Monthly Archives: September 2024

Indeed I Do

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Frank Wilson joined the team at Motown in 1963, first helping staff their Los Angeles office before relocating to Detroit to write and produce. He worked with Stevie Wonder, the Temptations, Marvin Gaye, the Four Tops. He helped shepherd a late-sixties renaissance for Diana Ross and the Supremes, including “Love Child” and “Stoned Love.” In 1976, he left Motown to become a minister and gospel music producer. He died in 2012 at age 71. 

He also wrote and sang one of the rarest and most coveted soul singles ever. “Do I Love You (Indeed I Do)” was cut in 1965 for Motown’s subsidiary label Soul. There were 250 demo copies of the single produced in advance of a December 23, 1965 release. Then…nothing. “At least two, and maybe as many as five, copies survive,” according to Wikipedia, one of which reportedly remains in Berry Gordy’s personal collection. As Wilson recalled to writer Andy Rix: 

“I went to Detroit, and I hadn’t been in town more than a week”, Frank said. “We were standing backstage at the Fox Theater, [where] they were having a Motown Revue, and [Berry] said, ‘Frank, now you know I’m getting ready to release this record on you. We’re excited about it. But I want to ask you a question. Do you really want to be an artist, or do you want to be a writer and a producer?’ And it was right then and there I told him I wanted to be a writer and a producer. And it was decided that he would not release that record on me.”

The Northern Soul movement in England somehow rescued the song from obscurity, and it became one of their key anthems, an ideal distillation of the vibe they tirelessly sought night after night in clubs like Wigan Casino. Owing to the resurgence in popularity, Motown reissued the single in the UK in 1979 and again in 2004. It’s since featured on CD via several different Motown-produced compilations.

Back to Frank Wilson. If you search the song on YouTube, there used to be a shaky video of Wilson lip-syncing to the tune in the late 90s. Northern Soul historian, DJ and producer Ian Levine found Wilson and cultivated a friendship with him, leading to both the home video he filmed and Wilson’s sole live appearance to perform the song in front of a couple thousand Northern Soul fans in England. It’s sadly gone from the web, but it was incredible. 

More recently, Bruce Springsteen covered the song for his 2022 album Only the Strong Survive. It’s not a great record; most of it sounds like borderline karaoke. But this song translates unscathed, the backup singers recorded with an echo that make them sound angelic, a dash of gospel sprinkled back into the rhythm and blues. 

How did this one cut somehow survive near-extinction to become the center piece of a musical movement and the lead single from the Boss’ late-career soul covers album? It’s survived because it’s perfect. I’m not sure there’s any other way to describe it. If you have any affection in your heart for the sounds of the sixties, for Motown, for soul and R&B, or just for the sheer expression of joy, you will love it. 

Bruce’s version is good. It’s amazing that he’s chosen to include it and recognize not just a great lost soul cut, but a great lost soul singer and songwriter in Frank Wilson. But for the real stuff, you gotta go back to the source. 

Imagine that this song, this shining thing, has sat near the bottom of the dustbin of history for decades. Hear Wilson’s vocal, and hear the sound of a man with his entire life in front of him and countless songs in his heart. Consider that only the vagaries and disappointments of record label politics kept him from perhaps becoming one of the great soul performers. He records one single, and THIS is it. His one shot, and he blows the target into bits from the center on out. 

Think about Frank Wilson, decades after this singular moment has come and gone, standing in front of an adoring crowd and sounding exactly as he did in the prime of his youth. I can’t imagine that feeling–putting something into the world, watching it vanish, and then hearing it sung back at you with nothing but devotion.

I’ve Never Heard You Sing!

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“Are we made for war, Izaya? You know–I’ve never heard you sing!”
–Jack Kirby, New Gods #7, 1972

There are things that MATTER, to each of us; and then there are things that don’t really matter but still matter. Social media is a constant push and pull between sharing all of those things, in ways that feel comfortable, and ideally without the classic Reply Guy emerging in your space to say “Well achtchuallyeah, that doesn’t matter at all” or “What matters to you matters so little to me, I will shit on it and then drift on with my life.” 

Don’t yuck my yum. We told our kids that and I think of it every day on social media. I work at home, I spend more time alone than is probably “healthy,” and I am trapped in my head too often. I have often looked to social media as a way to connect to the outside world in a way that’s meaningful, without having to prowl my city to find the one other dude who is both way into the new Rings of Power show on Amazon and the recorded works of Elvis Costello. 

When you put something out into social, and no one seems to notice, I guess that sucks? But when you put something out and the Reply Guys appear, it really sucks. But how else do you create interactions, if not to reply? And how else do you create dialogue if not to disagree? 

It’s a sticky wicket. 

Anyway, I’ve come around on Rings of Power in its second season, and I live in fear of mentioning it because I do not need an army of Reply Guys to tell me why Tolkien is rolling over in his grave, threatening to disrupt the prosthetic elf ears carefully glued to his corpse to honor his final wish. 

Overall I think I was a little iffy on season one. Maybe I was overly critical of it, or maybe it wasn’t as good? Looking back it does feel like a shitload of setup, how much was necessary?

But I am A Dense Man and so I will confess, it did not lock in for me until like S2E2 that this is basically the story of the prologue of the LOTR movies told in full. I guess for some crazy reason I assumed it was just trying to draw thin lines of plot thread out of all these appendices and whatever leftovers Amazon had the rights to. Realizing that this story “matters” to the stories I already know and love from the Peter Jackson movies immediately upped my interest.

As these tumbler pieces of plot and pathos click into place, I think the show has risen to the occasion. it’s been incredible watching Annatar/Sauron slowly seduce Celebrimbor, and then leave him hanging as a broken betrayed man completely suckered by ego. As Annatar/Sauron, Charlie Vickers is delivering a performance for the ages. Fully revealed to the audience as the embodiment of manipulative evil, his every glance and gesture is carefully measured. His arm is touched with gentle intent and he struggles not to destroy whoever is attached to the kind hand. His contempt is always barely contained, his true power carefully concealed until it benefits him to use it. 

And there are moments that stand in the same company as Jackson’s LOTR films, although I’d not dare to suggest they’re “better.” The siege of Eregion presented in S2E7 feels tactile and brutal in ways that television typically does not achieve. There’s real scale in it; watching the short “making of” featurettes after each episode, you can actually see they’re going to real places for some of this stuff. There’s plenty of CGI and plenty of it looks a little crappy, but there’s moments where the CGI is enriching and supplementing something originally shot practically, and those moments carry unexpected weight. 

I’ve tried at least three times to read the Lord of the Rings novels and failed. (I did read the Hobbit often as a kid.) I’m not really a Toliken guy, but I’ll court the fury of some Reply Guy somewhere and suggest that while I can’t say if this is “faithful” to Tolkien’s work, this does feel like something he would have come up with. If he were still alive, and the LOTR movies made a shitload of money, and they paid him dumptrucks full of gold to develop a prequel, this feels like something he might have approved. 

And if not, who cares? Are we made for the onslaught of Reply Guys? I’m enjoying it. And that doesn’t MATTER to me, but it matters, so I’m eager to discuss it, but wary of the yuck to my yum. So it goes.