The Jackson 5 Album: “Skywriter/Get It Together”

This is more of a heads up warning for folks. There is some kind of coding/authoring error on this disc.

The song Get It Together is flawed. For some reason, right into the first chorus the are a couple of really obvious jumps and skips. These are not the result of scratches to the disc itself. This error is in the digital transfer or authoring of the disc itself. In fact, the sample of the song Get It Together that you can listen to right on this page plays the exact spot where the error occurs. I double checked my disc on three different CD players and the same thing happened on all three players. I also checked my Soulsation 25th Anniversary set and the song Get It Together on that set doesn't have the same problem that this disc has.

So, buyer beware. The disc is flawed and you are not getting the entire song Get It Together. Listen to the sample on this page and you'll hear what I mean.

SKYWRITER and GET IT TOGETHER are two albums that are as different as day and night. SKYWRITER still boasted some of the Jackson 5's "bubble gum" soul sound that made them famous, yet the boys were young men by early 1973. The music wasn't lacking in quality, but it seemed like Motown had put the brothers into a box with material about teeny-bopper love and the sort, and didn't want them to break out of it. Plus, that year, the solo careers of Michael and Jermaine were already underway, with older brother Jackie next to make a splash with his debut.

So SKYWRITER was recorded at a time when the brothers' popularity was starting to wane - they still had hits, but nothing like the explosive material that they recorded when they first arrived at Motown. You hear some songs that let you know that the guys are growing up and maturing, but then you're hit with others that want to remind you that they were once a kiddie group, so you could correctly call SKYWRITER the group's "growing pains" album. A lot of this material is kind of bland, very pop-oriented ("World of Sunshine", "Ooh, I'd Love To Be With You" for example). It's surprising that Motown let this happen to one of their most exciting and popular acts. The biggest hit from this album was a bouncy tune from a Motown-produced Broadway musical called "Pippin": "Corner of the Sky", which peaked at #9 (R&B) and #18 (Pop). The song wasn't bad - I used to love that song when I was a kid - but it obviously lacked the energy of those earlier J-5 hits. SKYWRITER does have some good moments, though: the title song; of course, "Corner of the Sky", "Touch", an excellent amd sensual remake of a Supremes song; "I Can't Quit Your Love", "Uppermost" and "You Made Me What I Am". But somehow, while you're listening, you get the feeling that the boys are itching to move past this stuff, and what was to follow was a must-needed change for them.

Enter the "brand new thing". GET IT TOGETHER is my favorite (and undeniably the better) of the two albums presented here - the five star rating is for THIS album. Released in late 1973, GIT brought the J-5 where they wanted and needed to be: leaving the bubble gum sound behind and into some really funky territory. With raw, extended dance tracks and exciting vocal arrangements, it kind of reminds you of the metamorphosis that the Temptations underwent in 1968 when they began their "psychedelic" phase with "Cloud Nine". And much like the Temptations during that time, you hear ALL of the Jacksons' vocals individually on various cuts.

The title song, the electrifying "Get It Together", opens the album and sets the tone for everything you hear throughout. "Don't Say Goodbye Again" and "It's Too Late To Change The Time" are the two ballads on this album, but there is a touch of funk to each of them, so they are not at all out of place. The other songs are all slickly produced R&B dance tracks that were just in time for the blossoming disco movement, and made to make you get up out of your seat! And they do!

Now Motown definitely was accused of recutting the same tunes in their catalog over and over again with different groups to milk it for all its worth, but in this case, it wasn't such a bad idea. The J-5 do four funky, high-octane versions of earlier Motown songs, three from Norman Whitfield/Barrett Strong's psychedelic catalog, the duo responsible for transforming the Temptations: the primal underground club classic "Hum Along and Dance" and "You Need Love Like I Do (Don't You)", the Undisputed Truth's "Mama I Gotta Brand New Thing" and an interesting retake of the Supremes' "Reflections". "Brand New Thing" features individual member vocals on this tune, but this is really Marlon's song. He positively owns it as the lead. The massive #1 funk smash from 1974, "Dancing Machine", closes the album out, sparked a whole new dance craze, and put the Jackson 5 back on top where they belonged. If you didn't go off when you saw Michael do the Robot during the song's breakdown, you obviously didn't have a pulse!!!

You also get three bonus tracks from the vaults: "Pride and Joy", a funked up remake of the Marvin Gaye hit, but you hardly recognize it; "Love's Gone Bad", another remake of singer Chris Clark's song from the '60s that sounds like something the Four Tops should have recorded and "Love Is The Thing You Need", from JOYFUL JUKEBOX MUSIC (1976) (the final J-5 album that consisted of tracks that were in the vault and recorded sometime in 1972-73 at Motown but was not promoted).

The two albums that followed GIT (DANCING MACHINE - recycled again for that album - and MOVING VIOLATION) were the group's final offerings for Motown and both of them were heavily dance-oriented and ahead of their time. GIT blazed the trail for everything the Jacksons would do in later years. Pick this CD up and get your dance on!