Deep Listening Day #55 — Marvin Gaye: Super Hits (1970). while at college this was the album that got me into #MarvinGaye. the songs that were revelations: Pride and Joy, Can I Get a Witness, That's The Way Love Is, and Baby Don't You Do It. endless joy.

#DeepListening #Tamla #Motown

This week's #TuneTuesday theme is #thebubble, songs that make you forget everything around you and closes you off to the outside world.

Somewhat paradoxically - given the lyrical content - this one does it for me:

Marvin Gaye: What's Going On (1971)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-kA3UtBj4M

#marvingaye #soulmusic #tamla #motown

This week's #JukeboxFridayNight theme is #Directions. There are lots of great tunes to choose from, but this is the song I found playing in my head:

The Marvelettes: Destination Anywhere (1968)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_j1rmmunDTc

#Marvelettes #Tamla #Motown #NickolasAshford #ValerieSimpson #soulmusic

“The gambling known as business looks with austere disfavor upon the business known as gambling”*…

The quote above, from Ambrose Bierce, was true enough until relatively recently. Business has embraced gaming. When the Supreme Court struck down the federal ban on sports betting in 2018, Americans, who had legally wagered less than $5 billion on sports annually. Last year, they bet $150 billion, most of it online (with the active involvement of leagues and the broadcasters who serve up their games). And now prediction markets are on the scene, widening the apperture for online casino-like wagering to include politics, the Golden Globe awards, the return of Jesus Christ and virtually anything else… which could be a problem.

Indeed, just this past week, Common Sense Media released a report on gambling by young boys that reveals (among other deeply concerning things) that 1 in 3 American boys ages 11-17 are gambling before they can vote. (Full report here.)

Gambling addiction has been an issue in the U.S. for decades. But with the onslaught of new ways to wager, the problem is surging. And as Benjamin Errett (observes in an amusing piece on “McGuffins“– objects, devices, or events necessary to plot and the motivation of characters, but insignificant, unimportant, or irrelevant in itself), it’s a particularly problematic problem…

There’s a compelling argument to be made that money is the true MacGuffin. George Ainslie [here], a psychiatrist and behavioural economist, makes that case in a very readable paper on addiction and regrettable choices. He gets right to the weird thing about gambling as a compulsive behaviour: Spending money for a chance of getting more money (with the likelihood of losing it) is illogically direct. (I too got stuck on this paradox in The Wit’s Guide to Gambling, and some part of my brain is still spinning on the roulette table.) If you simply must have cocaine or hot fudge sundaes or hot cocaine fudge sundaes, the immediate pleasure and later pain are in different modalities. And so Ainslie concludes that money is a MacGuffin because it’s “the object of a hedonic game that is justified by its instrumental believability but which is actually shaped by its production of satisfaction in its own right.” Ergo, capitalism is a Hitchcock movie….

– source

Ainsle’s essay, prepared for a conference on addiction, is eminently worth reading and pondering.

* Ambrose Bierce

###

As we turn our backs on baccarat, we might recall that it was on this date in 1960 that “Money (That’s What I Want)” by Barrett Strong entered the Billboard Hot 100. Written by Berry Gordy and Janie Bradford, the single was the first hit record by Gordy’s Motown Records (released on Motown’s Tamla label). The song peaked at #23 in April and was the only song recorded by Strong that reached the Hot 100, though Strong went on to write many of Motown’s biggest hits. It was, of course, covered by The Beatles, among many others.

source

https://youtu.be/96XJl7mxDtc?si=vEXw930DzjYxwXSG

And we might note that today is the first day of a “prefectly square” month…

This week's #TuneTuesday theme is #MemorableLine. Smokey Robinson has written lots of them, including these:

People say I'm the life of the party
Cause I tell a joke or two
Although I might be laughing loud and hearty
Deep inside I'm blue

The Miracles: The Tracks of My Tears (1965)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnJNZJzl2FQ

#music #smokeyrobinson #miracles #tamla #motown #soulmusic

It's #MusicWomenWednesday once again!

My pick for today is a song by one of my favorite #Motown artists, Brenda Holloway. The record was only a minor hit for her, but this is still a gorgeous performance, followed by a short interview with Dick Clark:

Brenda Holloway: I'll Always Love You (The American Bandstand, September 12, 1964)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30HmJSDvkG0&list=RD30HmJSDvkG0

#music #brendaholloway #tamla #americanbandstand #dickclark #edcobb