MOTOWN 25- A Review

Tonight, the event I have been waiting for took place in my very living room.

Poo-poo, Willie, WilliesSisterElonda and I gathered to watch the tape of the original broadcast of 1983's Motown 25 celebration. The purpose of the gathering was more or less to get to the bottom of how a young Elonda could have ever had an attraction to El DeBarge.

I took notes on everything, and so here's my report:

The 25 year anniversary starts off with one of those stupid dance numbers that were all too common at awards shows/events. I think the end of that tradition was at the Oscars, when Snow White danced with Rob Lowe. The good thing about the dance piece: the song was "Dancing in the Street" by Martha & The Vandellas.

Commericals! This is really what I wanted to see!

The first ad talks about something called a home computer. The company is called Commodore. Apparently, this thing will let you make graphs and let your kids play games. Wow!

Next, we get an ad for Rave Body Wave shampoo. The woman in the ad is hot enough for me to exclaim that I want to have "pre-AIDS 1983 sex with her". When Willie points out that AIDS did in fact exist in 1983, Shannon replied "But no one knew about it". You see the fascinating discussions that come out of my living room? So, yes, AIDS existed, but I would go back and pretend to not know what I know now so that I could have sex with her in a very tubular way.

Smokey Robinson introduces us to Richard Pryor, who will be hosting. Richard Pryor, for those of you who don't know, was the funniest man ever. Even on NBC, with strict rules, the guy is a riot.

Richard now introduces the guy who introduced him, and Smokey and His Miracles perform a melody of their classics "Shop Around", "Tears Of A Clown" and "Going To A Go-Go".

Dick Clark comes out, and he appears to be 15 at the time. Before the stroke, Dick always looked the same age. This is before botox and such cosmetic alterations.

STEVIE F'NG WONDER~! plays "I Wish", gives an emoitonal speech about Motown, and goes into "My Cherie Amour" and "You Are The Sunshine of My Life". Stevie was the best pop star in the world at the time, but his post-1983 output is tragically terrible. Wha Happened?

Back to the Ads! A classic Stroh's commerical comes on. In this one, A bunch of guys are playing poker, and Alex the Dog goes into the kitchen, opens the fridge, pours some beeers for the boys, and then starts drinking. Oh the humanity! I mean, Oh, the caninity!

The Army "Be All That You Can Be" ad comes on. This ad campaign was so good, I would enlist, if it was still 1983. I don't want to be in the 2006 army.

A Kentucky Fried Chicken ad features an Olympic male gymnast, a young boy, and a bucket of chicken. The boy is sitting next to the bucket of chicken on a pummelhorse. I'm no gymnastic expert, but I would dare say that those leaky greasy KFC buckets could cause some damage to the next gymnast who goes for a dismount. (I just love saying dismount.) The gymnast gets really creepy with the boy, but it's all in the name of the March of Dimes, so whatever.

Smokey returns, and he introduces The Four Tops and The Temptations who go back and forth with the hit parade! I think only one of the Temptations is still alive today.These men are all Gods.

We get a clip of super young Michael doing his Motown audition tape. He mimics James Brown, and is adorable. Shannon points out that Joe Jackson was probably there beating him into shape the whole time.

Our next round of ads focus on the cool new car (Nissan Stanza), Coke at a black wedding (Coke Is It!), Betty White selling Q-Tips (Betty White is the opposite of Dick Clark, she never looks younger than 65), and some goober named Stewart selling us on the snazzy new Kodak Disc Camera.


Back from commercial, and out comes Marvin Gaye. Gaye sits at a piano and gives a long speech about the history of black music. It's really sad to watch this, because he is clearly a tormented soul, and appears to be under the influence of something pretty strong. In spite of his condition, his speaking voice is intoxicating, and when he stands up to sing "What's Going On?", his voice is as great as it ever was. This was his last TV performance before everything fell apart. Important to see, but sad.

Up next, we have the most ridiculously dated segment of the whole show, as Johnny Fever and Venus Fly Trap from WKRP introduce some Motown one hit wonders. John "Motor Mouth" Moschitta, the annoying fast talking guy who was all over television in the 80s, reads the roster of every artist to ever record for Motown. Whatever, I'm supposed to get all aroused because you talk fast? Whatever.

We cut to a pretaped studio session featuring a full fro Lionel Ritchie. He is sitting at a piano talking to a cute little girl who is suffering from sickle cell anemia. Lionel is very sweet to the young lady, and he even sings a song to her. A classic Lionel song that sounds exactly like all of his other songs. The girl seems very happy. Even though the girl is about 7 years old, I would like to point out that she weighed more in 1983 than Lionel's daughter Nicole weighs TODAY.

We get some more commericals for Computers, Anacin-3, and Stadia shoes.

We come back from back and see the original Jackson family audition tape, featuring little Michael doing a good James Brown impression. Following that, the Jackson 5 themselves come out to do a medley of "I Want You Back", "The Love you Save" and "I'll Be There". Tito has on a big hat that says "TITO", automatically making him the best Jackson child of the bunch. Randy is so feminine in his dance moves that he makes Michael look like Reggie Jackson by comparison. While the other Jacksons leave the stage, Michael stays around telling us how he loves those old songs, and loves playing with all of his brothers, "including Jermaine". Ouch! That's sort of like saying, "I eat all of my vegetables, even the brussel sprouts." Michael then tells he that he likes the new stuff as well. Billie Jean starts up, and Michael delvers the single greatest musical performance of my lifetime. He doesn't sing, he lipsynchs, but his dancing his amazing. He debuts the moonwalk, and overnight, goes from pop superstar to legend. This performance is what most people remember from this show.

More commercials! Prince Machiabelli Aviance Night Musk! I need a bottle of that ASAP. Hey, guess what shows are coming on? Real People, The Facts of Life and Taxi. You could not find 3 shows with less in common. By the way, Taxi was one of the greatest sitcoms ever. The Facts of Life was not.

After the groudbreaking MJ appearance, who could follow? How about another over the top dance number? The dance troupe does its thing to Marvin Gaye's "I Want You". William, it was really nothing.

The sexiest man in the world, Billy Dee Williams, introduces a montage of Motown in the movies, featuring his work with Diana Ross in "Lady Sings The Blues".

After a silly segment where Motown office personnel attempt to define what exactly makes up "The Motown Sound", we get what we were waiting for: 2 hot acts of the future!

DeBarge! The strangest looking family ever. El, the lead singer, has a 14 inch waist, and he is the normal one. As he sings, his brothers in the background make some of the funniest faces as they dance. Bunny, the sister, looks like she was adopted. El makes some not very macho faces as the family exits to make way for that huge act...

High Energy! Who? Well, I guess they can't all make it big. High Energy consists of 3 hot middle aged women singing run of the mill 80s soul. The reatrded gay DeBarge family return to the stage to finish out the song with the old broads. This was supposed to show that Motown would live on, but it showed quite the opposite. By the way, in spite of appearances, DeBarge made some awesome music.

A pretaped ad for Rick James' "Bustin' Out" runs. I think it's great that James was such a sleazeball there was no way they could risk having him appear with the other artists. Before he became a punchline, he was the King of Sleaze, and also a pretty good singles artist.

Commercials! Kitty Cats Crave Crave! Starskin by Danskin (this was an ad for pantyhose, and so we get a lot of good leg shots), Baltimore's Best Music, B-104, and Wendy's is offering a burger, fries and drink meal for the price of, (wait for it), $1.99.

Smokey returns! He sings "Ooh Baby Baby" with a still fuckable Linda Ronstadt. They also do a good job doubling up on "Tracks of My Tears".

After some wacky stuff, we get the strangest moment of the show: a performance by Adam Ant.

Why Adam Ant? What does he have to do with Motown, you ask? Well, he dresses like a pirate, his songs have tribal Burundi drum beats, he does one dance move over and over, and he makes goofy faces and overacts in his "porno without the sex" style cheap ass music videos. In other words, no one has any idea why he is there.

To make matters worse, he is singing "Where Did Our Love Go", and it is painful. A woman stands in the shadows who looks enough like Diana Ross that the corwd goes nuts. When they realize it was just a look alike, the performance, and Adam Ant's career took a turn for the worse. So Sad.

To close out the show, a Supremes reunion takes place for a second, before all of the other artists come onstage to close out the show. Apparently, what really happened at the taping was that Diana took exception to the other 2 Supremes standing next to her, and shouted at them to step back because she was the star. In a panic, Smokey and the other artists poured out onto the stage to save the day. Thanks to glorious editing, it doesn't look so bad. Diana Ross is a total diva, but I still love her.

The show ends, and we get a commercial for Pabst's Blue Ribbon featuring a young, fully haired Jason Alexander! Worlds Colliding!

In conclusion, this show is chockfull of memorable events, but the most important of all is the Michael Jackson performance. He was still black, still normal, and still awesome. This was the peak of his powers, and probably helped drive him into full fledged insanity.

AAR