#BESTTHINGS2011 // OUR LIVES ARE SHAPED BY WHAT WE LOVE: Motown’s Mowest Story, 1971-1973 (Light In The Attic)
By the dawn of the 1970s, Motown founder Berry Gordy had begun cutting ties with his hometown of Detroit - the city that had been the scene of his many successes throughout the 1950s and 1960s. The Motor City was on the downturn and Gordy was moving on. The music mogul had his sights set on the west coast, buying property in Los Angeles and commemorating the move with the launch of Mowest Records, a L.A.-based subsidiary of Motown. In this light, the creation of Mowest follows the same trajectory as several other gross American narratives: manifest destiny, post-industrial flight, suburban sprawl, etc. The result of Gordy’s westward journey only adds to this complicated narrative. The label took risks to capture its new Cali-sound that critically may have been sure-bets but financially turned out to be total misfires. Never able to properly package its new product to the public, the label folded after a brief three-year run leaving its memory relegated to the cutout bins of popular music history.
With Our Lives Are Shaped By What We Love, Seattle’s reissue leader Light In The Attic is the first label up to the task of retelling Mowest’s story. So, with all of its aesthetic victories and commercial failures, what exactly did Mowest sound like? Racially and sonically diverse, the label featured a really odd array of sounds from the r&b-tinged psych of Odyssey to the disco-funk of Sisters Love to the future-soul of Stevie Wonder protégé Syreeta. All of it tied together if only in its hyphenated-eclecticism and in the way that it was all music that only L.A. in the early ’70s could have produced. Over the course of its 16 carefully selected tracks, Our Lives Are Shaped By What We Love manages to make coherent sense of the Mowest vision - something the original label was never able to do in its day. In the clarity of Light In The Attic’s hindsight, what’s left is a compelling tale of a weird grouping of artists trapped in a weird place at a weird time. Ultimately, a real weird and rewarding treat.
Odyssey - “Our Lives Are Shaped By What We Love” from Our Lives Are Shaped By What We Love: Motown’s Mowest Story, 1971-1973 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWZYmfUCmwY
Syreeta - “I Love Every Little Thing About You” from Our Lives Are Shaped By What We Love: Motown’s Mowest Story, 1971-1973 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEj3nqtCVMc
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#BESTTHINGS2011 is a series focusing on the “best things” released in 2011. Bucking arbitrary numerical distinction, these postings will appear in no particular order with no particular concern for whether they are original releases or reissues from this year. I’m hoping to post one a day for the remainder of the calendar year or until I run out of best things to write about. Not sure which will come first.
