I never saw it coming. I had stopped into the bookstore to find last week’s issue of Rolling Stone with Jon Stewart on it; there was a bitchin interview with him that I only got to read half of in my shrink’s office until she buzzed me in. But it looked like they’d already cycled in the brand new issue, sporting John Kerry and a juicy Hunter S. Thompson feature. So I plucked it off the rack and strolled over to the information desk to ask the whereabouts of last week’s issues.
And that’s when it happened.
The unmistakable sound of Michael McDonald’s voice broke through the ether. Or rather, was shot full-blast out of it. Terrible music is everywhere, but at Border’s Books & Music, they like to crank it way up to break the monastic peace of book-perusing and reading that would otherwise make you wanna hang out there forever. Like the color scheme at Del Taco.
Now, to anyone who is too young to remember the Late 70s version of the Doobie Brothers, to uncool for Steely Dan, or was in a coma during the “Shine Sweet Freedom” 1980’s, let me explain Michael McDonald’s voice:
A bag of wind being punched.
A dryer machine filled with shoes.
A bagpipe someone buried in the sand at the beach and forgot about until his fat mother sat on it.
A Great Dane with tonsillitis.
A crying mummy.
When it was happening in the Doobies, Steely, and even solo in the 80s, at least you could say, “But damn, those are some funky keyboards!”
Unfortunately, the Doobster ran out of good shit to write when he put down his bong 20 years ago. Now he’s rampaging across the annals of great music to find hits he can smear his albino hoarseness on.
That’s right y’all, this new CD - cleverly dubbed Motown 2 (thus implying that some dumb fucking record exec let him do this BEFORE) - covers Motown’s Greatest Hits.
White is defined as the absolute absence of color. It is fitting then, that McDonald sports the white beard & moustache that get him mobbed each Christmas by hoardes of joyous children. He and his music are both completely devoid of color, even when that music is written by the bluest and blackest souls our earth has ever seen.
If I were black, I would be protesting in front of the White House. McDonald does to Motown what Godzilla does to Tokyo. It’s the worst affront to good music since Pat Boone covered “Wind Cries Mary.” At least THAT album I can play for kitsch value at parties. This one merely makes you want to poop in your hand and eat it, just so there’s something more disgusting going on in your life right then.
When it dawned on me that Brother McDonald was in fact bastardizing “Reach Out For Me, I’ll Be There” by The Four Tops, I realized the sitch was critical and high-tailed it to the checkout line. That’s when I heard the first few familiar notes of one of my very favorite Stevie Wonder songs, “I Was Made to Love Her.”
Only instead of the bouncy, funky bass and string section-opening, it was synthesized CLAPPING coupled with an electric guitar that was as limply enthusiastic as the retarded girl we let cheerlead in my senior year. I mean it, this is the worst white assault on black music since the Christy Minstrels donned blackface.
Other soulful, funky performances bastardized on this album are Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On?”, Smokey Robinson’s “Second That Emotion”, and Aretha Franklin’s aptly named “Nowhere to Hide.”
To be fair, it’s not McDonald’s chainsaw-in-a-bucket-of-Cool-Whip voice that drags the songs down to ruination - it’s the perky, clean office-Christmas-party orchestration that puts you in convulsions. Instead of jumpy horns, confidently gospel keyboards, and velvety strings, you get cheesy handclaps, lifeless drumming that manages to sound synthesized, and worst of all: an abundant use of those effing chimes held so dear by Yanni and his Wiccan loveslaves.
Dear God, he has made soul into polka using the very same percussive “instruments” they gave us all in kindergarten. Remember the wood blocks? They’re on “After the Dance.” That weird, rippled thing you slide the stick over that sounded like a frog? That’s in there, too. And tamborines? I counted at least three in “Nowhere to Run To.” Even Stevie Nicks is going, “Look man, take it easy.”
Here’s my credo on remakes: If you can’t do it better, at least do it galactically different. No Doubt does neither of these things. My man Pat Boone had it right when he made “In a Metal Mood,” cause he knew - he fucking KNEW - he was venturing into territory he had no right to be in, and that you were going to laugh your ass off. So that made it good - it swooped over the parabola to “So Bad It’s Good”.
Motown 2 just sort of hangs right on the loop of “So Bad.”
At least this review loses wind right before that point and just ends up on “Meh.”
