What's Going On: Tribute acts

For the tribute act there are certain truisms of the art which, according to how many can be said to apply, will tend to determine the success or otherwise of the act. It does help to begin with if the trib act can sing, unless he or she is on the lowest rung of all tourist resort entertainment - the playback rung. Secondly, having a recognisable body of work is essential; recognisable preferably to all age groups, thus ensuring fun (possibly) for all the family.

Less essential but handy is that the trib act looks vaguely like his or her subject. Sometimes non-lookaliking can be compensated for with the judicious use of props. Get a blonde wig, for example, and an Agnetha is Abba-ed up; a full set, and Benny's your uncle. Very occasionally the lookaliking is so real that it can offer someone like the truly remarkable Rud Stewart; he not only looks more like Rod than Rod, he even sounds more like Rod than Rod.

The most tributed of all acts is Elvis. For the Elvises there are additional benefits, such as the stage gestures and vocal idiosyncrasies that allow the trib to become like an all-round song and dance man. The Elvises also have an advantage in that the younger generation know the Elvis oeuvre inside out; and they know this thanks to the sheer number of Elvises rather than their ever having actually heard an Elvis record.

Elvis is hugely worthy of tribute, and it is this - whether the subject is genuinely worthy - that draws into question the suitability of some subjects for tributing and asks another as to why certain artists are not tributed.

There is a distinction between artists of the past and those of the present or near present. Of those from the past, and from the early Elvis days of modern popular music up to around the start of the seventies, there were arguably only four acts to which one could assign the badge of true greatness: Elvis, The Beatles, Bob Dylan and The Beach Boys (Brian Wilson).

Of these, a tribute Dylan wouldn't exactly go down a storm one imagines at the evening entertainment in a Mallorcan hotel. The Beach Boys would probably be largely unknown to a younger audience, while the sheer complexity and precision of their harmonies would tend to preclude them as a suitable subject for the trib act for whom simplicity is preferable.

If greatness is a necessity for tributing, then Tamla Motown as a collective would also qualify. However, Motown didn't produce true individual greats; with one notable exception, and before Stevie Wonder and Michael Jackson went on to become true greats.

Forty years ago the greatest album ever made was released. It was a record that came completely out of the blue. It was unlike anything else; certainly anything else that Motown had put out. A black man's album, it wasn't black music per se; its messages and its musical styles resonated across cultures.

The "hey, what's happenin'?" chatter of Detroit Lions American footballers, the congas in an echo chamber and the sax at the start of Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On" introduced an album that totally changed the perception of Gaye himself, of Motown and of black commercial music. Motown, for all its success and for all that it was admired and was influential, was still looked upon as churning out formulaic pop, sanitised for a white audience.

Marvin Gaye made a musically original and brilliant album that combined protest against war, environmental damage and social injustice and which succeeded in suddenly making black music hip to those with all sorts of musical tastes. For example, a "progressive" music fan, one more inclined to searching for the meaning from a Pink Floyd record cover, could now openly admit to liking a Motown record.

But Marvin Gaye would never be the subject for a local trib act. Yet, in addition to "What's Going On", there was what came before and afterwards, while he suffered a fate that might in fact be another requirement for the trib act - an untimely and, in his case, violent end.

Trib acts are, for the most part, a bit of fun and a bit of froth. Not all, but most. True greatness isn't a pre-requisite. If it were, then Dylan, Brian Wilson and Marvin Gaye would find themselves being tributed rather than, let's say, Girls Aloud. Perhaps it's as well. The greatest tribute to the greatest album ever made is that no one in their right mind would even attempt to emulate it.



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