The Empress Strikes Back!

A few years ago, I saw the incomparable Gladys Knight in concert at a Casino in Florida. Of the five times I had the privilege to see the Empress of Soul live, this was the weakest showing, mostly due to a somewhat disinterested audience that did not even clamor loudly enough for an encore! However, the veteran soul diva said something on stage that resonates within me in relations to the musical offerings Gladys granted her fans this year so far:

“You don't get it when you want it, you get it when you need it.”

We the fans had been waiting for a new album for a long time. It's been 7 years since her jazz outing, Before Me. Before that, she released a Christmas album and a gospel album with her Saints Unified Voices choir, which did not even feature her on lead vocals on all tracks. So the last actual R&B/Soul album, At Last, was a dozen years ago!

Pretty much every Pip-less album by Ms Knight has been plagued by delays since Just For You in 1994. So it came to no surprise that her latest full album of material was postponed a few times without explanation. Singles from the then “soon to be released” album came out in 2010 and 2011. Some time before that, fans were asked to send in suggestions for songs to be included on an album consisting entirely of cover versions, but it appears that idea got scrapped soon after.

As you can imagine, being the huge fan that I am, I really really wanted to groove to some new Gladys music, to fall in love with another touching ballad, to badly sing along to a funky tune when nobody else can hear me.

Alas, you don't get it when you want it. When the album Another Journey was (somewhat) released, I felt a little disappointed, a bit confused at some of the choices made. (I included the "somewhat" as it seems impossible to get a physical copy of the CD outside the US. The distribution is that bad!)

It is by no means a horrible album. A lot of the songs have promise, but are ultimately flawed. “The Dream” has some great moments, but the children's choir in the back sounds oddly subdued and the list of dreamers at the end, from Martin Luther King and the much more controversial Mother Theresa to media tycoon Oprah Winfrey and President Obama is cringeworthy in that odd juxtaposition.

The stand-out track is not new by any means: The cover of Lee Ann Womack's classic “I Hope You Dance” had previously been featured in the 2008 movie "Tyler Perry's The Family That Preys.” Along with another Tyler Perry OST song, Settle and two versions of “I who have nothing”, 4 out of the 9 tracks on the album are already well know to the many completists among her fans.

The most infuriating thing about the low-budget production on most of the tracks is the occasional use of auto tune on Gladys' vocals. Somebody must have misunderstood their assignment: The reason we hear that horrible effect on so many records (as well as on shows like “Glee”) is not that it is popular, it's that lesser vocalists need it to iron out the kinks in their attempts to sing. Who in their right mind would ever think that auto tune and Gladys could be a winning combination?

So. I was not in a happy place with my Gladys Fanboyism. I was worried that albums like this one would be the musical legacy of her golden years in the industry. I began to feel that brilliant music by Gladys Knight had become a self-contained collection field with no new additions to come.

In other words, I needed something from her. Didn't just want it, needed it.

And boy, did I get it.

The epic “You And I Ain't Nothin' No More” is everything a Gladys Knight song should be. Taken from the soundtrack of the hit movie “Lee Daniels' The Butler” and written and produced by Lenny Kravitz, there already is quite a bit of Oscar buzz about the track.

It is passionate, it has a brutally honest lyric about a damaged relationship between a parent and a child and it allows Gladys to show off her still incredible range and versatile vocal texture.

There is nothing superficial or “pop” about the lyrics:

I want your love

But I'll just wait in vain

Cause you and I ain't nothin' no more.

You gave me life

But I don't share your soul -

You lived your life alone.

It is pure soul, an inner scream of honest sadness and humanity wrapped in a lush arrangement and carried by an angelic voice that keeps us from falling into the abyss we can glimpse between the lines of the song's poetry.This, this is the kind of song Gladys Knight should sing because she is one of the few singers out there who can succeed with its immense demands. 

I am pretty optimistic as far as the song's chances to get nominated for an Academy Award go. Previous nominees like “Listen” from Dreamgirls and “The Girl Who Used to Be Me” from Shirley Valentine showed that the academy likes an honest soul ballad. We just need to distract Randy Newman with something shiny so that he won't compose another Disney song between now and the Oscars!

My fervent hope is that “Another Journey” was just a brief detour – nay, a wrong turn. And that “You and I Have Nothin' No More” will open the door to an entirely new glorious road in the career of Gladys Maria Knight. Let us not stop here, let's do an entire album with Lenny Kravitz or other musicians of his caliber who are fans of Gladys.

It worked for Burt Bacharach, who had become a bit of a joke and misunderstood as a muzak composer when he collaborated with Elvis Costello on the soul-stirring miniature musical drama “God Give Me Strength” on the soundtrack to the movie “Grace of My Heart.” The song got a Grammy nomination and led to a full album, which included another nominated song. Bacharach's standing in the industry was restored and he went on to record a critically acclaimed album with Ronald Isley.

These things happen. And Gladys Knight deserves to have it happen to her. Let the Empress strike back!

Can the Album Format be Saved?

A few days ago, the movie title Jason's Lyric was trending on Twitter. It made me realize two things:
A. I had never watched the movie and should look for the DVD.
B. The picture's soundtrack CD had hardly ever left my CD player in 1994 and we don't really get albums like that anymore.

That soundtrack was epic. Composed of all new recordings, it featured an incredible range of talented African-American musicians from several generations. From blues veteran Buddy Guy to gospel songstress Oleta Adams, from the cream of 90s r&b and New Jack Swing like Tony! Toni! Toné! and K-Ci Hayley to talented Hip Hop artists like LL Cool J and Warren G. And the cherry on the top was an all-star, all male choir labeled "Black Men United" that combined more vocal firepower than a military platoon of opera singers. Listen to it and "u will know" what I mean.

Jason's Lyric was not the only movie with a soundtrack like that in the 90s. Films like White Men Can't Jump, Boyz n the Hood, Love Jones and Set it Off all combined Hip Hop, soul and gospel in ways that made the soundtrack albums must-haves for several generations of fans: The kids would buy them to get their hands on that new Ice-T track and ended up being impressed by immensely talented music legends over 40, while older fans could not miss out on the new Aretha Franklin ballad you could not get anyplace else - and in turn realized that Queen Latifah was a force to be reckoned with.

Alas, the days of those soundtrack albums, all albums, actually, seem to have come to an end. Downloads, both illegal and legal, are the way most people listen to music these days, and that means a focus on individual tracks, not albums.

The music industry is trying to adapt to survive. A hit song is more likely to make a profit if it makes a good ring-tone. Concert tickets now cost a small fortune, as artists went from touring to promote their new recordings to recording new music to promote their tours.

The album, it seems, is considered expendable.

Concept albums, a format that once rode high on the charts thanks to artists like Marvin Gaye and Pink Floyd, are now a niche phenomenon for the Björks and Kate Bushs of this world. I will never forget the intensity of experiencing "What's Going On" on my old Walkman for the first time, in the dark, on a night train to Vienna. It was a life-transforming experience you just don't get from a ring-tone you downloaded for your new smartphone.

Mick Jagger and Keith Richards got to know each other because one of them noticed the stack of vinyl albums the other one was carrying, and the result was one of the greatest rock 'n' roll bands of all time. Is leaning over somebody to see what is playing on their iPod too stalkerish?

Also, no more cross-pollination between different generations of fans via soundtracks and compilations as I described above. Nor first exposure for new artists that way.

This is what we are losing. This is what the future will be missing. It's hurting the culture of music, and it is hurting the bottom line of the music industry in the long run.

Well, I will not let the album go down without a fight. I'm rolling up my sleeves. I'm taking off my rings (get me some vaseline!)

Over the next few blog posts, I will make suggestions on how to make people excited about albums again. And nobody will care. But at least I can say I tried.

Movie Review: A Single Man

So the two movies I saw so far this year were "A Serious Man" about a middle aged college professor whose life is crap and "A Single Man" about, well, a middle aged college professor whose life is crap.

I read Isherwood's novel for the first time last year. I'll mention that I picked up the book at a used book store specializing in English language books in Avignon in the South of France just because that sounds so damn cool.

I was worried that Hollywood would add a happy ending, or explosions and more chicks to make it more of a straight guy flick, but none of that happened.

It's an incredibly sad story, most of the action is internal to the lead character brought to tragic life by Colin Firth who really outdoes himself. I hope he gets that Oscar. Julianne Moore is also amazing, but unlike Firth you sometimes get the impression that she was trying to get nominated every single moment she was on camera. Unlike Firth, she didn't get a nod though.

The movie is directed by fashion designer Tom Ford, and the fact that the movie often looks like a perfume ad sometimes took me out of the story. It's a story about very real emotions, but it hardly ever loses that fairy tale visual quality. In some moments though, it works, and then it works brilliantly. When a dying man is shot with that sense of beauty, it evoked images of Michelangelo's Pieta in me.

I wish I hadn't had to sleep alone after watching "A Single Man." It's certainly a picture that stays with you.

The Sobbing of Doris Troy

While browsing IMDB, I stumbled across an upcoming movie version of the musical Mama, I Want to Sing!
This, for those who don't know, is the autobiographical musical of the late, great soul singer Doris Troy, who played her own mother in the original stage version of the musical. In London, that part was played by both Chaka Khan and Micah Paris.

The movie has an interesting cast, including musicians Ciara, Ne-Yo, Bobby Valentino, Ralph Tresvant and the one and only Patti Labelle! Also starring is CSI: NY hottie, Hill Harper.

Doris Troy grew up in the Bronx as the daughter of a pentecostal preacher from Barbados. She may not have been the best versed singer technically, but few reached the sheer amount of emotions she could pack into a song. Just listen to her desperate sobbing on "How my Heart Breaks" - a record that, rumor has it, may have featured a young Dwight Reginald a.k.a. Elton John on Piano!

Doris was a talented song writer, and her big hit "Just One Look" was used in so many movies and commercials, as well as getting covered by acts like the Hollies, that it allowed her not to have to starve like so many of her peers.

Doris Troy died of emphysema on February 16, 2004. I hope this movie will be a worthy monument to her and her achievements.

Somembody nearly got sued!


In related news: Motown got the studio to issue a disclaimer, saying that Dreamgirls is a work of fiction (snicker). See, I still can't do it.

Motown obtains Dreamgirls disclaimer (Reuters via Yahoo)

Dreaming in the Shadows of Motown

I finally got to see “Dreamgirls” last night. And seeing how a review of that movie sort of sparked Brian’s blog, I figure I’d put down my own thoughts on the film in this comatose place.

There is something I should explain before I discuss “Dreamgirls”: If my Internet nickname hasn’t tipped you off, I am a bit of a Motown and soul music fanatic. I own countless vinyl albums and CDs of the Motown stars you’ve all heard of (the Stevies and Marvins and Gladyseses) as well as those only few people remember (The Sisters Love, Bohannon, the Dynamic Superiors etc.). I have read Nelson George’s “Where Did our Love Go – The Rise and Fall of Motown Records,” Gerri Hirshey’s “Nowhere to Run: The Story of Soul Music,” David Nathan’s “Soulful Divas” and the biographies of Marvin Gaye, Otis Williams and Gladys Knight, among others.

So there is very little exaggeration when I say that watching “Dreamgirls” for me was a bit like the Pope watching “The Ten Commandments” with Charlton Heston. It looks and sounds real pretty, and the story I know and love is hiding somewhere in there, but lawd did they sugar-coat it and dumb it down for the masses.

OK, so Dreamgirls is an imaginary story (snicker). See, I could not type that with a straight face. At every turn, the movie tries to remind us that it’s really the story of Motown and Diana Ross and the Supremes. Motown’s motto “The Sound of Young America” becomes “The Sound of the Future” with Rainbow Records. Both the real and the imaginary™ label publish Dr. Martin Luther King’s speeches on record. The Dreams’ album covers are direct copies of Supremes records (even one from after Diana’s departure!). And of course, plot points big and small were lifted directly from Motown history.

All of that made it very difficult for me to just sit back and enjoy the movie without occasionally cringing when they took what felt too many liberties with said history. I’ve already seen one movie critic claim that the Supremes sang behind Marvin Gaye early on when it was really Martha Reeves and the Vandellas who did that. It was also Martha who (though a trained singer) got into Motown as a secretary just to get her foot in the door, something that “Michelle Morris” – think ersatz-Supreme Cindy Birdsong - does in “Dreamgirls.” I guess the press kit didn’t go into too much detail as to what’s fact and what’s fiction.

I understand the concept of composite characters, but did it really help tell the movie’s story to make Eddie Murphy’s character a mix of Little Richard, James Brown, Marvin Gaye and David Ruffin? While it gave the actor a chance to show that his singing has improved quite a bit since “Party All the Time,” for me it downplayed the enormity and breadth of the history of rhythm & blues by cramping too much into one person and too few years.

Not that the soundtrack showed a lot of understanding of that subject anyway: While the songs sounded great (I was pleased at how much less they sounded like show tunes than on my old Dreamgirls Broadway album) they did a poor job of echoing the various eras they supposedly represented. Murphy’s Jimmy Early is a 50s-character doing 70s music in the early 60s that sounds like a James Brown record produced by Isaac Hayes and recorded with Chicago musicians. It made my head spin! None of the Dreams’ songs capture the Motown magic. The only song in the movie that comes close to being a good fit is the one performed by the “Campbell Connection” kids – and that’s mostly because it’s the most blatantly plagiarized tune that sounds almost exactly like the Jackson 5’s “ABC.” It’s a shame they didn’t even go all the way 70s with the supposed disco version of “One Night Only.” Would it have killed them to throw in a few of those “p’tooo! p’tooo!” sounds we all love from the polyester years? The art directors do a much better job of capturing the look of the era.

I have to say the news songs written for the movie are all very nice. “Listen” is great, but my favourite is probable “Love you I do” co-written by Sieda Garret, who I’m sure knows more than a little bit about Motown musicians as well, having duetted with former Temptation Dennis Edwards on his one solo hit, “Don’t Look Any Further.”

People who read my posts on message boards around the time Jennifer Hudson was on American Idol may remember me as one of her biggest fans from her very early auditions. She really shines in “Dreamgirls” and if this is the vehicle that was needed to finally make her a star, then the movie was worth every penny it cost to be made. Looking forward to her first album.

I guess everything has been said about how great the cast is in this movie, so I’ll keep this short. Hudson and Murphy were the stand-outs, but it was also nice to see Danny Glover (as usual) and to have Dawnn Lewis in a major motion picture, even if it was as Murphy’s rarely seen wife and not a singing role. “A Different World” was one of the few things making the 1980s bearable for me.

I just wish they’d made Deena Jones more like Ms Ross. You know: evil. Deena still comes off as a basically good girl who is misled. They make Jamie Foxx’ character the only real bad guy by blaming everything on him and his manipulations. I mean, what a missed chance to bring a character as fascinatingly villainous as Diana Ross to the big screen! In “Soulful Divas” Dionne Warwick remembers waking up in a hospital room after surgery once and inexplicably finding Ms Ross next to her bed. Dionne’s first thought: “She’s come to kill me!” How great is that? And could we see people reacting like that to Beyoncé’s Deena, who ends up kissing and making up with Effie?

In the end, it felt to me like Dreamgirls was written by a fan about the Supremes he wanted, not the ones we really had. As a result, we get a happy end for Florence Ballard and Diana Ross isn’t even evil. (ALLEGEDLY! Don’t wanna get sued here.) In real life, Flo died in obscurity and Ms Ross couldn’t even have her let the spotlight at her own funeral, causing a major scene with a most likely faked fainting spell. Sure, the truth isn’t very glamorous. But one of my favourite Maya Angelou sayings is “Life is larger than life!” and I feel that a little more real life still would have sold movie tickets.

In Essence, “Dreamgirls” is a great Hollywood movie with a nice soundtrack and a stellar cast. But it has as much to do with Motown as Diana Ross’ “Ladys Sings the Blues” had to do with Billie Holliday. If you want good movies about the Motown experience, get the documentary “Standing in the Shadows of Motown” or even the made-for-tv Temptations movie on DVD. Watching “The Five Heartbeats” again won’t hurt either, though it shares many of the flaws I listed above. If you want a GREAT movie about the music scene in the 60s from a New York, Brill Building perspective, get Allison Anders’ "Grace of my Heart".