Music

The crusade to never age out of the Grammys

BY COLIN MCGUIRE

Special to The News-Post

“Why the [beep] is Abba nominated for Record of the Year in 2023?”

I didn’t actually say “beep,” when I uttered that sentence after the 2023 Grammy nominations were announced. But this is a family newspaper. So you get the edited version.

Still. Why the beep is Abba nominated for Record of the Year in 2023? This ain’t no “Dancing Queen.” In fact, the announcement made me exclaim “Mamma Mia.” Did someone have to pay “Money, Money, Money” in order to make the finalists list?

Sorry. I’ll stop.

Anyway, it was the first time I’ve had even the tiniest modicum of emotion for anything the Grammys has done for years. There used to be a time when I lived and died by those things. My musical year went like this: Grammys in the spring. MTV’s Video Music Awards in the fall.

And that’s it. American Music Awards. Billboard Music Awards. Country Music Awards. Any of the awards shows that have risen to prominence in the last decade or so – they’re meaningless to me. I was raised during the days when the Grammys weren’t begging LL Cool J to host the show every other year and the VMAs were actually … whatever it isn’t now.

Even so, the Grammys always took precedence over its counterpart, if only because it just felt more important. People wore tuxedoes and gowns. Winners cried. Performances weren’t relegated to weird duets, and they exuded pomp. It worked because it was big.

These days?

Well, these days, I can’t even speak to the event because it’s been years since I’ve paid attention. I can’t quite tell you why. From what I understand, they’ve moved the day on which the ceremony takes place a couple times, so that didn’t help. Clips I see or read make the whole thing feel less formal, which I don’t really endorse. And they now have something called a “Best Score Soundtrack for Video Games and Other Interactive Media” category.

To which I say … what?

Perhaps my biggest gripe about the Grammys these days is the same gripe that other music fans tend to face when they succumb to an inevitable fear and it’s a fear with which all of us nerds come face to face: the fear of not knowing who the hell the nominees are because we’ve aged out of knowing anything about contemporary music. I feel like I have this conversation all the time. I ask someone if they watched the Grammys. They tell me they in fact did not watch the Grammys. They then follow it up with some variation of this: “I turned it on for 15 minutes, but I didn’t recognize anyone, so I changed the channel.” And it’s sad because that says a few things. One, they don’t want to learn about new music anymore, and two, they are stuck in a musical purgatory, a place

where the art fails to move you the way it once did. Also, it’s sad for me because … well, that’s where I’ve been, too. I’m old now. And when I look at the list of nominees and performers each year, I just kind of shrug and turn the other way. If Taylor Swift, Beyonce or Adele are ever up for anything, chances are they’ll win. Rock music is hardly ever represented in any of the major categories. And the most important thing that show producers seem to care about is seeing how outrageous they can book the thing. “I got an idea,” I imagine they say. “How about we put Bad Bunny and Judas Priest out there together to COLIN McGUIRE cover an Otis Redding B-side!” Such is why I’m making a pact with you, the fabulous reader, that I’m going to get myself out of the rut by the time February rolls and around and this ceremony takes place. I’m going to make a conscious effort to find out what a Doja Cat is and I’m going to finally listen to that Harry Styles record (which has to be overrated, right?). For the first time in more than a decade, I’m going to try to catch Grammy Fever, all streaming services be damned. Members of ABBA, from left, Bjorn Ulvaeus, Agnetha Faltskog, Anni-Frid Lyngstad and Benny Andersson, arrive for the ABBA Voyage concert at the ABBA Arena in London on May 26. ABBA released their first new music in four decades, and the album, “Don’t Shut Me Down,” was nominated for a Grammy.

Associated Press

Why? Because I want to (or, well, because Elvis Costello is actually up for one of these things, I learned, and that’s fun). Then, after all is said and done, the dust has settled and the awards are given out, I’ll report back my findings right here, hopefully with a better grasp of why Coldplay still matters. Either way, it’ll be a journey through each aspect of modern music, a road filled with computer-generated instruments and enough auto-tune to make Jay-Z have to work on “D.O.A. (Part 2).”

You should join me. Because at the very least, perhaps one of us will stumble across an answer to that allimportant question I just can’t stop asking: Why the [beep] is Abba nominated for Record of the Year in 2023?

Colin McGuire has been in and out of bands for more than 20 years and also helps produce concerts in and around Frederick. His work has appeared in Alternative Press magazine, PopMatters and 72 Hours, among other outlets. He is convinced that the difference between being in a band and being in a romantic relationship is less than minimal. Contact him at mcguire.colin@gmail. com. 72 HOURS | Thursday, dec. 1, 2022 | 5

MUSIC

Take a trip to Motor City this holiday season

BY CRYSTAL SCHELLE

Special to The News-Post

By all accounts, Glen Raby should have been exhausted when he took time for a telephone interview about “A Motown Christmas.”

Raby, along with the rest of the crew of the musical stage show, was on the road for a week (first in Ohio, then Pennsylvania, then back to Ohio), it was a couple of days before Thanksgiving, and he was scheduled to go on the road again by week’s end. They’ll start in North Carolina before heading to Pennsylvania and finally landing in Maryland. He’ll be in Frederick on Dec. 2 for two shows at the Weinberg Center for the Arts.

But Raby, founder and musical director of “A Motown Christmas,” doesn’t mind the hard work when it’s doing something he’s loved since he was a child: music.

“I used to have a little record player when I was 4,” he said during a telephone interview from his home near Detroit. “My uncle used to take me down to the local five-and-dime to buy records.”

The first record he ever bought was Little Richard’s 1959 album “Tutti Frutti.”

Music became a pastime, love and eventually his vocation as he lived and worked in Detroit, home of Motown Records founded by Berry Gordy.

Over the years, Raby was musical director for some of Motown’s best acts: Martha and the Vandellas (“Dancing in the Street”), various forms of The Temptations (“My Girl”), The Miracles (“The Tracks of My Tears”), and he spent 15 years with The Contours (“Do You Love Me”).

“My tenure with The Contours was coming to an end, and I was looking for another project,” he recalled. “It started out as a holiday show. I reached out to different artists from different Motown acts that I had worked with over the years and I felt we had good chemistry.”

They agreed to sign on to the holiday show, calling themselves the Motortown AllStars. He added an orchestra with top-notch veteran musicians, most of whom played with him during his Contour days. The first show was staged in 2013.

For most of those nine years, the lineup was virtually the same, he said, although one of its members, David Finley, who had also been a 40year member of The Miracles, died in 2020.

Today, the average age for most of the group is in their 60s, many of whom he said were the “second generation to a lot of these acts.” But don’t let the age fool you, he said. Groups that came to maturity in the Motown heyday were professionals who could perform onstage, i.e., without a backtrack to high flubs or out-of-tune notes.

Raby said he was lucky to put the lineup together for what he says will be 35 shows this year, mostly during the holiday season.

“I’ve worked with enough artists over the years that it was easy to find them,” Raby said. “The hard thing was to find people that are the right fit. It’s fairly easy to find a lot of them that are able to sing and dance, but I think that when you have good chemistry, it shows. The audience feels it and sees it. And it’s really important for us to really be enjoying what we do.” For “A Motown Christmas,” Raby is promising tunes that will take the audience down a musical memory lane by highlighting Motown’s Golden Age of the early to late 1960s. About one-third of the show will be classic Motown songs, “many of them from groups our members are or were a part of,” he said. They will also perform classic holiday songs, while the rest will be holiday songs performed with “a Motown twist.” However, don’t expect the entire Motown catalog to be part of the set list.

“We all started throwing ideas around on what songs we wanted to do,” he said, “and we quickly ended up with about 100 songs, which would have been a five- or six-hour show.”

See “A Motown Christmas” at the Weinberg Center for the Arts.

That’s why the focus is on the Golden Age of Motown, which is the time of some of Motown’s biggest hits. “It’s always gratifying to see the multigenerational fans of this music,” he said. “Even if people don’t know the artists, they know the songs. “A Motown And they’ve been played so much, and in so many places, they’ve stood the test of time. So it’s always Christmas” great to see that.” He said they sometimes have young people When: 3 p.m. Dec. 2 come to the autograph table, and he asks them if Where: Weinberg Center they knew the songs during the show. for the Arts, 20 W. Patrick “And it’s amazing. They really do,” he said. St., Frederick “A Motown Christmas” is a holiday card to Tickets: $47, $53, $59 Motown fans. Info: weinbergcenter.org “For the people that grew up with this music, we Note: As of press time, the want them to remember what it was like and take 8 p.m. show was sold out, that trip down memory lane,” he said. “And for the but a 3 p.m. matinee was people that weren’t part of that generation, we want added to accommodate the them to enjoy classic songs that never really have demand. gone out of style. And for all of those that enjoy the holiday season, we want them to walk out thinking they’ve had a really good time.” Crystal Schelle is an award-winning journalist whose work has been published locally, regionally and nationally. She enjoys trivia, cats and streaming movies.

Courtesy photo

Chris Collins performs at the Broadway Theatre of Pitman in Pitman, N.J.

Courtesy photo

A John Denver Christmas at the Weinberg Center

Celebrate the holidays with Chris Collins and Boulder Canyon and A John Denver Christmas, featuring interpretations of holiday classics plus Denver’s biggest hits, at 8 p.m. Dec. 3 at the Weinberg Center for the Arts.

Chris Collins and Boulder Canyon have toured internationally, delighting audiences with their talent, warmth, humor and passion for the music of John Denver. With similarities between award-winning, singersongwriter Collins’ natural voice and appearance of that of Denver’s, Collins brings to the stage the energy and unmistakable enthusiasm that was the hallmark of a John Denver performance.

Hailed as the most exciting John Denver tribute band, joining Collins are the consummate musicians in Boulder Canyon. Consisting of Berkley School of Music graduates, a former lead singer and co-founder of a recording rock group, a doctorate in music and members with numerous years of experience as musicians in many genres, Chris Collins and Boulder Canyon have been receiving delighted acclaim from audiences all over the country and abroad while emerging as the top performers of John Denver’s music.

Tickets start at $35 and are available at weinbergcenter.org, by calling the box office at 301-600-2828, or in person at 20 W. Patrick St. in downtown Frederick.

SANTAVSANT ISIT

December 10,2022 •12Noon–3 PM

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