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Showing posts with label Motown. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Motown. Show all posts

Wednesday, February 24, 2016

Fake Lionel Richie

This CD was from the Mount Vernon City Library (WA) and particularly strange because these recordings aren't even from Lionel Richie at all. The singer(s) don't even sound close to Lionel Richie. Or Diana Ross on "Endless Love".
It was released in 1993 not on Motown (Lionel Richie's home label during his '80s hit making streak), but on something called Starnice. That was the first warning sign, along with the crummy, non-descript packaging.

A Googling of Starnice reveals it to be a Hong Kong based label with other titles of presumably similar knock-off material of other acts. Regardless, the CD is a fake and not worth anyone's money unless you like really bad anonymous karaoke covers better than original hit recordings (which I'm presuming most of you don't.)

I'm also sure this wasn't intended for sale in the U.S. where recordings like this are illegal to sell unless they are marked as not the original performer on the packaging. This is how these recordings otherwise get sold in America, as worthless anonymous "tribute" albums. I can't believe there's an entire bastard subset of the music industry dedicated to this crap (I once broke off a budding relationship with someone over the fact that she bought a Glee CD - no joke.) But this disc is a flat out fraud. It promises Lionel Richie, but gives you not one, but two and possibly three, maybe even four schmucks with detectable Chinese accents.

This disc starts out with an anemic cover of "Say You Say Me", bungled up lyrics in "Hello" ("I've been alone with you inside my head".) It's just droning electronic keyboards and lame attempts at sounding like Lionel Richie.     

And since it is a cheap, chintzy knockoff, I've included it for your masochistic pleasure. But most of you probably would rather have a tax audit instead of hearing this garbage.

Enjoy (Or something.)   

CD Front/Inside V Card (Other side was blank)

CD Back
CD Label

Saturday, March 07, 2015

The Hollywood Palace starring Diana Ross & The Supremes, Sammy Davis Jr. and The Jackson Five (1969)


Let's drop everything and go back to 1969. This is an episode of The Hollywood Palace, a popular TV variety show in the 1960s. This originally broadcast on October 18, 1969 and starred Diana Ross & The Supremes, Sammy Davis Jr. and The Jackson Five. It's also complete with original commercials!

More episodes of The Hollywood Palace and more great Classic TV can be found at Internet Archive



Sunday, January 27, 2013

"I've Never Been To Me" Charlene (1976/1982)


Charlene originally released this tune on Motown's Prodigal subsidiary in 1976, but even with anything goes '70s radio (even on the hardcore R&B stations, which were serviced heavily by Motown and where Millie Jackson was NEVER a problem), those radio programmers had a problem with THIS song.


It referenced everything from abortion to prostitution in a sort of girl talk over coffee manner, the kind you would overhear coming from a secluded corner booth in the back of a Denny's. The kind of things that would spell instant career death for not only the person who sang it, but the DJ playing it.

But if there's one thing I know about pop music (and I can point out many, many more examples), it's this: The more conservative the country gets socially, the more outlandishly sexually themed the pop songs become. It's a natural rebellion.

So when a Florida DJ found this song in 1982 (during the first years of the Reagan administration) and played it on the radio, the phone lines went berserk. So Motown re-released it.


Where in spite of radio station boycotts of the tune (especially in the South), the song shot up to #3 on the national radio pop charts in 1982.