Motown mastermind passes away, Smashing Pumpkins nostalgic

Sun, 09/21/2008 9:47 AM  |  Entertainment

Welcome back to Underground Hum, my brave little indienauts. *Tis once again time to hop into our little geek spaceship and fly headfirst into a galaxy of totally cool music news. As always, thanks for the feedback. Now, let's get cracking with this week's Reverb.

REVERB

Norman Whitfield, songwriter, producer and one of the masterminds behind the Motown Records' sound in the mid-to-late 1960s and early 70s, passed away in Los Angeles on Sept. 16, aged 67.

He had recently emerged from a coma after struggling with complications from diabetes. Whitfield is best remembered for his involvement in writing and producing several of Motown's biggest hits, including Gladys Knight & the Pips' "I Heard It Through the Grapevine" (he also produced Marvin Gaye's rendition of this song), the Temptations' "Papa Was a Rollin' Stone" and Edwin Starr's "War", all written in collaboration with his frequent songwriting partner Barrett Strong.

Whitfield is credited with helping to usher the label's sound from its smoother early days into the headier psychedelic era, influenced by the likes of Sly Stone and James Brown.

Whitfield continued to work in the music industry after leaving Motown in 1973, and later struck chart gold with Rose Royce's "Car Wash", which he wrote and produced. He returned to the producer's chair at Motown in the 1980s. Rest in peace, soulman.

The Smashing Pumpkins are revisiting their rocky past with the release of a DVD called If All Goes Wrong, a double-disc release. The first disc features the titular documentary, which chronicles the band's reunion and live residencies in San Francisco and Asheville, North Carolina, last year through interviews with band members, fans, journalists and other musicians.

Also on the disc: a short documentary about Pumpkins fans called Voices of the Ghost Children and, lord knows why, an interview with The Who's Pete Townshend. The second disc of If All Goes Wrong features The Fillmore Residency, a collection of live performances from the band's residency in San Francisco.

Also included are five bonus tracks lumped together as "Live From the Floor of the Fillmore". The second disc of the DVD contains seven different exclusive new tracks.

From Pumpkins to other Halloween-esque things. On Sept. 30, Walt Disney Records will bring out Nightmare Revisited, a 20-track set of modern rock covers of tunes from the classic twisted 1993 holiday film The Nightmare Before Christmas.

It features versions on spooky songs by some of your favorite musicians and, I'm pretty sure, several of your least favorite. There are covers by Sparklehorse, the Polyphonic Spree, DeVotchKa, Datarock, RJD2, Amiina, the Album Leaf, Rodrigo y Gabriela and a pair of tunes from original soundtrack composer Danny Elfman.

Unfortunately, the project also features participation from hack-rockers KoRn, trend victims Plain White Ts, and -- in an "I can't believe Disney is behind this record" revelation -- Marilyn Manson. Excellent legacy, I say, for weird yet awesome little movie about little skeleton people, especially one that advocates violence against fictional holiday icons.

That about does it for this week's Underground Hum. Got a whopper of a Main Stage for you guys next week, so stay tuned! Be good now, children!

If you have any questions, suggestions, praises or curses just send us a note at undergroundhum@yahoo.com.

For all of you indie bands or artists out there, let us know if you have a gig coming up so we can include it in future editions of Reverb. Be sure to include the name of the event you're playing, what other acts are billed, time, place, date and entry fee if any.

See y'all next Sunday!

--Paul F. Agusta

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