THE JACKSON 5 - I Will Never Forget 23rd June, 1973

concerts

Prince has early concerts plastered over YouTube before he hit it big with purple rain. Money is not the problem, I'm sure there is (much more) footage of J5 concerts
Unless there's some Prince concerts from the 1970s, I clearly said filmed concerts were not that common before the 1980s. Filmed concerts are even more rare before the 1970s. The Jackson 5 is the early 1970s and they were on Motown. There's unlikely to be many filmed concerts of that time by any Motown artist, other than performances for TV shows. Motown was not a major label, they were an indie. Any label that had majority non-white performers was likely to be independents. Majors mostly had white performers and major labels had more money to spend. Prince was on Warner Brothers. He did not sign to a black label or an indie.

The 1980s is when VCRs became popular and also MTV showed concerts. So there became more of a market for filmed concerts. There were music videos going all the way back to the 1930s. They were called different things like soundies & scopitones. Videos were still not that common until MTV as there was few places that showed them.

Money was a problem with concerts. Many R&B and funk bands have said they could not afford to film concerts. How could they when the labels did not even give them the same budgets for their records as the rock bands? Earth Wind & Fire didn't have their concerts filmed until they really got the crossover audience. That is also when they got more money to have more extravagant shows than their early days.

Also the Jackson 5 was a teen group. Teen idol acts usually had a short shelf life. If someone was going to spend money to film an artist for a lot of concerts during that era, a Tiger Beat/Right On! type of act was less likely to be it. It would be an adult band/singer. Nobody had any idea that Michael Jackson was going to blow up in the 1980s. It didn't happen with Donny Osmond, Black Ivory, or The Sylvers. Leon Sylvers became a popular R&B producer in the early 1980s. If the J5 had remained on Motown, Michael would most likely have become an oldies act like many of the classic era Motown performers. Motown wasn't doing as much promo on the later J5 records already and they were doing a family variety style show in Las Vegas, which was at that time considered a place for performers past their chart popularity days like Wayne Newton,
Engelbert Humperdinck, & The Rat Pack.
 
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Thank you, Duran Duran. You are absolutely correct about what the scene was like for artists and groups in the late sixties and seventies, in terms of filming concerts. It just was not done on any kind of consistent, large scale at all.
 
I'm not disputing your expertise and I'm not someone who like to argue because you are a musical encyclopedia and I fully understand what you're trying to tell me but I really have no problem going on YouTube and finding 70s concerts by Parliament/funkadelic, James brown or Marvin Gaye. Heck the J5 in Mexico is also from 1975. You simply cannot convince me that of the hundred plus shows of the J5 there is not more extensive footage out there.
I also remember one time there was extensive footage of live in Japan and Paris 1974.
 
I'm not disputing your expertise and I'm not someone who like to argue because you are a musical encyclopedia and I fully understand what you're trying to tell me but I really have no problem going on YouTube and finding 70s concerts by Parliament/funkadelic, James brown or Marvin Gaye. Heck the J5 in Mexico is also from 1975. You simply cannot convince me that of the hundred plus shows of the J5 there is not more extensive footage out there.
I also remember one time there was extensive footage of live in Japan and Paris 1974.
Those acts had some crossover and are not considered teenybopper or bubblegum artists. It's doubtful you're going to find many filmed 1970s concerts by Con Funk Shun, Tyrone Davis, Bar-Kays, or Joe Tex. A lot of blues, R&B, & soul acts played in thousands of shows in juke joints on the chitlin' circuit. They were rarely filmed if at all. Those Marvin Gaye concerts are generally overseas and not in the US. They were filmed by companies in Europe or at music festivals like Montreux Jazz Festival. Montreux concerts were not filmed by the acts themselves, but the festival. The Capitol Theatre also filmed concerts, sometimes in black & white. That J5 concert was for a TV program in Mexico. It looks like a TV studio set and not a concert hall. The Jacksons Destiny concert is in London and not the states. It seems R&B was taken more seriously by mainstream audiences outside of the US. It's telling that the 1960s British Invasion acts became popular in the US performing music influenced from black American R&B, blues, & gospel. The Beatles "woooo" is Little Richard. Black jazz artists from that era also got more recognition in European countries & Japan.

That P-Funk shows were after they signed to Warner Brothers/Casablanca and got some crossover. You're probably not going to find many concerts of early Funkadelic pre-Mothership when they were on Westbound Records.
 
Alright , so I guess it's best not to have too much expectations regarding old concert footage.
Would you see say video is available of the 2 Forum concerts Motown released on CD a couple of years ago?

At least we still have Mikky Dee to tell us how incredible it was :-D
 
Jackson 5

Alright , so I guess it's best not to have too much expectations regarding old concert footage.
Would you see say video is available of the 2 Forum concerts Motown released on CD a couple of years ago?

At least we still have Mikky Dee to tell us how incredible it was :-D
I know for sure that there is a rehearsal/behind the scenes thing filmed around 1970 or 1971. Parts of it was used on a news program, I think on ABC. It has Suzanne De Passe in it. I don't know if entire concerts were shot, but there's footage from 3 or 4 J5 concerts and the group performing the Star Spangled Banner at a baseball game. One is in Japan. It's possible that entire one was filmed because there's a concert of The Beatles in Japan, and there's not many entire Beatles concerts filmed. Different countries shot short clips of Beatle shows for their news broadcasts. There's some live footage in the Goin' Back To Indiana TV special. It's probably owned by ABC too. I don't see that one being released anytime soon since Bill Cosby is in it and right now is the "cancel culture" generation. But the Fat Albert show is still for sale on DVD and so is the Cosby Show & some of the movies he was in. Those were already out before Cosby got into trouble. The J5 are also in the 1973 Save The Children concert film which has many artists. It has never been released on home video as far as I know, except as a bootleg VHS. Maybe there's more, but those are the ones that definitely exist.

Even if more J5 concerts were filmed does not mean they still exist today. They might be lost/destroyed or the film deteriorated if it wasn't stored properly. Film/videotape footage could have been bought by private collectors. If that is the case, there's less of a chance it would get commercially released.
 
Would you see say video is available of the 2 Forum concerts Motown released on CD a couple of years ago?

Very unlikely, I know there exist CLEAN video recording of the First night in Philadelphia 1970 & the last night in Jacksonville 1970, while the Jacksonville show has pretty low quality, the Philadelphia show has CLEAN audio, & some unique songs (My Cherie Amor & Yesterday). In fact they were used as recently as 2019 & 2018 respectively in Hq.

Indiana 1971 could be remastered & finally released in full. There's also a recording of Australia 1973 that was meant to be shown on TV way back when.
 
The Night of the Concert (Part 3)

Memories of my favourite parts of the concer
Everyone was in sync - totally polished - but I could not take my eyes off Michael. He was "next level". Fast, sharp, effortless, lithe....absolutely flawless body lines
Just read your concert review. Loved it and am going back over it again later today. For now, just wanted to quickly flag up your comment here about Michael's body lines. This is it. Exactly it. He is first and foremost a dancer for me and of all the many, miraculous things about his dancing or his physicality it's his beautiful, flawless body lines that I love the most. So sharp. So clean. So eloquent. Gorgeous.
 
May 12, 1974
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Quick question that some people might know: when did Johny Jackson stop playing drums? When did Tony Lewis start? Was there anybody between the two? There's a bit of a lack of info in this era.
 
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