I've always thought that the original version of "Money (That's What I Want)" was lacking in something. It's a song almost entirely about being a greedy prick. Take any prior version - the Barrett Strong original, The Beatles catchy hit, etc. - and what you have is songs about capitalist fantasy without the grit-filled smile [...]
I am a member of two Mix CD clubs. They're great! You get 12 people together and each month someone is responsible for sending the other 11 members a mix. You get new music, new perspectives, all for the price of the effort it takes to make one of these yourself and the subsequent packaging and postage. For various reasons, I wanted to put together a mix of American music for my latest mix. Partly, I was trying to understand what American music means to me, and what kinds of songs and sounds I find distinctly American. To [...]
We've amassed a ton of covers performed live by seminal alternative band The Smashing Pumpkins.

Welcome to the latest installment in the Musical Pairings "history of pop music" series. This time the focus is on the music that claimed to represent "the Sound of Young America": Motown. A record label so unique and successful that it became synonymous with one of the most successful styles/genres of music in modern history. Of course, Motown Records continues to exist to this day, and still releases amazing music. But not everything released by Motown Records fits into the commonly accepted notions of what is considered Motown as a style/genre. Instead, the "Motown Sound" refers [...]

Barrett Strong: I Heard It Through The Grapevine [ purchase used for 80 bucks!] It's unusual to find a live performance from Barrett Strong, who spent most of his career behind the music, cranking out songs for other artists both with and without producer Norman Whitfield - though it's worth noting that Barrett's original 1959 version of Money (That's What I Want) , which would go on to make so much money for The Beatles, was the very first hit record for Berry Gordon's Motown Label. [...]

Filed under: News Marvin Gaye transformed soul music when he began recording his landmark 'What's Going On' album 30 years ago. But even before Gaye's jazzy, percussive, socially-conscious masterpiece, the Temptations had tinkered with the famous "Motown Sound," paving the way for others to take soul in a new direction. "We were the first Motown act that really started adding another kind of dimension to the Motown Sound," Otis Williams , who founded the Temptations in the early '60s, tells Spinner. "We were the first, [...]

Success has nothing to do with what you gain in life or accomplish for yourself. It's what you do for others. - Danny Thomas - The Money Mix 1. MIA - $20 2. Ol Dirty Bastard - Got Your Money 3. Barrett Strong - Money (That's What I Want) [...]

After the 2000 elections, a Democratic president left behind a budget surplus as the Republican Party came to Washington with a majority in both houses of Congress and on the Supreme Court. So much for being fiscally conservative, the Republican dominated government immediately ran up a big deficit every year since, doubling the national debt from $5 trillion to $10 trillion. The US government's $700-billion plan to bail out the banking system will give the US Treasury new powers to monetize private business failures and fraud. It will be encumbered with $5 trillion in new debt [...]
Motown songwriter and producer Norman Whitfield has died. Co-writing with Barrett Strong, Whitfield provided a rockier counterpoint to the songs provided by the label's other in-house team, Holland-Dozier-Holland and often took a political stance - Edwin Starr's War and The Temptation's Ball Of Confusion, as examples. Whitfield and Strong shared a Grammy in 1972 (Best Song for Papa Was A Rolling Stone); Norman won in his own right four years later when his score for Car Wash pleased the judges. More than a songwriter, Whitfield also produced many of the songs he [...]

Gladys Knight and The Pips weren't the first people to record this song , but they were the first to release it. Their release was soon eclipsed by Marvin Gaye's recording (actually completed before the Knight recording), but both versions have inspired a lot of love... and a lot of covers. Here are some of the best. Bobby Taylor & The Vancouvers (who toured with Gladys & The Pips) do a cover, and then The Rustix (the first white band signed to Motown) does a cover. Then Creedence Clearwater Revival present their extended, eleven-minute [...]
May 28, 2007, 3:57pm
100b

This song is so cool that it has been covered by everyone from The Beatles to The Smashing Pumpkins. Barrett Strong first released the single in 1959 and it climbed all the way up to the number 2 spot in America. He became a prolific lyricist for Motown and the song became so popular among other artists that it porbably has its own manager. Barrett Strong - Money (That's What I Want) I listened to most of the other artists versions listed on the song's Wikipedia page and more [...]
Or part of it, anyway. Several posts back, I described my fun visit to Half Price Books and Records on Brice Road in Columbus, Ohio. I can't remember much about the visit--my mind has erased the horror of it all. However, it looks like I got several nice 45s (and one LP) at the place, and for cheap. Let's hear some of them. Yes, let's. Now, where did I put those? Let me see.... No, wait. I turned the records into mp3 files. That's right. I forgot. Sorry--I [...]

I was asked to DJ a one-hour set , though I had no previous DJ experience. I didn't know how to beatmatch or transition smoothly, and neither do you. You just have to be comfortable with being a laptop DJ. Know your audience I had never been to the venue and from what the outside looked like, I figured inside was a bunch of dusty overweight 30-year-olds with massive facial hair. I took a weekday evening trip over and had a beer inside, scoping out the clientele. I [...]