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Tuesday, October 07, 2008
MY GIRL
The Temptations
The Temptations Sing Smokey
Motown : 1965
[Buy It]
THE WAY YOU DO THE THINGS YOU DO
The Temptations
Meet the Temptations
Motown : 1964
[Buy It]
"Battle Song" (Part 1 of 4)
By Sean Howe
Excerpted from Rock And Roll Cage Match: Music's Greatest Rivalries, Decided; edited by Sean Manning; Crown Books; 2008
[Buy It]
Friday, March 25, 1983: At the Pasadena Civic Center, Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever is being taped for a May broadcast. Smokey Robinson's voice - a sound that's familiar but for its degree of shrill excitement - echoes within the auditorium, washes over the studio audience of three thousand: The Four Tops! And the tempting Temptations! Here to battle it out, just like in the old days!
The Tops take the stage in gold lame; the Tempts are in black tuxedos. The contest consists mostly of the groups alternating choruses of their biggest hits, in leaden arrangements that incorporate the pit orchestra's best idea of contemporary jangle-funk. "Reach Out (I'll Be There)" cedes to "Get Ready," "It's the Same Old Song" to "Ain't Too Proud to Beg." An awkward faux-cockiness emerges, with exaggerated arm-folding, eye-rolling, and back-turning yielding to it's-all-good smiles. The Temptations trot out their famous dance steps, while the Tops make do with a lot of clapping and snapping. "Baby, I Need Your Loving," "My Girl," and "I Can't Get Next To You" follow, before the Tops really heat things up with..."I Can't Help Myself (Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch)"? What kind of fool brings a song about a honey bunch to a knife fight? The Temptations respond with "I Know I'm Losing You," and the house band - not the legendary Funk Brothers, though James Jamerson watches from the cheap seats - signs off, everybody hugs, and the camera crane swoops over the audience.
Like the lyric says, it's the same old song, but with a different meaning now: It's all show biz. The songs that make up this murderer's row of classics have been clinically excerpted, delivered in key, and forgotten. The performers leave the stage, never having inhabited the songs tonight in the way they did decades ago (how can you inhabit a medley?) and gather across the street for a party at the Plaza Pasadena. When the special finally airs, the sing-off will be fondly received, and the two groups will tour together for the next few years, recreating the playful tussle for the oldies circuit. But the television audience will pay most of its attention to former child star Michael Jackson and his funny new backsliding dance step.
Among that audience is a sophomore at Buffalo State named Bill Garrett, who catches the NBC broadcast in the study lounge of his dormitory building. It's a week before finals start, and though anxiety looms, it's eclipsed by the acute infatuation he's experiencing with Elizabeth Arntz, a redhead in his Art History class. They've had four dates. It's too bad that Liz missed that show. She loves "Billie Jean."
Inspired by the Motown special, Bill goes to a record store the following day and spends $10.19 on a double-length cassette compilation entitled Motown: 25 #1 Hits in 25 Years. He'll listen to it several times in the next few weeks, and then frequently all summer, most memorably on an August trip to visit Liz in New Hampshire. She teases him for preferring the sentimental journeys of Motown to the Flashdance soundtrack and Men At Work's Cargo, but they sing along to "My Girl" and "Endless Love" and "I Heard It Through The Grapevine" while they drive around. The visit lasts four days. Before he leaves, she breaks up with him, as gently as possible. When he listens to the tape on the drive home, he gets the feeling that he's being taunted by the sweet nothings of Smokey Robinson and the Temptations and The Four Tops and Mary Wells and Marvin Gaye and the Commodores. (Rick James, on the other hand, is just doing his own thing.)
In September, Bill and Liz go (as friends, just friends) to see The Big Chill, and he experiences a quiet satisfaction in seeing these songs presented as sacred. He buys a stack of used Four Tops and Temptations records, but after a few months, Van Halen's 1984 rules his world, and the Motown records stay in their sleeves.
Bill graduates and moves to the Boston area. He works as an advertising manager for a newspaper. When he's 29, he sees Liz at a party of a mutual friend. He asks her out to dinner, and within a year they're engaged. Their wedding song is "The Way You Do The Things You Do" by the Temptations.
This concludes part 1. Stay tuned for part 2 of Sean Howe's "Battle Song" tomorrow!Labels: four tops, motown, sean howe, temptations
posted by Brian
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