Review: How Sweet It Is.. The Motown Show @ Mechanics, Burnley (From Preston and Leyland Citizen)

Review: How Sweet It Is.. The Motown Show @ Mechanics, Burnley

11:01am Monday 15th June 2009

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The magic of Tamla Motown refuses to die and the packed house at the Mechanics was testament to the fact it is likely to live on forever.

The show was a strange one. It wasn’t your normal tribute band concert because covers of 20-odd artistes were performed. It was more a case of close your eyes and imagine the entire Motown Revue is on stage!

But for more than two hours, four unknown and in musical terms anonymous black guys, sang their little soul socks off to the admiration of an already converted and, dare I say, middle-aged crowd.

The audience knew every word of every song and blasted them out accordingly.

Sixties hits from the Temps, Four Tops, Stevie Wonder and Smokey Robinson etc through to the Seventies and Eighties numbers of the Jackson Five and Lionel Ritchie and the more up to date Boyz II Men received magnificent applause.

The renditions ranged from average to outstanding. But the four guys, who dubbed themselves the Motown Brothers, polished off their act with some thrilling dance routines and amusing patter.

The all-white eight-piece band the Peter Brent Ochestra provided brilliant backing which would not have shamed the original Motown session guys.

A couple of moans. They had no girl singer, so none of Motown’s famous female tracks were featured.

And why did they cover two non-Motown tracks when there were so many other monumental Motown memories they could have reproduced?

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