LimeWire Music Blog

Like the music it reports on, Susan Whithall’s recent story in The Detroit News might have gone a little under the radar.  With the awkward headline “The Rock Side of Motown: Rappers Revive Lesser Known Psychedelic Acts,” it’s no wonder.  But snuggled under that banner, and in the middle of that conservative Motor City newspaper, was a totally fascinating, if mostly unheard history of one of the most famous record labels in the world.  Nine years after the formation of Motown Records, Barry Gordy was branching out.  In 1969, the songwriter responsible for “Lonely Teardrops” was casting an eye toward the much whiter world of hard rock and psychedelia.  It was that year that Motown signed Rare Earth, the first of a series of bands and the namesake for Motown’s new imprint.  While the band Rare Earth ripped up a couple of Temptations hits into white boy bangers, the label Rare Earth went on to sign up a handful of hard rock acts like Stoney and Meatloaf (yes, that Meatloaf), The Mynah Birds, which featured Neil Young and Rick James (no, seriously), and Detroit act Power of Zeus.

None of these bands really went anywhere.  Even while some of their members were destined for legendary status in the pantheon of rock Gods, the Rare Earth label mostly floundered until its dissolution in 1976.  But today this somewhat apocryphal history of Motown lingers on.  Its not just old rock heads like Chuck Klosterman plundering old ’78s: Whithall points out that Power of Zeus has been sampled by Eminem and Common.  Klosterman himself reported on the band a couple years back in Esquire:

“The record sounds like what would have happened if Jack White had liked Deep Purple and (the Stones’) ‘Their Satanic Majesties Request’ more than Led Zeppelin and (Dylan’s) ‘Nashville Skyline,’ which isn’t necessarily a positive thing.”