I'm reading an excellent bio of the Motown label by Gerald Posner. My ass is engrossed! The stories are unbelievable, almost as unbelievable as the music. So there will probably be a lot of Motown-related posts coming on this blog.
Diana Ross... she comes across pretty badly in the book. Like just this side of demon. Posner paints the picture of a skinny, pretty young woman with cosmos-sized ambition and anger. It's hard not to be disgusted. And then you watch this performance, which took place in the '80s, and you see nothing but purity and gentleness.
The video starts on a smiling and soaking wet Ross onstage in Central Park in front of thousands of waterlogged fans. It's just started to pour rain and if you listen closely you can hear the holy spirit crackling in the monitors. Somebody is in her ear aggressively trying to get her to cancel the show because of safety reasons, but Ross barely registers that he's there and just wants to sing sweet soul lullabies to the audience. The song is schmaltzy 80s wedding ballad stuff - pretty corny. But there's nothing corny about the way she turns her entire tiny body into a cavity of sound, throwing her head back and singing without a filter of any sort. When she finishes the tune she beams and seems lost in a trance, basking in the power and truth of the moment. She sings a half lullaby and you can practically see her sins washing away.
This is totally in line with a strange fact of life I've been observing and meditating on this year - how beautiful artistry and ugly humanity often live in the same person. I used to think this was a contradiction in terms, but now I think it's a confirmation. Music is the manifestation of an energy that is bigger than us, bigger than ethics or decency. It's only natural that the shittiest people are sometimes plugged in to the highest-grade juice. Love belongs to everybody.
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