all those young ladies

When I was a kid I was blessed to find myself immersed in a musical milieu with three distict ‘styles’ of sound — The Beatles/Beach Boys British Invasion/American counterpart groups; Motown – and growing up in a population of one-fourth/one-third black folks and classmates, and working at a record store two years, there was lots and lots of Motown; and Girl Groups. It would have been a wildly limited life without the girl groups, and was wildly enriched with them. If you know, you know. If you don’t, bummer. Double winner — Motown girl groups.

If I wanted to refer back to last week’s pronoun-less and Chinese poetry fascinations, it may sound like this — “Evening walk, open windows, Ronettes spin, each star twinkles.” Which – far out – is me walking alone 6:45pm, early December passing Liz Precourt’s house and out comes flying through a second-floor window ‘Be My Baby.’ — “The night we met I knew I needed you so.”

When I was growing up in Wareham, MA there were these two places for dancing – The Monday Club, right down from me on High Street, and The Upstairs Cellar down on Main. You best believe both were filled with The Rascals, The Four Tops, and The Shangrilas. And if the creek don’t rise, and I’m right here through Friday, tacked on to every post this week will be one of my 10,000 favorite girl group songs.

Honored ones.