Went to see ‘Motown: The Musical’ last night. Brilliant. Ish. Very ‘ish’. In fact much more ‘ish’ than brilliant. Because its a formula now. Jersey Boys (Frankie Valley: the musical), Sunny Afternoon (Kinks: the musical), Beautiful (Carole King: the musical), Queen: the Musical (Queen; the musical)… ya get the picture.

And of course the music’s great, which is why the audience was 90% 50-plus. It was our music. And mainly pretty fantastic. They performed it well, a little OTT in places but pretty much anything by the Four Tops, Smokey Robinson, The Temptations, Diana Ross, Martha Reeves, etc, etc, etc, is a pretty good starting point.

Ok, these shows ‘tell the story’ behind the music. But so do all those fab BBC4 documentaries that I’ve been addicted to for… since the BBC went up to ‘4’. And they play the real thing. And have the real faces speaking about it. But heh, this is ‘entertainment’, ain’t’a fucking documentary. Yeah, but I wish it was. Because then they wouldn’t come into the audience for a little ‘join-in’ sesh. Oh. No. I was safe, I was in the Circle. But any semi-decent show immediately becomes a downmarket shit-fest for semi-drunk daytrippers from Blackpool as soon as they get a few slappers on stage for some karaoke.

That’s where they lost me totally. Sadly. Because the cast works hard. Really hard. And does it well. Ok, unless you’re Marvin Gaye you really have no right singing ‘What’s going on?’ but he’s been dead years so that’s difficult. So its ‘a trubute’. Ok, I can almost live with that, until the singer walked down ‘among us’.

What was much more interesting though is the awakening I had.

I was 14 when the Temptations brought out ‘Ball of Confusion’ and I loved it. Great song, great dance tune, fab, blah, blah, teenage adolescent blah. But it wasn’t a ‘fun’ song. It wasn’t ‘baby love’ or ‘my girl’, this was a song about the state of the world, the state of America, and racism. 6 years after the civil rights bill was passed and still there was an almost-apartheit situation in many southern states. And a full apartheit in music. ‘White’ radio stations wouldn’t play ‘black’ music. The sponsors wouldn’t allow it. Segregation was outlawed in 1964 but continued in so many real ways.

And I never realised that in 1970. Didn’t occur to me in, even then, multi-cultural, liberal Britain, that the USA, the country we all idolised and aspired to, was in some parts just like the South Africa we’d boycotted, banned and hated. And the music of Motown, like all good music, was a reflection of the society that spawned it.

Must listen to the words more carefully.

Happy Sunday. Ok, not for Jose Morinho, but for everyone else.

A xxxx