtrack for the soul revolution. For years I feared that soul music as I knew it was dead, only to have it come roaring back to life.
Let’s define terms. Soul music doesn’t employ auto-tuned vocals, electronic beats, or sampled music. It’s played by real singers backed by live bands. It’s not hip-hop, it’s not rap, and it’s not rock. It’s not black, and it’s not white. It’s whatever it is that Marvin Gaye, or the Temptations, or Otis Redding had, and Aretha Franklin still has.
Imagine someone gave you the opportunity to create the ultimate soul band. First, you’d get a great singer like Tre Williams, a guy who will remind you of David Ruffin without remotely copping his style. It’s something about that gravel in the throat. Then you have to be sure to have a great songwriter and backup singer like Rell to write the songs and sing them with Williams. Of course you’d need a band, and you’d get someone like Wes Mingus on guitar, and keyboard player Borahm Lee. You’re going to need a great rhythm section, and bassist Josh Werner, and drummer Gintas Janusonis fill that bill.
So now that you’ve got your singers, and you’ve got your band, what’s it going to sound like? Well suppose you could create an amalgam of Motown propulsion, the rawness of Stax, and just a touch of the balladry magic of Gamble and Huff’s Philadelphia International sound? That would be the ultimate, wouldn’t it?
The results of this brew, the seven-track Deep Soul ep, is just about as perfect as it gets. When it’s over you want more, even as you’re astonished by just how right the Revelations got it. But since you don’t want it to end, they give it to you, in the form of instrumental versions of the seven tracks. Think that’s redundant and you don’t need to hear them? Just wait.
While this ep will remind you of another era, there’s nothing retro about it. This is forward looking contemporary music. The Brooklyn-based Revelations featuring Tre Williams have created something rare that needs to be nurtured so that it can thrive. Tell everyone you know – this is a new soul classic for our time.
Today is a very important day in the history of popular music. It was on this day in 1959 that Motown was born. An auto worker by the name of Berry Gordy borrowed $800 from his father to start the company, and to create a headquarters at 2648 West Grand Boulevard in Detroit. The sign over the door said “Hitsville USA,” and that was no idle boast. The building is a museum today. Motown left Detroit in 1972, leaving behind a city that is still struggling economically.
You’ve no doubt heard the story many times, but here are some of the names; The Temptation, The Supremes, The Four Tops, Martha and the Vandellas, The Marvelettes, Smokey and the Miracles, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, Mary Wells. The producers were equally legendary, including the team of Holland, Dozier and Holland, and Norman Whitfield.
The musicians who played on the records were known as the Funk Brothers. They were largely forgotten until the wonderful documentary Standing in the Shadows of Motown was released a few years back, giving wonderful musicians like James Jamerson, Benny Benjamin, Joe Hunter, Earl Van Dyke, and Richard “Pistol” Allen, the recognition that they have deserved for so long.
So if you’ve ever danced to a Motown song, or if hearing one of the songs on the radio takes you back to another time in your life, today is a day to celebrate this great American institution.
It’s impossible to choose one song to represent the incredible heritage of Motown Records. So I decided to choose something that I like, that you might not have heard recently. Enjoy:
One of the questions I am occasionally asked by readers, other than “Are you sure you’re straight?,” is “Why don’t you write more?” (This is also the question I am asked most often by our Editor-in-Chief.) Without giving you the long lame-ass explanation about the various balls I’m juggling on a daily basis (yes, I’m sure), I’ll just say that I happen to be a very slow writer. CHART ATTACK! and other posts, like last week’s Earmageddon entries, take me days and days to write. I imagine they’d take even longer if I was actually funny.
And this is just one of the reasons why Jeff is my personal hero, folks. Not only does the man write articles of substance, but he churns ‘em out like babies on a polygamist compound. This week’s guest writer punked out with less than two days to spare; Sir Jefito came to my rescue and turned in this entire post in just over two hours. Yes, his kids went hungry, but that’s just the kind of guy he is — anything for Popdose.
So those of you who have been clamoring for another oldie chart, I’m happy to present this one to you. Enjoy, because we’ll be hovering around the ’80s until November. Give thanks to Jeff as he presents us with September 20, 1969! -JH
10. I Can’t Get Next to You — The TemptationsAmazoniTunes 9. Little Woman — Bobby ShermanAmazoniTunes 8. Jean — OliverAmazoniTunes 7. Get Together — The YoungbloodsAmazoniTunes 6. (It Looks Like) I’ll Never Fall in Love Again — Tom JonesAmazoniTunes 5. Easy to Be Hard — Three Dog NightAmazoniTunes 4. A Boy Named Sue — Johnny CashAmazoniTunes 3. Green River — Creedence Clearwater RevivalAmazoniTunes 2. Honky Tonk Woman — The Rolling StonesAmazoniTunes 1. Sugar, Sugar — The ArchiesAmazoniTunes
Howdy, gang! Good to see all of you hungry Chart Attackers again — it’s been awhile, hasn’t it? I didn’t mean to be away for so long, but Jason’s got the CA! schedule booked pretty solid, and whenever I volunteer to take over for one of his weeks, he waves me away for some reason. I can’t figure it out. (It’s usually because you’ve just farted. -JH)
But this week? This week, Jason had no choice. Our old buddy Kurt — who you might remember from his on-again/off-again blog, Kurt’s Krap, and his appearances at Chartburn — was scheduled to lead you through this chart, but he slipped and sprained his vagina, forcing him to punk out cancel at the last minute. Never one to pass up an opportunity to attack a chart, I quickly agreed to take over, at which point I realized I was -5 years old when these songs were popular. Shit! (more…)
Robert:Rolling Stone magazine named Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone” (1965) the greatest song of all time in 2004. It certainly contains the best Rolling Stone product placement of all time — it predates the magazine’s existence, making it a truly impressive example of forward-thinking marketing — but is it really the best song ever? For the purposes of this edition of Song-Off, you bet your ass it is! Some say this immaculate kiss-off to a privileged bohemian girl who wants to be a starving artist (but without all that icky starvation) was blown in the direction of Edie Sedgwick or Joan Baez. But others say it’s Dylan turning his poison pen on himself, that he’s the one “with no direction home” after embracing electric guitars and alienating his folk-music fans. But as he says in the song, “When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose.” Dylan goes for broke in “Like a Rolling Stone” and comes up with a song for the ages.
Let’s begin with the facts. Motown: The DVD contains 18 vintage clips of Motown artists performing some of their best known songs. Only five of the 18 are actually live performances. Of these, Gladys Knight and the Pips’ performance of “Grapevine” at the 1972 Save the Children Concert and Smokey Robinson & the Miracles doing “Tears of a Clown” on the Andy Williams Show in 1971 stand out. The rest of the clips have been gathered from a variety of U.S. and overseas sources including the Ed Sullivan Show, the Mike Douglas Show, Hullabaloo, and Live from the Bitter End.
Columbus for a couple weeks, so I guess he felt one more bash was justified before he left for college. In the past, I had sat upstairs and watched a video while the music thumped through the basement door, but this year was different. I was a freshman in high school and I knew some of the people downstairs. Furthermore, I was deemed old enough (not “cool enough,” mind you) to join the older kids in the basement.
Me: You two have been making music together for nearly 40 years. What do you consider to be the secret to your success?
“In the style of the boy-band vocal bands of the time, Human Nature became Australia’s most successful pop group of the ’90s and beyond,” according to their 
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Today is a very important day in the history of popular music. It was on this day in 1959 that Motown was born. An auto worker by the name of Berry Gordy borrowed $800 from his father to start the company, and to create a headquarters at 2648 West Grand Boulevard in Detroit. The sign over the door said “Hitsville USA,” and that was no idle boast. The building is a museum today. Motown left Detroit in 1972, leaving behind a city that is still struggling economically.
