Motown Gets Down, Down Under.

Dreamgirls sparked my interest in the Motown story. When I heard of the Motown 50th Anniversary event coming to Melbourne, I forked out $149 for a mediocre seat without a second thought. It seemed an incredible opportunity to be able to see some of these living legends of Motown history perform. 


Mary Wilson, from the Supremes, had the misfortune to kick the concert off. I say misfortune, because at first the quality of the sound was not good! And it didn’t just bother me, she was getting a lot of feedback through the monitor and repeatedly had to ask mid-song for it to be turned down. Despite being obviously bothered by this, she gave a great performance, although she wasn’t able to whip the mainly older crowd into the frenzy I think she had hoped. No discredit to her act, I just don’t think we were capable of it. Takes a while to warm up, you know, after coming straight from work on a Tuesday night, hiking from all sides of the arena after illegally parking the car as close as we could get. Add to that the irritation my blistered feet and I were recovering from, after limping past a car park right within the arena that I had no knowledge of… but I digress. It struck me, as I watched Mary Wilson strut around the stage in a slinky gown, that she must be around the same age as my mother. How is that possible? Ms Wilson looks incredible and sings with a voice as sexy and strong as a thirty year old’s. And when she came out at the end she was wearing a black mini! A mini! And she looked fantastic in it! 


The Miracles sounded great and looked fantastic in their gold suits with the long jackets, but their one original member, Bobby Rogers, sat on a stool for much of their performance and was clearly beyond many of the moves in their routine. He got left behind as they sang ‘The Tracks of my Tears' and ‘Second the Emotion’. I felt as if Mr. Rogers was there as a kind of club mascot, there so they could say ‘look – we still got one member, we’re authentic,’ rather than that we was up to the task of performing. But you know what? I would rather have seen him up on stage than a newcomer anyway. Again, a living legend in the flesh, and the fact that he was up there as all is to be applauded. 


At first I was obsessed with googling on my i-phone to see which of the original members of the bands would be performing, but by the time The Temptations and The Four Tops came out I was like, ‘Who cares?’ These bands were just incredible and got the kind of enthusiasm from the audience that you would hope. 


And Martha Reeves and the Vandellas – another great lady who had me marvelling at what can still be done later in life. (Sorry Mum, must stop comparing). There’s something about her confidence, the way she owns the stage that is quite mesmerising. I suppose that comes from a lifetime of performing. She had the crowd laughing as she joked about us helping her to find Jimmy - how we had to sing loud, because he was an old, old man now. And she had the audience on its feet as she sang ‘Dancing in the Streets,’ reminding us that it was her song first, before all the covers. 


Joan Osborne was phenomenal, especially when she sang ‘Midnight Train to Georgia’. As soon as I post this, I'll be downloading some of her music from i-Tunes. My partner, I kid you not, said to me, ‘Wow, she looks good doesn’t she? What band was she from?’ 


When Jimmy Barnes and Ian Moss sang ‘What becomes of the BrokenHearted’ with her I began to understand how Jimmy Barnes came to be there. I mean, Jimmy Barnes is, well, Jimmy Barnes. The crowd love him. But, I’m sorry to say, I found myself giggling as he screamed Stevie Wonder’s ‘I Was Made to Love Her’ through what sounded like a lungful of phlegm and flung the sweat from his eyes. I’m not denying he is an incredible artist; I just couldn’t quite put him with the smoothness of the other Motown performers. I imagined the Motown gang backstage saying ‘What the –?’ His daughter, Mahalia who sang backup throughout the concert came forward and performed a number with him that was just incredible. Now THERE, I thought, is a voice that goes with Motown.


I wonder if anyone else there found the MC as annoying as I did. After every act he came onstage shouting ‘Do you like it?’ In fact as he walked Mary Wilson off the stage, trying to squeeze more hysteria from the crowd, he was like a bad spruiker who makes his wares looks suspicious just because he’s trying to sell them so hard. And when he said that if we wanted to see more of Motown, we could travel interstate to see one of the other concerts, he sounded as if he was bordering on desperate.


Why is there such limited space for dancing at concerts? I think every concert should have a ‘mosh pit’’ where people who really feel the music and want to dance can do so without being told they are a safety hazard. The number of people who stood up to dance and were told to move off the stairs, or out of the aisles, and were sent down the back to dance in a tiny row on the ground floor against the wall, as if they would be a disturbance in any other place, made me think of mothers having to go to the cry room with their noisy babies during church. I mean isn’t that the point? Isn’t music supposed to make you want to dance? Shouldn’t the aim be to have everyone up and dancing? 


The absolute highlight of the evening was when all the performers came on stage and sang ‘I’ll be There’ in tribute to Michael Jackson, while images of Michael showed on the screens. It made me think how fantastic it would be if they recorded it as a single and donated the proceeds to Haiti or another charity. Then they finished up with ‘River Low-Mountain High’ kicked off by Jimmy Barnes, convincing me to think that he actually was a great fit after all. 


As we looked back into the foyer around the stadium at the end of the concert, we saw a section sealed off for the performers, and there was Mary Wilson, in her black mini, sitting there ready for autograph signing. If I had known in advance they would be signing autographs I would have bought a program. I’m really not an autograph hunter, but the autographs of those Motown legends would have been worth having.