It starts off promising enough, even for the staunchest of soul purists. The beautiful guitar playing of
David T. Walker and the bass playing of
Wilton Felder interweave around one another free of percussion to create one of the most famous and beautiful intros in all of soul music,
the Jackson Five's "I Want You Back." From there, it all goes downhill -- quickly. Abandon all hope, ye who enter here, for Motown has stepped into the dimension of despair otherwise known as "the remix project." With the recent onslaught of abhorrent cash-cow remixes feebly flooding the market in an attempt to introduce young people to classic soul imprints (see
Atlantiquity,
Mayfield: Remixed,
Blue Note Revisited and the
Verve Remixed series for similar crimes of passion), it has become the trend du jour to grant dance and hip-hop producers access to master tapes locked away (for a good reason, mind you) in vaults or archives. Instead of offering reasonably priced discs of the classic works; instead of offering up single MP3s on Internet purchasing stations; instead of coming up with creative new deluxe editions of these classic works, all that is left is the notion that someone, somewhere, thought this trend was a good idea. They should be tarred and feathered. This is, without question, the most ill-conceived and poorly executed project in the history of the Motown label. And coming from a label that released records by
Rockwell, that speaks volumes.