NOTE FROM MIGUEL:
Tusk made this post in the
Listen Up! thread. After I responded, I decided to split it off and create a new topic out of it.
Tusk's post:
At IDF, a poster commented she thought Casey delivered on the promise of an 'organic' album as opposed to the more processed sounds on Haley's "Listen Up!".
Another poster countered that "Listen Up!" was indeed 'organic' for a
Motown inspired album, which caused me to look something up and I posted an interesting article that I found that seems to be the template that they went with when making "Listen Up!" They followed the Motown map to a "T"
Quote:Haley's album is organic in the sense that it's pretty pure for a mo-town sound and such. You don't strip down those types of songs.
I agreed with this post and posted
http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,...75,00.html
Quote:So what was the Motown Sound? Great melodies, lots of tambourines and hand clapping, blaring horns, interplay between the lead singer and his or her backup vocalists, driving bass lines and foot-slapping drum parts. In his still essential Motown history Where Did Our Love Go? Nelson George writes, "Motown chief engineer Mike McClain built a miniscule, tinny-sounding radio designed to approximate the sound of a car radio. The high-end bias of Motown's recordings can be partially traced to the company's reliance on this piece of equipment." They knew people would be listening on their car stereos and on their transistor sets and they were going to do what it took to make their songs sound good and memorable. Even if you couldn't put your finger on it, when a Motown song came on, you knew it.
Throughout the Sixties, Motown produced a catalog of songs that cannot be rivaled. "You've Really Got a Hold On Me," "Heat Wave," "Dancing in the Street," "Tracks of My Tears," "Where Did Our Love Go," "My Guy," "My Girl," "Baby Love," "Reach Out, I'll Be There," "I Can't Help Myself," "Get Ready," "Stop! In the Name of Love," "The Way You Do the Things You Do," and so on. They were simple love songs that told simple stories, often in joyously happy or heartbreakingly sad ways. And all the while Motown was the pride of Detroit and the pride of black America (though Gordy tried, with his usual bluster, to make it the "Sound of Young America," a label he began to stamp on all of the company's vinyl)
sounds like Mission accomplished on "Listen Up!"
