Song of the Day #141 - Gladys Knight & the Pips

 

I've printed this extract before but it's worth printing again.

 

'Big collars. The colours are brown, orange, purple and ripe yellow, the whacked colours of late 60s psychedelic television. I'm one of the Pips - off to the side of Gladys who is doing the performance and takes the pressure. The Pips are free, but drilled and slick. We spin, we turn, we break at the knees, we point, we bop and then we come to the microphone and sing some outrageous lyric at exactly the right moment and then we spin and bring the knee up, and do a little shimmy at the side with our hands that tells you about the story of the song. We can do 'rain' with our hands, we can do 'thunder' with our hips.'

 

Robert Forster