Quote Originally Posted by sup_fan View Post
great thoughts Maniac - love your POV and all.

I think the group had to maintain some degree of Vegas because they still had their Frontier contract. and big clubs like that were still an important part of their live revenues. but at the same time they needed to do more to appeal to the college kids. the college kids in 1970 were definitely NOT the same types of kids from 1964. so the question of would the Sups ever be super popular with the college kids is one that probably would never be. they were always going to have a bit of "the establishment" about them. the girls would maintain a sunny squeaky clean image. but they could have done more to step away from the excessive glitter and sequins of DRATS.

as for the whole message of SL and all, yeah. the girls were not doing to be overly militant or Black Power. again that just wasn't their image. so with SL and New Ways, we get Message Lite - there's some nods towards peace and love and all But wrapped up in a pretty package.

i agree with you that motown did invest a lot of promotional effort into the new group. but i think sloppy decisions by the company and shoddy group strategic planning undermined that promotional effort.

if nothing else, NW should have charted somewhere in the 30s at least. albums like Let the Sunshine In reached these levels and there certainly couldn't have been much positive word of mouth about that crapbag. lol Cream wasn't really any better. and it too made it to the 30s. and both of these albums lingered on the charts many weeks longer than NW.

The one thing that let the sunshine in and cream of the crop had going for it, was diana ross was still with the group and so for better or worse, there was that familiarity and perhaps even subconsciously loyalty. Let the sunshine in is a very dismal affair - Even the mixes of the singles are not listenable……I don’t really mind cream of the crop as much at all, but it got cannibalized by greatest hits volume three, plus it had a cheesy back cover and the front cover was probably a little bit too much in your face for many tastes.

technically, new Waze should’ve outperformed right on because it’s lead single was a much much much bigger hit, however, the fact that there was so much drop off, indicates the public wasn’t really buying the new act. You’ll notice the touch album had a much more hip look to it, I don’t think that was a mistake. And Gordy was so anal retentive about cloning what had already been successful that he was unable or incapable providing any forward thinking or vision to established acts. He preferred Marvin going to release how can I forget instead of what’s going on, for example. It’s a shame that no one in the group had a sense of the pulse of the now generation. It’s much more important for a group to remain current, then it is for a single. Ross could get away with more of that stuff than the group could. And they could still continue to have their nightclub act but their concerts should’ve done away with all that. Look at the name and reputation Ike and Tina turner developed with their app. They were rarely on the radio, especially on pop stations, but their show rocked and grew. JMC needed an identity, and never got one.