"Fake-a-lettes" appearance coming up....shall we protest?

**daviddesper** · 08-26-2012, 12:13 AM

Just read about a music festival coming up over Labor Day weekend and the alleged "Marvelettes" will be appearing. It is called the American Music Festival and will feature 30 groups over a three-day period. Some of the others listed as appearing are The Platters, The Family Stone [[no mention of Sly), and Cheap Trick, so I wonder how authentic some of those are as well.

Anyway, as we all know, this appearance cannot possibly have any REAL Marvelettes in it, so I wonder if there is anything we could or should do to call their attention to it. Or would it even do any good?

The good news is that they [[the group they are calling The Marvelettes) are not one of the headlining acts and they are only scheduled for a 45 minute performance, but that shouldn't really matter.

To read about it, visit www.BeachStreetUSA.com.

**BigAl** · 08-26-2012, 08:48 AM

With the recent Unsung segment on the Marvelettes, I'd say the word is probably out to the general public that original group members no longer perform. I believe that most people know that with Herb Reed's recent passing [[which was even covered on NPR) there are no original living Platters, either. The sad truth is that most people who attend these gigs don't really care one way or the other and just want to hear the old songs, no matter who performs them. I've seen a couple of groupings of bogus Marvelettes and they bore no resemblance to the actual groups, musically or otherwise and nobody in attendance seemed to care. On one oldies revue, headlined by Martha & The Vandellas [[Roz and Nettie, before the rift), among the starting acts were some fake Marvelettes [[the ones whose handler actually owns the name legally) and some fake Shangri Las, both of which were pretty awful, but the audience ate it up just the same. Thus, I doubt that attempting to alert concert-goers that they're not going to see the real deal would accomplish much, if anything.