My Motown Experience - Part Two

For part one of this story click here.

Amazingly I was still awake as the taxi pulled up to the hotel. I hurriedly zipped my fabulous but totally impractical boots back on, and jumped out the taxi as if I did this all the time.

Get dressed up, go to a concert, catch a taxi to a hotel at 11 at night to hang out with famous people. Umm, yeah, I do this all the time.

Del and I walked into the hotel bar expectantly, looked around and saw........

NOBODY!

Except for a few guys having a quiet drink to one side. So what did we do?

Headed over to the bar of course!

(Turns out those 'few guys having a quiet drink' were actually a band called Shine Down, an American hard rock band in town for a few days . We got talking to them for a while, trading stories about escaping turtles and advising them of the best place to swim with sharks. Nice guys, even with the dreadlocks and facial jewelery. They had a laugh that Del actually knew who they were! Del had recently bought their latest album "The Sound of Madness" by mistake, thinking it was by one of his all time favourite UK groups Madness!).

So there we were, sipping our drinks, trying not to look out of place as we sat in a near empty bar, late in the evening, in a hotel weren't even staying at. Like I said earlier, we errr....do this sort of thing all the time.... yeah.

An hour or so later, after a few drinks and a few phone calls from my dad back at home, wondering what we were up to (Two not so young and carefree, sleep deprived parents out past midnight? What were we thinking?!), a bus pulls up out the front of the hotel.

BTW - we were the only people from the concert to actually go to the hotel. We couldn't believe we were the only ones with stalker potential out of the whole crowd!

So while Del headed for the door to get some autographs, I tried to look as cool and unstalker-like as possible, lounging casually in my chair sipping my alcohol free mocktail.

As Martha Reeves alights from the bus (OMG!) Del politely relieves her of the plate of food she was carrying and substitutes it with a piece of paper and charmingly asks for an autograph. How could she say no? Especially while he was holding her dinner to ransom.

She graciously signed it, asked if we were going to join them all for an 'after-glow' at the bar, and off she went to her room to freshen up.

Forgetting her plate of food in Del's hand.

After contemplating keeping it and selling it on Ebay to the highest bidder, he thought better of it and handed it to one of Martha's followers instead.

After that we retired to the bar area for another 'after-glow', and who should walk by but Charles Davis from the Contours, who was the MC for the night. Again Del introduced himself, and Charles happily gave us his autograph and invited us to join his group for a drink.

Umm, can we think about it? Oh, sure. Why not.

So that was how we found ourselves at way past midnight, having drinks and hanging out with our new best friends - a group of Motown legends.

They were all so friendly, musical and........ effortlessly cool.

One person would spontaneously break into song, any song, at any given moment, and then a few more would join in, giving us a personal medley of Motown hits. I could of happily sat with my eyes closed, listening to them all night.

Except for the danger that I might fall asleep, it being past my bedtime and all.

Everywhere we looked, there was another Motown legend. I had to pinch myself meeting Mary Wilson from The Supremes, and frantically try to think of something cool to say.

I think I failed.

I got hugs, kisses and compliments on my retro look dress and boots (made the pain worth it). At one point Theo Peoples from The Four Tops, asked me what I had thought of the concert.

I told him that I hadn't stopped dancing the whole time.

His reply : "And you would of looked good doing it too, baby." Said in a deep, smooth, musical voice that made me shiver in delight. Sigh.

We even received a private dance lesson from Lawrence Payton Jr of The Four Tops, as he tried to teach us how to 'catch the beat'. Unfortunately Del and I, having been born without any rythym, couldn't 'catch the beat'. AT ALL. But it was nice of him to try.

It was at this point, about 1.45am, that I received a phone call from Kaiden, our 14 year old.

"Mum, where are you? It's late. You should be home by now".

I hung my head, and mumbled "Yes Dad. I'm leaving now".

And we did.

Leaving our new best friends to continue the party without us.



(Sorry for the lack of photos in this post. You would of thought we would have lots of us posing with famous people, but we had such a great time talking to them, we forgot!)