Done and done

So you're watching American Idol last night (you were watching, don't front) and trying to figure out who the precociously talented contestant Allison looks like. Thankfully, my sole talent in life is figuring these kinds of things out.


Kelly Clarkson meets Brittany Murphy. Am I right or right? I'm a genius, I know.

American Idol went "to Detroit" (for a solid fifteen seconds of footage) to showcase the Motown sound (and a few dozen fans.) They checked out the studio where most of the great music was made and took in a couple of corners of the museum. Berry Gordy and Smokey Robinson were there, looking good, enjoying the limelight.

My eternal complaint: I know he's a musical genius and all (as important to pop music as I am to the craft of figuring out who people look like) but can't we just have a VH1 bubble pop up every time Berry Gordy talks about the glory days of Motown and note: "Thanks for bailing after the '68 riots and moving the label to Los Angeles in '72---Love, Detroit." It's like if all the Indian movie producers decided to move to LA and then still put out "Bollywood" movies. At least symbolically, you're cutting yourself off from what made the art possible in the first place. The magic was not just about Berry Gordy.

Some music transcends time and space (no really cares about the context of the Beatles as a Liverpudlian band) but Motown music rose out of a certain experience and ambition of the black community in Detroit, a place that promised in the post-World War II era to bring (though ultimately failed to fulfill) a new social equality based on prosperity for all.

Caveats: I'm as white as Clay Aiken and way too young to have been there. I also realize that Gordy is a record producer, not a political figure. Still, I think it would have been amazing to see what kind of songs Motown Records could have produced if they had stayed in Detroit and confronted in a more concrete way the challenges of post-Dr. King/post-Malcolm X rapidly deindustrializing black America. Anyone who's suffered through a Michigan winter can empathize with the decision, but I'll always wonder what could have been.