There was a time, prior to 1964, when ‘My Girl’ didn’t exist. That collection of notes, arranged in that order… it hadn’t been thought of yet. Or if it had, it hadn’t been recorded either on paper or tape. And then Smokey Robinson sat down and pieced it all together into the song we all know and love.
I’m often baffled by the thought that there must be a finite set of melodies out there, and it seems to me that the world’s songwriters should have used them up by now. I mean, how many notes are there in the scale? 12? And how many different ways can they be arranged to form a melody? OK, that’s a huge number. But how many of those sound like something other than noise? Probably a much smaller number.
OK, now I’m going to blow your mind.
The great thing about these Motown Weekends is that the music is so easy to find on You Tube and these are some of the best songs ever written… can’t beat that combo. The bed thing is that I don’t have a ton to say about them (cue the chorus of ‘Trust me, that’s not a bad thing!’ comments).
Seeing the old Diana Ross makes me regret the caricature she became, but she’s got nothing on her pal Michael Jackson in that regard. Jackson has lived as a circus freak for so long now that it’s hard to remember the days when he was the biggest star in the world. And it’s even harder to see an early Jackson 5 clip like this one without feeling sad about what would happen to this adorable, mega-talented little boy.
[Note: The Billy Joel theme will resume on Monday]
Meet Me In Montauk 