Word: motowners
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...Tony Toni Tone, Sons of Soul (Wing/Mercury). This trio may hail from Southern California, but their homage-packed soul songs prove they left their hearts in Motown. The Tonyies, who are all in their 20s, evoke past greats such as the Jackson Five with vibrant vocals and melodies, but they never settle for mere imitation. Radio is rotten with musical hacks who fake the funk with computer- generated beats, but the Tonyies are a real band, with real instruments, who have succeeded in bringing the art of R.-and-B. songwriting back to the future...
...result of his labors weaves together the comfortable sounds of 1970s and '80s kids' TV shows - ambling Charlie Brown-style piano and cop-show car-chase music - with more conventional pop influences. Guitars owe a debt to U.S. alternative legends Sonic Youth, the strings to Bollywood, and rhythms recall Motown and break beats. "I've always quite liked that [retro kids' TV] feel, but I'd always want to make it more dirty in some way," says Parton. "If you are going to have recorders, make them distorted." It's a potentially disastrous mix, but one that somehow ends...
...chronically underrated Motown songwriters Eddie Holland, Lamont Dozier and Brian Holland wrote more No. 1 hits than the Beatles, and there's pure nostalgic pleasure in hearing the Four Tops (Baby I Need Your Loving) and the Supremes (Stop! In the Name of Love) sing them. You can also marvel at the ways in which they managed to make the boundaries of their two commercially dictated themes--(a) I don't deserve you, please come back; and (b) you don't deserve me, I'm not coming back--seem limitless...
With nearly an infinite number of songs in the universe at one’s disposal, the choice can be daunting. Mann, who picked Jean Knight’s definitive Motown piece, “Mr. Big Stuff”—he wanted “something diva,” he told me—testified that the decision wasn’t so hard...
Memories of the '60s will also be wafting out of NBC's The Motown Revue Starring Smokey Robinson. Along with contemporary musical numbers, each show will feature a salute to one year from Motown's heyday. Dick Clark's Rock'n Roll Summer Action, the lone summer entry from ABC, seems aimed at younger viewers (under eight, perhaps) but nods to an older crowd with guest appearances by such relics of the Top 40 as Jan and Dean and Paul Revere and the Raiders. The show makes another contribution to the nostalgia vogue: its mindless fun-on-the-beach antics...