It was January, 1970, snowy and blowy in New York, and “I Want You Back” was on the jukebox at Max’s. It sounded like a Supremes’ song at first, but not quite, the lead voice being too high and thin. I went and checked the juke-box, G-9 or whatever, read JACKSON FIVE — MOTOWN, and said, ‘Wow Diana Ross has found a sound-alike group from Jackson, Miss. and put them through the Motown wringer. Come to think of it, that screws up my whole musical categorization system inside my head, because suddenly there is another group in the Supremes’ pigeonhole that isn’t the Supremes at all, which means the Supremes’ sound isn’t unique, in fact most likely it is endlessly duplicatable, Berry Gordy probably has ten, fifteen Supremes’ sounding groups around waiting in line — they all have rhythm after all, Diana was just luckier or prettier than the others, and the whole music business is just a lot of hype.”

The above period of depression lasted some weeks, uhtil the J-Five had their second hit and they started getting all the publicity. Their album'came out and then they got their own pigeonhole in my head — right next' to Diana Ross to be sure but that made it all right, once I realized the J-Five were really good and that they had a personality o;f their own, apart from Diana Ross, and that they had worked very hard to get good, and it wasn’t all as easy as it’seemed at first. But still, a$ the sub-teen black girls around the country went insane and kept ripping Jermaine’s shirt and fainting in droves (sixteen, like dominoes, in Cincinnati) and the group had to get smuggled out of auditoriums (Detroit, Cobo) and live in a fortress and go to a private school in Encino for special persons, the whole phenomenon kept bothering me because they were, after all, just five kids, healthy, good looking kids but kids,, and their sound was pure Motown super-slick production — nothing new,. ordifferent. The songs themselves were only average, for Jhe most part, as well, and I got depressed again and added the whole; scene to evidence l have been gathering lately which will ' conclusively prove we have all been crazy for some time. | .