Watchout!, Joe

More so than any other possible subset of music, I've always felt that Motown music has the unique ability to not only be known by everyone, but also to be appreciated by everyone. There are plenty of sounds that everyone in the country would recognize, but Motown is the only instantly recognizable sound that also gets you on your feet. Even if you don't know a particular Motown song, then it's still gonna be more than "I feel like I know this song." It's instead gonna be: "Holy shit, this song is awesome."

In other words, Motown music represents, in my eyes, the true power of music. It has the ability to bring people together. The entire collective just has a particular alchemy, a specific brand of magic that gathers strangers close and friends closer.

This isn't just speculation. As someone who strives to cultivate these types of parties/gatherings/whatever, I've put the hypothesis into practice. Motown is the perfect soundtrack to the shindig I want to be a part of. One summer in high school, I picked up a compilation CD of Motown's biggest hits, and it was such an easy album to put on at that part of the night, when the beer is flowing and the camaraderie is swelling and you're looking for some type of catharsis. Motown can easily get you there.

 

There was one particular night that always come back to me when I'm thinking about the phenomenon. My hometown friends and I had a tradition for a few summers in our youth in which we'd spend a weekend at Brianna's parents' shore house (called "Warped Shore" because some of our crew would go to Warped Tour first and we'd all meet down the shore afterward). We'd get drunk and act like teenagers and have a fucking blast.

One year, there was a literal dance party in that cramped little Cape May Villas bungalow, involving lots of Miller High Life, oven mitts, board shorts and bikinis, my very best friends, and, yes, Motown on the speakers. I used to have one of those tiny speaker systems that had a port for an iPod Classic specifically, and I didn't go to a party without it. This was a goddamn party. I swear to god, if one thing in the world is true, it's that the song playing out of the speakers when this picture was taken is "Jimmy Mack" by Martha and the Vandellas:

 

But that song was part of that infamous Best Of playlist, right? I guess I took the tiniest pause when this week of Record Club started, because the question was whether the magic of Motown existed in my mind and my ears because of a Greatest Hits compilation that my friends and I used to reach nirvana on the backs of, or if maybe the magic extended outward, across the entire Motown discography, even the deep cuts on one of the many albums that the label put out in the '60s and '70s. Listening to Watchout! was a risky proposal. Would the magic run out?

 

Good readers of Puke on Your Birthday, I am happy to report that Watchout! by Martha and the Vandellas manages to maintain the quality, the consistency, and the magic of the Motown music that I was already familiar with before this week.

I think it's tempting to try to break the machine down into its parts to investigate how exactly it runs so smoothly. Is it just a matter of having a magnetic center in Martha Reeves (or the other Motown megastars)? Is it more to do with the supernatural songwriting, i.e. did Holland and Dozier and Holland make some kind of pact with the devil? Is it that the drummers of the Funk Brothers (a prominent and sprawling backing band featured on many Motown songs including the ones on this album) always seem to be deep in the pocket? Is it that these Motown songs always seem to be deceptively more complicated than a typical two-minute soul-R&B-pop song might be (e.g. the cascading vocal/percussion performance on "I'll Follow You," or how the verses of "One Way Out" build tension by hitting the same note over and over)? Something else?

But then you risk ruining the magic by examining it too closely. This is absolutely one of those precious metals that could rust if you handle it too often. Just let it be its special thing. Pop it on, dance to it in the kitchen with the kids or in your seat on the bus or in some Cape May Villas kitchen from so long ago, let it exist in that space, and don't fuck with it.

Sure, you might also then zoom out too far, and you might start to feel like this album seems a little slight. It's more of a collection of songs than a cohesive album, for sure. I'm saying this as a stalwart defender of the idea of the "album" as a work of art: it doesn't make sense to apply this criticism to every single album in history. Watchout! was released in 1966, and the idea of the album as a complete artistic statement was only just starting to form. Watchout! is a throwback from the time when music was truly allowed to just be a collection of songs. Let's not ruin the fun here, okay?

And that's really what it comes down to—the fun. Music is special because there's a potential to create this sort of rapturous joy in the space of three minutes, and Martha and the Vandellas, like their Motown peers, are able to pull that specific sort of joy out of thin air, over and over and over. The magic is still there!

GRADE: 4 pukes out of 5