Unreleased Jackson 5 Tracks Discovered For New Collection
Motown/UMe is celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Jackson 5's first single with "I Want You Back! Unreleased Masters," a new collection of 12 vault recordings due out on Nov. 10. A single, "That's How Love Is," was released Tuesday on iTunes; the song was written and produced by The Corporation, the team of writers and producers that wrote the J5's early material, and has been remixed by original Motown engineer Russ Terrana.
"That's How Love Is" is also streaming at jackson5.com.
"I Want You Back!" also features: a rendition of Stevie Wonder's "Buttercup;" a medley of "I Want You Back"/"ABC"/"The Love You Save;" alternate versions of "Never Can Say Goodbye," with Michael Jackson's "safety" vocal for TV broadcasts, "ABC" and "Dancing Machine;" another unreleased Corporation track, "Love Comes in Different Flavors;" the Curtis Mayfield-written "Man's Temptation," which was produced by the Vancouvers' Bobby Taylor -- who also wrote and produced "Listen I'll Tell You How;" Hal Davis' "Lucky Day;" the Willie Hutch-written "Love Call;" and Johnny Bristol's socially conscious "I'll Try You'll Try (Maybe We'll All Get By)."
Tito Jackson tells Billboard.com that the J5's days at Motown were busy, but enjoyable. "It was just fun years," he says. "We were young kids then, pursuing our dream. And to have a company like Motown behind you to nurture you and grow you to your professionalism, it was quite an honor. And to have success at a young age when you were not really realizing what you were accomplishing...it was really fun. Everything was exciting."
In addition to "I Want You Back!," Motown/UMe is releasing on Oct. 13 "The Jackson 5 Ultimate Christmas Collection," a 21-track set that includes spoken seasons greetings from the Michael, Jermaine, Tito and Jackie, "stripped" mixes of "Someday at Christmas" and "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer," a DJ Spinna re-edit of "Up on the Housetop" and an album-closing medley. The J5 also appears on "The Ultimate Motown Christmas Collection," a two-disc, 51-track anthology featuring holiday fare from Smokey Robinson & the Miracles, Marvin Gaye, the Supremes, the Four Tops, the Temptations, Johnny Gill and more obscure acts such as the Elgins, Shorty Long and the Twistin' Kings.
The track listing for "I Want You Back! Unreleased Masters" includes:
"Man's Temptation
"Buttercup
"Never Can Say Goodbye
"That's How Love Is
"Love Comes in Flavors
"Lucky Day
Medley: "I Want You Back/ABC/The Love You Save"
"ABC"
"I'll Try You'll Try (Maybe We'll All Get By)"
"Listen I'll Tell You How"
"Love Call"
"Dancing Machine"
Twins complete comeback, 6-5 over Tigers in 12th
MINNEAPOLIS – The Metrodome erupted in a jet-like roar as Carlos Gomez zoomed home with the winning run to finish off an AL Central race — and a thrilling tiebreaker — that didn't want to end.
Minnesota wouldn't quit, while the Detroit Tigers finished their historic fade. And there was little time for the Twins to celebrate, because the New York Yankees were waiting.
Alexi Casilla singled home the winning run with one out in the 12th inning and the Twins rallied for a 6-5 victory Tuesday night, completing a colossal collapse for the Tigers.
"This is the most unbelievable game I've ever played or seen," Twins shortstop Orlando Cabrera said.
How was that for bonus baseball?
As Gomez scored from second — well ahead of a late throw from right field — Homer Hankies spiraled. The Twins celebrated and scrambled: They had 21 hours to get ready for Game 1 of the AL playoffs at Yankee Stadium against New York ace CC Sabathia. He'll face rookie Brian Duensing.
The Tigers will head home instead. They became the first team in history to blow a three-game lead with four games left.
"I guess it's fitting to say there was a loser in this game because we lost the game, but it's hard for me to believe there was a loser in this game," Tigers manager Jim Leyland said. "Both teams played their hearts out. You can't ask for anything more than that."
The Twins overcame a seven-game gap in the final month, went 17-4 to pull even on the final weekend and won their fifth division title in eight years.
"We just feel like we have nothing to lose, man," outfielder Denard Span said.
Both teams had chance after chance to end it earlier, and each club scored in the 10th. Casilla was thrown out at the plate to end that inning by left fielder Ryan Raburn after tagging up.
The Tigers thought they'd taken the lead in the 12th. But with the bases loaded, plate umpire Randy Marsh ruled that Brandon Inge was not hit by a pitch by Bobby Keppel. The replay appeared to show the pitch grazing Inge's billowing uniform.
"I did not have the ball hitting him. We looked at replays, too, and the replays we've looked at, to be honest with you, were inconclusive," said Marsh, the crew chief.
Said Inge: "No matter what we did, it seems like it wasn't meant to be. This is the best game, by far, that I've ever played in no matter the outcome."
It was the first AL tiebreaker to go to extra innings, making up for Minnesota's disappointment last year when it lost 1-0 in Chicago to the White Sox in an AL Central tiebreaker. Had the Twins lost, it would've been the final baseball game at the Metrodome. Instead, the Twins get the Yankees — New York was 7-0 against Minnesota this season.
"We're not afraid. I can guarantee you that," Twins manager Ron Gardenhire said.
Said Yankees manager Joe Girardi: "We're not going to have to face questions like 'Can you beat them?' like we've had to answer during the course of the year. Once the playoffs start though, it's a new series and we know the importance of each game. You can pretty much throw everything else out the window."
A day after Brett Favre and the Minnesota Vikings beat the Green Bay Packers at the Dome — "Monday Night Football" is what delayed this tiebreaker for a day — the Twins pulled off a Tuesday Night Frenzy.
Gardenhire and Leyland made so many moves for defense and relief that the lineups and pitching staffs were depleted by the end.
Tigers reliever Fernando Rodney (2-5) worked his longest appearance of the season, getting the last two outs of the ninth. But he didn't have enough to get out of the 12th. The Twins rushed out of the dugout in celebration even before Gomez reached the plate, and their comeback from a seven-game gap with 20 to play was complete.
Joe Mauer, who heard thunderous "M-V-P!" chants from the largest regular-season baseball crowd in Metrodome history throughout the game, led his team on a sprint around the warning track as they slapped hands with fans in the first rows.
"One of the best games I'll ever play in," Mauer said.
Keppel, Minnesota's eighth pitcher, loaded the bases with one out in the 12th. After the non-call on Inge, second baseman Nick Punto then scooped Inge's grounder and fired home in time to get the runner on the force. Then Keppel struck out Gerald Laird to squelch that rally.
Twins closer Joe Nathan found trouble in the ninth when consecutive singles put runners at the corners, but he got a strikeout and a line-drive double play to end that threat. The four-time All-Star gave two huge pumps of his right arm as he spun to thank his defense and run to the dugout, preserving the tie.
Inge's two-out double in the 10th gave the Tigers a 5-4 lead, but Michael Cuddyer sliced a triple past Raburn in left and scored on Matt Tolbert's bouncing single through the middle in the bottom of the inning.
On the potential winning sacrifice fly, though, Casilla strayed a bit too far from third and was thrown out by Raburn trying to score to end the inning. The split-second Casilla needed to retouch the base might have cost him the run.
He more than made up for that mistake later.
According to sports researcher STATS LLC, only three teams since 1901 have blown a three-game lead in the standings with four games left. The Houston Astros lost three straight games to Los Angeles in 1980, but they recovered to defeat the Dodgers in a tiebreaker game for the NL West. Milwaukee lost three in a row to Baltimore in 1982 to force a tie, but beat the Orioles in the final regular season game to win the AL East.
After splitting four in Detroit last week — a loss in the series finale Thursday would've given the division to the Tigers — the Twins came home for the final scheduled series in the bubble needing a sweep of the Kansas City Royals and did just that.
So with 54,088 fans in attendance, the place was erupting with noise and excitement. The chants for Mauer, who wrapped up his third batting title, were deafening. Leyland even told his players before the game to think of the loudest experience of their life and multiply it by four to anticipate the decibel level for this game. Dome ball came in handy again, on a day when the city was drenched by cold rain.
Rookie starter Rick Porcello pitched well beyond his 20 years for the Tigers, and Miguel Cabrera made up for a miserable weekend — on and off the field — with a two-run homer against Scott Baker in the third inning that made it 3-0. The crowd chanted "al-co-ho-lic" right before Cabrera went deep, a rude reference to the first baseman's fight with his wife after he came home late and drunk.
The Twins crept back, though, and Orlando Cabrera's two-run homer in the seventh gave them a brief lead that Magglio Ordonez ended with his leadoff homer in the eighth.
"We were dead and buried a couple times, and our team just kept coming back," Twins general manager Bill Smith said.
NOTES: This was the ninth tiebreaker game in baseball history, and the third straight year with a 163rd game. Only two of them went to extra innings. ... Seven members of the Metrodome's cleaning and maintenance crews were honored on the mound before the game for the work of those groups in converting the field back and forth from baseball to football in light of Monday's Packers-Vikings game.
FULL ALBUMS IN PHILLY AND BEYOND
Three shows into the Giants Stadium stand, audiences have now gotten a taste of all three albums that Bruce and the E Street Band are playing top to bottom: Born to Run, Darkness, and Born in the U.S.A. Later this week, Born to Run and Born in the U.S.A. will be reprised at the final two nights of the stand, Thursday and Friday nights, respectively.
But the swamps of Jersey won't be the only place to hear this trio: the Spectrum has just announced that Bruce and the band will be giving Philly audiences the same treatment when that stand starts next week:
Tue, Oct 13 - Born to Run
Wed, Oct 14 - Darkness on the Edge of Town
Mon, Oct 19 - Born to Run
Tue, Oct 20 - Born in the U.S.A.
Jokes, apologies from Letterman
NEW YORK -- David Letterman acknowledged in his on-air apologies to his wife and staff for having sex with co-workers that he has his work cut out for him.
As Letterman mixed wisecracks with contrition, he said his wife, Regina Lasko, had been "horribly hurt by my behaviour" and stated flat-out that those affairs "are in the past."
The CBS late-night host vowed during Monday's show to repair his relationship with his wife, whom he married in March after a years-long courtship.
"Let me tell you folks, I got my work cut out for me," he said ruefully.
His apologies meant another big night in the ratings. The Nielsen Co.'s overnight measurement of the nation's 56 biggest markets netted Letterman's "Late Show" a 4.2 rating -- higher than anything rival NBC had in prime-time.
Nielsen didn't immediately have an estimate of the size of Letterman's audience. The overnight rating was slightly less than Thursday's show, when 5.8 million people watched Letterman say he had been the victim of a $2 million blackmail threat that led him to reveal he had sex with staff members.
Monday's show was the first Letterman had taped since Thursday. While he laced the show with references to the scandal, only one other late-night host, Craig Ferguson, made any reference to it. Jay Leno, Jimmy Fallon and NBC's "Saturday Night Live" had all made jokes in earlier shows, but everyone but Ferguson avoided the topic on their Monday night and Tuesday morning shows.
As host of the "Late Late Show," Ferguson follows Letterman's "Late Show." Letterman also is his boss, since Letterman's production company, Worldwide Pants Inc., produces the "Late Late Show."
"The person you work for, the person you admire and respect, is caught in an embarrassing situation," said Ferguson. "And your job is to be funny about that, whilst trying to keep your own job."
"So this is my last show," he joked.
Ferguson did make light of the situation, joking that it had now been revealed how he got the job in the first place.
But Ferguson defended Letterman, calling him "the king of late-night television."
"If we are now holding late-night talk-show hosts to the same moral accountability as we hold politicians or clergymen, I'm out," said Ferguson. "I'm gone."
On the "Late Show," Letterman noted the cool fall weather, reporting, "It's chilly outside my house; chilly INSIDE my house."
Then he cautioned the audience, "This is only phase one of the scandal. Phase two: Next week I go on 'Oprah' and sob."
A bit later, guest Steve Martin gave Letterman his kidding consolation: "It proves that you're a human being. And we weren't really that sure before."
Martin Short, making an unannounced appearance, playfully plopped himself in Martin's lap.
"You spend one more minute on his lap, you're gonna get blackmailed," Letterman quipped.
During the hour, Letterman apologized to his staff, which, he said, had been subjected to "being browbeaten and humiliated" by reporters since his revelations.
"My thanks to the staff for, once again, putting up with something stupid I've gotten myself involved in," he said.
Letterman, 62, began dating Lasko in 1986, and they have a son, Harry, who was born in November 2003. All the affairs took place before Letterman's marriage, said Tom Keaney, spokesman for Letterman's production company.
Letterman arrived on stage Monday to applause and cheers from his studio audience. After drinking it in, he grinned sheepishly and inquired, with a mock stammer, "Did your, did your weekend just fly by?"
After pausing for the audience's sympathetic laughter, he went on: "I mean, I'll be honest with you folks -- right now, I would give anything to be hiking on the Appalachian Trail."
"I got into the car this morning," he added, "and the navigation lady wasn't speaking to me. Ouch."
In a more sombre display, Letterman voiced his mea culpas. Regarding his wife, he said that, "If you hurt a person and it's your responsibility, you try to fix it."
Letterman has offered no specifics about how many women he had sex with.
But the CBS producer accused of blackmailing Letterman used pages from a former assistant's diary that described an affair with the "Late Show" host, a law enforcement official said Monday. The ex-assistant, Stephanie Birkitt, went to live with CBS News producer Robert Halderman, who found her diary describing her relationship with Letterman and used it to help blackmail him, the law enforcement official said Monday on the condition of anonymity because the investigation was ongoing.
Halderman, a producer for the true-crime show "48 Hours Mystery," pleaded not guilty last week to extortion charges.
The flood of attention on Letterman was inevitable, and the way he initially dealt with this maelstrom recalled an embarrassing dilemma for another star in 1995.
For a celebrity the calibre of Hugh Grant, publicity -- including speculation of career suicide -- was unavoidable when he was arrested with a prostitute on Hollywood's Sunset Strip. But then he retreated to NBC's "The Tonight Show" to try to explain.
Host Jay Leno wasted no time before asking an instant classic of a question: "What the hell were you thinking?!"
Grant's appearance provided him with some needed image rehab. It also vaulted ratings runner-up "Tonight" past Letterman's "Late Show," a leadership position Leno held through his retirement from late night earlier this year.
Since then, Letterman has reclaimed a ratings edge over new "Tonight" host Conan O'Brien.
And now he may have truly sealed the deal. Beloved by viewers and critics for decades, he has abruptly freshened the enduring Letterman brand and demonstrated he still can surprise even fans who thought they knew him well.
But it isn't the first time Letterman has shown finesse in managing a firestorm.
In June, he had a run-in with then Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin over jokes made at the expense of her teenage daughter. He emerged from a tumultuous few days of protests and demands for his dismissal with a ratings jolt. And thanks to the dumb-luck timing of the flap, he also handily upstaged his much-hyped NBC rival just as O'Brien was taking over as "Tonight" host.
Letterman apologized to Palin and her family in what became another one of his memorable performances. But he has never stopped making jokes at Palin's expense -- including yet another apology to her on Monday's show, just for good measure.