Who Are The Robots?: “Dancing Machine” by The Jackson 5

It is fair to say that in 1974 Motown had little idea what to do with, or about, the Jackson 5. In fact one could say that in 1974 Motown had little idea what to do about anything; I recall a doom-laden piece by Bob Edmands in the NME at the time which bandied about words such as “Hubris” and “Nemesis,” while the optimistically-titled Motown Chartbusters Volume 9 included three reissued oldies from the sixties.

Nevertheless “Dancing Machine” is the second consecutive Motown single to appear in this list so they must have remembered how to do something, and indeed the J5’s first US top ten hit since 1971’s unfortunately-titled “Sugar Daddy” – in Britain they had a few more hits, including two top tens with the tune-free “Lookin’ Through The Window” and their bizarre cover of “Doctor My Eyes,” but the hits dried up altogether after 1973 and when they resurfaced in the charts a few years later they had signed to Epic Records and become The Jacksons.

Actually disco suits the group quite well, and fifteen-year-old Michael in particular has a whale of a time with the song’s robotic determinism – witness his exclamatory “She’s geared to really BLOW YOUR MIND!” The mid-song instrumental breakdown reminded Lena of Kraftwerk and the prospect of teenage Michael grooving to Autobahn – which emerged just a few months later – is, in its own logical way, mind-blowing. You can clearly tell where Michael, if nobody else, is going and the “Robot” dance he did on Soul Train spelled that out even more obviously.

Date Record Made Number Two: 18 May 1974

Number Of Weeks At Number Two: 2

Record At Number One: “The Streak” by Ray Stevens

UK Chart Position: None

Other Information: The song was subsequently sampled by many artists, most notably by MC Hammer on "Dancin' Machine" and Justin Timberlake on "Murder." Laura Mvula and Naughty Boy also revisited the song in 2017.

Comments

A Disaffection, Or Fight Against Same: “Baker Street” by Gerry Rafferty

Even as a young teenager growing up in Lanarkshire, I was always listening out for music that sounded out of kilter, whether it was George Crumb’s Makrokosmos III (the closing section of which I heard on a Saturday afternoon on Radio 3) or anything which “irrupted” the top forty. From the first time that I heard “Baker Street” on the radio – I think it was Dougie Donnelly on Radio Clyde – I was immediately hooked, mentally noting that this song seemed to go as much against the grain of a standard pop record as anything coming out of punk or New Wave, and was probably just as angry, if not angrier. For forty years I harboured the notion – and this was from a time when visiting London, never mind living and working in it, was still a distant pipedream – that the song encapsulated the situation of the displaced Scotsman, marooned in a world he doesn’t really like or perhaps even understand. Make no mistake, this is undeniably a Scottish record, and seemingly all about someone...

“I Would Have Thought In The Middle Of The Atlantic In The Middle Of The Night That Rockets Must Mean Trouble”: “I’m Not In Love” by 10cc

"watching for night, with absinthe eye cocked on the lone, late, passer-by." (Sylvia Plath, "Prospect," 1956) This story begins in 1954, before most people had really recognised anything called rock, and a pop record which is half-perfect. That record, which stayed at number one in our charts for ten weeks, was “Cara Mia” by David Whitfield with Mantovani and his Orchestra and Chorus. Now, Whitfield was never the most subtle of singers and his in-your-face bellowing is somewhat distracting – it is significant that he was the first British reality media star (not from television, because at that time Opportunity Knocks was only broadcast on Radio Luxembourg) since his climactic high C at the end of “Cara Mia” is like a display of gymnastics, or an athletic field event; can he do that triple loop or throw that javelin beyond the stadium? It proves that technical prowess can often render itself unlistenable. But the magic here lies in the extraordinary ...

Threads Of Alligator Lizards In The Air: “Purple Rain” by Prince and The Revolution

The original idea was for a country-style collaboration with Stevie Nicks, to whom Prince sent a ten-minute instrumental backing track, asking her to come up with some lyrics. However, Nicks was overwhelmed by what she heard and feared that the task was too much for her to take on, so the song was reworked in rehearsal with The Revolution, utilising Wendy Melvoin’s guitar phrasing as a new guideline. The song appears to have existed before the film; Purple Rain the movie is best described as lucid hokum, but its soundtrack changed the atoms which constituted “pop,” far more so than much ostensibly radical music of the period. For many of that decade’s generation, Purple Rain the soundtrack was “our” Ziggy Stardust – better conceived, performed and produced in every way – and the title song, which closes the album, was “our” “Rock ‘N’ Roll Suicide.” It is such a patient epic, the song, and about a lot of things, and people – each of the verses addresses a different su...

Raise All Kinds Of Candy To The Stars

Search This Blog