Word: motowners
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...just Can't Stop It is a landmark album. A good place to start is with their version of the old Smokey Robinson hit, "Tears of a Clown." Just after the grand introductory riff, the Beat pitches a rhythm that is speedy, tense, seemingly out of whack. Is this Motown or is it ska? Is the bass guitar chasing the sax or is it the other way around? With truckloads of scratchy guitar work, snaky bass runs and exotic sax passages, the Beat create a sound that is soulful, dangerous, irresistible and distinctly urban. One can practically hear the buzz...
...month ago in Detroit the allegedly reborn party of Abraham Lincoln and Jesse Helms gathered to crown its champion. Fanatically grateful for any attention, the Motown elders cleared out one end of their city a week before Ronnie's legions arrived. A sticky labor strike evaporated, the streets around Cobo Hall were cleaned, and everyone was so damned nice. New York is just too tired and too grumpy to make such an effort...
...made his first big hit, Shop Around, when he was 20. It launched Robinson, the group he helped form, the Miracles, and the upstart Detroit record company that released it on a wing and a prayer, Motown. In the decades since Smokey passed along some tuneful romantic advice ("My mama told me/ You better shop around"), Motown changed from a phenomenon to a corporation. Smokey became vice president of artist relations. He named his son Berry after his friend Berry Gordy Jr., founder of Motown, and christened his daughter Tamla after the Motown subsidiary for which Smokey still records. When...
...Miracles ended 1960 with one gold record. By the end of the decade they had seven more. Motown grew into a kind of consortium of all-American soul as Gordy moved acts like the Supremes, Marvin Gaye and-yes-the Miracles out of the soul circuit and into the mainstream. Eventually Smokey seemed to lose his footing a little bit. He broke with the Miracles in 1972, wanting to spend time with his family. His solo records, smoothly crafted, were winning but not involving, irresolute, somehow, as if written and recorded on automatic...
Today's moody Motown sound is in sharp discord with the tune played two years ago. Then the auto industry enjoyed its third-best year in history as buyers snatched up the biggest and most expensive cars it made. Today those same high-powered, six-passenger American cars are an anachronism...