Let me get this straight. You’ve got Martha Reeves singing a Van Morrison song with James Jamerson playing bass? I’m in:
Man, Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert really used to get shit done back in the day.
Back in the day, arguing about Ginger or Mary Ann was a thing. Jeannie vs. Samantha. Chevy vs. Ford was a hardy perennial, of course. Fender vs. Gibson was another one. But the real action was Motown vs. Stax records.
Motown was the Detroit thang, of course. Stax was Memphis. Most people assume that Motown was the older outfit, but Stax was founded two years earlier, in 1957. Motown was urban and polished. Stax was funky and raw. Motown was a new form of doowop. Stax was gospel church — the other six days of the week. They both had pretty good runs. Stax went bankrupt in 1975. Motown moved to Los Angeles about the same time and made money for a while, but ultimately lost its way. It was eventually swallowed up by Universal Records, and then burped back out in time for oldies shows.
The Blues Brothers movies resurrected Stax in the public’s eye. Steve Cropper and Duck Dunn appeared in it. They were from Booker T. & the M.G.’s, the original house band for Stax. The drummer in that band, Al Jackson Jr., was one of the most original drummers I ever heard. He’s drumming on all the Al Green records, among many others. He had this uncanny knack for sounding like he was slowing down, but never slowing down.
The Blues Brothers movie was mildly amusing. But it also contained stretches of what can only be characterized as: vibe.
vibe /vīb/
noun
A distinctive emotional quality or atmosphere that is sensed or experienced by someone.
Vibe was the M.G.’s stock in trade, and Stax had more of it than anyone outside of Muscle Shoals. To wit:
So everyone knows Motown stars. The Supremes, The Temptations, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson, and The Jackson 5. I certainly listened to it. But I never wanted to play music like that, exactly. I wanted to play music like Stax. I wanted that vibe. Sam and Dave and Rufus Thomas and Albert King and Wilson Pickett and the Staple Singers and the Bar Kays.
RIP Sam Moore. Your vibe will be missed.
That drum intro can’t ever mean anything to me other than Benny Benjamin opening up Ain’t Too Proud To Beg. I’ve made money singing that song. Please notice that I didn’t claim I earned money singing that song. I said I was paid money to sing that song. Different set of circumstances. Mayer Hawthorne is earning his money.
There really can’t be anything truly new in culture. The idea that you’re an artist so you have to constantly break new ground is silly. Humans have a trajectory as individuals, and as societies; humans start from scratch but their cultures don’t. Smart humans don’t reject everything that came before them out of hand. Winnowing through the dross to get the gloss.
After a while, the only way to do something truly new is to do something bad. After all the bad stuff is taken, you have to move on to malignant. The search for novelty over all things is a form of vivisection. You made a new animal, Dr. Moreau, it’s true, but it’s born dead. And ugly.
It’s hard enough to be entertaining, or interesting — hell, it’s hard to be plain competent. Holland-Dozier-Holland didn’t invent music. Mayer Hawthorne didn’t either, but being unafraid to plant a fresh crop in a fertile vineyard is a kind of bravery nowadays. Go, man, go.
Ah, pop music. There’s serious money in unserious music. And wherever there’s money, people sense importance.
After a professional football game, which involves around one hundred illiterate and innumerate neanderthals, looped on steroids and ADHD medicine, shoving each other on a striped lawn over possession of a malformed basketball for a few hours, dozens of likewise illiterate and innumerate sportswriters and TV hair farmers push microphones into the players’ faces and ask them their opinions, more than occasionally about topics outside their field of expertise — said expertise solely consisting of fooling a piss test. Such is the end result of lots of money applied to trivial things.
People ask pop singers who should be president, which is much the same. And if a person has a million-seller, you can be sure some intellectual holding down a chair and a sinecure at a university or a magazine will invest that success with the veneer of seriousness. Lady Gaga’s meat dress means something, I can assure you. It wouldn’t mean something if she was playing Debbie Boone covers at the Ramada Inn, but a vapor trail of zeroes makes Goofy into Laika.
I have suffered from the syndrome myself, when I was much younger. I thought pop songs were important. You can get your fun out of taking all the fun out of things if you try. All-night arguments about whether the Dave Clark Five were superior to the Monkees can fill your life with meaning. It’s sad and pathetic meaning, like worrying over a State Senate election, or arguing on the Intertunnel, but it is meaning.
If you see it as just fun, you can make more fun out of it, without worrying overmuch. Mashing E.L.O. and The Supremes together isn’t going to cure cancer, but hey; it isn’t going to cause it, either. Enjoy.
Very unfortunate dance moves begin at 1:32.
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