MOJO'S 70 GREAT SOUL ALBUMS FROM THE '70S

I love lists, and British music magazine Mojo has some great ones.  In the recent issue (Robert Plant cover), they list 70 great soul albums from the '70s.  I confess that I haven't yet read it.  You see, I like to create a soundtrack for every Mojo list-type feature, and I just finished creating my iTunes playlist.  But I wanted to tell you about this issue while it's still available! A lot of the albums are in my collection - everyone should have Stevie Wonder's Innervisions, Marvin Gaye's What's Going On, Sly & The Family Stone's There's A Riot Goin' On and Funkadelic's Maggot Brain. But the list called my attention to artists I haven't listened to much (Donny Hathaway, Johnnie Taylor) and a few who I don't know anything about, or I never even heard of! (Like Shirley Brown, Honey Cone and Willie Hutch.) I love to learn about artists who time has sort of "forgotten," whether they are garage rock, country, blues or soul. So this countdown is a big gift! Thank you Mojo!

TOMORROW ON OUTQ: THE BRITISH INVASION AND R&B

For those of you who are new to No Expiration, every Wednesday morning at 9 am ET I go on the SIRIUS XM channel OutQ and talk about music on The Morning Jolt with Larry Flick. This week and next week, however, I am moving to Thursdays.  In three weeks, I'll be back to Wednesday.

I'm going to talk about what I was supposed to talk about last week: the British invasion of the early '60s, and the American R&B of the era: how they influenced each other, and how that influence manifests itself today.  I'm adding one recent release that I didn't originally plan on: Otis Redding's Live On The Sunset Strip. It's a two CD collection of a few sets that he did over the course of a multi-night stand at the Sunset Strip in April of 1966, backed by his own band (as opposed to Booker T & The MGs) at the point where the dude was blowing up.  It is hot, and worth checking out. I've talked about Otis on the show before, but as far as I'm concerned, you can't talk about him too much.

I'll also be talking about The Kinks, in honor of the late Pete Quaife. I'll be talking about a newly released live Jackson 5 album. And new albums by Paul Weller and Bettye Lavette. But the main thing will be the recently released DVD version of The TAMI Show. I was talking with a friend of mine, we said it may be the best music DVD ever. And I never say that kind of stuff.  But it is a well shot concert from 1964 featuring a legendary performance by James Brown (see part of it here). Plus, The Rolling Stones (here), Marvin Gaye (here), Diana Ross & The Supremes (also here), The Beach Boys and Smokey Robinson & The Miracles. Check out below, I've posted a joint performance by Chuck Berry with Gerry & The Pacemakers, and also Lesley Gore. This is incredible stuff.

TOMORROW ON OUTQ: THE BRITISH INVASION AND R&B

UPDATE: I'm not going to be on OutQ today, due to a number of other guests. So I'll do an extended version of my weekly thing next week. Sorry everyone, I just found out! Tomorrow night, however, I will be on The Catholic Channel, and I'll post more about that later on.

For those of you who are new to No Expiration, every Wednesday morning at 9 am ET, I go on the SIRIUS XM channel OutQ to talk about music on The Morning Jolt with Larry Flick. Tomorrow I will talk about the "British Invasion" of the early 1960's, and the American R&B of that era, and the effects they still have today. It's something I love to talk about: how music can bring together different cultures, and that was definitely happening in the early '60s. 

First, I'll talk about The Kinks' late founding bass player Pete Quaife. He passed away last week. The Kinks were kind of seen as the quintessential British band, and they were. But on their first album, they were covering Chuck Berry and blues and R&B artists. It's still amazing to me: there was no internet in the early '60s: the fact that white British kids were going crazy over American artists like Chuck and Muddy Waters - who many American kids didn't know about, or didn't appreciate, it's pretty amazing.

After that, I'm going to talk about The TAMI Show DVD. The TAMI Show was a concert film recorded October 28 and 29 of 1964 and was released in December of that year. The concert featured performances by James Brown, The Rolling Stones, Marvin Gaye, Lesley Gore, Smokey Robinson & The Miracles, Diana Ross & The Supremes, Chuck Berry and The Beach Boys among others. It was when desegregation was still a relatively new concept. The show was mainly attended by white kids, but there were black kids too, and I bet this made lots of people nervous. You can hear the white girls going crazy throughout the entire performance, especially when James Brown is on. Brown's TAMI performance is legendary, he blew everyone away. The Rolling Stones were pretty badass, and the Motown artists were excellent, but James was by far the best. Anyway, this DVD costs like $15 and it's one of the best things I've ever seen. I can't say enough about how awesome it is, just trust me.

It's been a year since Michael Jackson died. Before he was The King Of Pop, he was the star of a great Motown band, The Jackson 5. A newly released live album, Live At The Forum, recorded at the L.A. Forum in 1970 and 1972. I brought in their cover of Traffic's "Feelin' Alright."

One British rocker who was profoundly influenced by the music of 1964 is Paul Weller. In the late '70s and early '80s, he fronted a legendary band called The Jam, who were influenced by The Who and The Kinks, but only through their mod periods. Not only The Who and The Kinks, but their American R&B influences, and when they moved away from that, I think he moved on. In the '80s, he formed a new band, Style Council, who were very influenced by the very synth-heavy American R&B of that era. He's been solo since the '90s, and done some of the best music of his career in that time. Some say that his latest album, Wake Up The Nation, is his finest. Larry Flick has already said that it is his favorite album of 2010.

Finally, Bettye Lavette. Last year, I said that her 2005 album I've Got My Own Hell To Raise was one of the most underrated albums of the '00s. I'll stand by that: the album saw her covering classic songs from great female songwriters. Her new album, Interpretations, sees her covering Britsh rock artists, most of whom started in the '60s, including The Beatles (individually and collectively), The Rolling Stones, The Who, Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd. It's good, I don't love it as much as I've Got My Own Hell To Raise, but it's a cool album.

One album that I wanted to discuss, but I just won't have time, is the newly released Otis Redding collection Live On The Sunset Strip. If I don't talk about it on OutQ at some point, I will at least write about it here.

MOTOWN ON THE TAMI SHOW

Motown's slogan was "The Sound Of Young America." I think that classic Motown records still make people feel young, but here are some videos from when their music really did appeal to young folks (and it's a glimpse of when the artists themselves were still young!). Check out these performances by Marvin Gaye and Diana Ross and The Supremes (I couldn't find any videos online of Smokey Robinson and The Miracles from The TAMI show, but they played also).

THE GREATEST ROCK CONCERT FILM EVER?

Rolling Stone writer David Fricke claims that The T.A.M.I. Show is the best concert film ever. Based on that, I just put it in my cart on amazon. The artists playing at this one concert, recorded October 29, 1964 at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium include Jan & Dean, Chuck Berry, Smokey Robinson & The Miracles, Marvin Gaye, The Beach Boys, The Supremes, James Brown and The Rolling Stones.

MOTOWN'S 50 MOST POPULAR SONGS

Motown has been celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. Motown's story is such an astonishing one. The artist roster is unmatched. Smokey. Stevie. The Supremes. Marvin. The Tops. The Temps. What can you really say about Motown that hasn't been said? Anyway, Motown took a poll on their website to find out what their most popular songs were for a collection called Motown 50 Fanthology, which comes out September 1. The Temptations' "My Girl" took first place, followed by Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On," and then "Let's Get It On." The Temps were at #4 with "Just My Imagination (Running Away With Me)" and Smokey Robinson & The Miracles were at #5 with "The Tracks Of My Tears." I was fortunate enough to interview Smokey about Motown's history last summer and some of the excerpts of it can be seen inthe below video. It was one of the major honors of my life to sit and talk with the man about the history of Motown.

IT TAKES TWO (MARVIN GAYE FLICKS)?

I was bummed to hear that there are now two Marvin Gaye flicks in the works. I'm a huge fan of Marvin, but I think that two films will cannibalize each other. Although word is one film, which will have the rights to his Motown catalog (90% of his career) will be about his life, and the other, which has the rights to his post-Motown stuff (notably "Sexual Healing") will be about his decline and death. 

I hope both films are great and introduce a new generation to his incredible music: outside of Bob Marley, Stevie Wonder, Bob Dylan and maybe John Lennon, few artists excelled equally when writing about the state of the world and about love. I discovered Marvin's music fairly late, but better late than never. 

MARVIN GAYE DVD CONTAINS CONCERT AND DOC

I recently wrote about the Marvin Gaye biopic that is in the works. But there's also a new DVD set, that collects the documentary What's Going On: The Life & Death Of Marvin Gaye and the concert Greatest Hits Live in '76. I love this kind of thing. I never had the opportunity to see Marvin perform - not even on screen. Now I'll get to see what a Marvin performance looked like (of course, it's never the same as being there).

Marvin is one of those figures, like James Brown, Hank Williams, Muddy Waters, Aretha Franklin, Buddy Holly, Otis Redding... the list can go on and on. They're names that you know growing up, but you only know a song or two. Before the CD (and box set) era, it was hard to get a grip on what the best albums were (as the Internet wasn't a factor at the time, and magazines weren't so list-addicted). "Classic rock" radio stations ignored them due to their color or age or both in favor of giants like Styx or REO Speedwagon or Foreigner.

Anyway, I got into these artists during college, or after college, and I am grateful that I did. Listening to the artists that influenced your favorite artists can give you a new appreciation of the continuity of music. I'm listening to Marvin Gaye right now - he's one of my favorite singers. If you're not familiar with him, you should check him out also. Outside of Marley, Stevie and Dylan, few artists were able to tackle matters of the world and matters of the heart the way he could.

MARVIN GAYE BIOPIC IN THE WORKS

I'd heard rumors of a Marvin Gaye biopic, but I guess it's in production. I read that Jesse Martin of Law & Order is playing Marvin, and James Gandolfini from The Sopranos has a support role.

When I was younger, the only song I knew by Marvin was "Sexual Healing." But about ten years ago, I picked up his box set, and was completely blown away, not just by his singing and songwriting, but by his artistic progression, which is akin to Stevie Wonder's. Both guys started out very much a part of the Motown system (nothing wrong with that, as it cranked out some of the greatest music of all time). But at some point, both artists outgrew it, and created their own music, on their own... with amazing, timeless results. It reminds me of The Beatles in some regards.

Anyway, Marvin has a fascinating, tragic story, so I look forward to seeing how they bring it to the screen.