Pep It Up

During the summer, the county I live in offers free concerts in the park. Sometimes the artists are the real ones and other times they are local bands singing their hits. Last night the show was made up of two parts. The first part was disco. The singers were fantastic. They sang the most popular hits from the disco era and had the crowd dancing in the aisles. I saw people that looked like they could barely walk when they arrived, spinning and doing the "hustle" as soon as the music started. It was one hour of total enjoyment. There was a brief intermission and then the Motown review started. There were 8 instrumentalists and 4 singers, one male and three females. The music started and within the first minute, I thought that the sound was a bit off. It seemed flat and off key. Then the singing started. Again, something was off. The singers had no pep in their voices and sang the songs slower than they should have. Instead of "Stop!! In the name of love...", they sang "stooooop in the naaaame of loooove". The words were long and drawn out and almost painful. You couldn't dance or sing to the music because there was no rhythmic beat. After about a half hour, some of the crowd started to pack up and leave. I left a bit after that because I could no longer hear the songs I love sung in such an off key, slow manner. This band is playing at other parks next week. I hope they rehearse a bit more.