60s Motown and 90s Jazz

First, some things I've learned in the Motown class I'm taking this summer:

1. Barrett Strong's "Money" is very similar, rhythmically speaking, to Ray Charles' "What'd I Say." I'm not sure which came first (Charles' song started as a live audience warmup, I think), but one of these guys clearly heard the other. The Beatles covered the former (improving upon it), and basically covered the latter, with a song called "I Feel Fine." Later, Sugarloaf covered "I Feel Fine," basically, with that song "Don't Call Us, We'll Call You." That's about as far as I got, and then realized that I was still sitting in class, and now I had a Sugarloaf song stuck in my head.

2. Smokey Robinson was on some serious Scottie Ferguson shit re: his total make over of Mary Wells, from a harder-edged Detroit gospel singer to, well, a female version of Smokey Robinson. Let us not forget that a.) Robinson invented the sub-sub genre of romantic soul-pop known as "quiet storm" (mostly used by "urban" radio stations and late-night infomercial CD spokespeople--usually two white people sitting by a fireplace) with this record, and b.) there are plenty of quiet storm songs that are indeed jams. The song he wrote for Wells that has emerged as my favorite thus far is "You Beat Me to the Punch" (mp3), which is like proto, proto, proto-q.s. Just listen to the way she restrains herself on the word "punch"; the exact opposite of what I expect to hear each time.

3. Stevie Wonder's "Fingertips, Pt. 2" (mp3) might be one of the weirdest songs to ever hit number one on the pop charts. I'm sure this is common knowledge to most of you, and I've been more than passingly familiar with the song for a while now, but I've come to a new realization about it. It's more a document of a funny, talented little blind kid on stage, essentially revving up a crowd with, well, "What'd I Say" sorta invocations, and then not leaving when the next band in the revue takes the stage. You can hear the bass player for the second band yell "what key?" before that whole band jumps in and rocks out for a few more seconds. This clip isn't from that performance, but it's of a very similar stripe. Wait til the end, when Stevie gets what Stevie wants, and that includes a hypnotically spastic drum solo.

4. Martha and the Vandellas, especially the Martha part of the group, fucking wailed. And I'm not even talking about "Dancin' in the Street" or "Heat Wave" or even the sublime "Nowhere to Run," because we all know those. Actually, we might know "Come and Get These Memories" (mp3) but the me part of that we didn't before last week. I love how short and natural-seeming the chorus is; how the band slips into and out of it easily, but still climbs it sideways like a model up a staircase. And how they're also all like "Hey, dick. Come get your shaving cream out of my bathroom. And while you're here, get these memories, too. Especially the one where you cried after sex at first. That was weird." I'm reading that last part into it.

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Second, one of the all-time greatest blogs of any sort has entered the canon-formation phase of its existence, and thankfully so. Destination: Out is, all week, presenting myriad submitted lists, gathered from their significant and fervent readership, of the best jazz records of the 1990s, and I'm not ashamed to say I don't think I've listened to about 97% of them (I was much more than flattered to be [perhaps accidentally] included on the original call for entries). Their effort is noble and lots of fun to scroll through, partly because I'm making a list of things that appear with relative frequency (Anthony Braxton's Willisau), and also because a lot of the submittees have blogs of their own. Go and explore.

[ Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 ]

[Also, Chilly's free-jazz intro-post on marathonpacks here]

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Third, some housekeeping errata: I've updated any and all concerts I'll be attending over on the right; for those in the greater Indiana area, come to the Bluebird and let Frog Eyes know that they should feel free to come back here again sometime. I also paid 42 bucks for that Wilco ticket, which is way too much, but I really like Wilco, and also the new album, and thus heartily disagree with Mitchum's Pitchfork review of same, for more than a few reasons. Finally, if you're game, and if there's still tickets left, get a money order for five bucks and send it, with an SASE (I'm being serious here), to get your ticket for Bonnie "Prince" Billy playing I See A Darkness all the way through, in Louisville, for charity. I'll be there. And by "charity," I mean "saving a mondo-indie local video store.")