Also this issue: Flash Forward Costumed lip-synchers Fischerspooner are not out to shock you. -Sean O’Neal Dirty Three -Paul Burress Jayhawks -Sam Adams Gabriel Yacoub -Mary Armstrong VERSIONsound -Sean O’Neal Brentano String Quartet -Peter Burwasser Vir Unis/James Johnson -A.D. Amorosi CD Reviews -Sam Adams, A.D. Amorosi and Collin Keefe

April 10-16, 2003

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The Funk Brothers

For 13 years the R&B session men informally known as The Funk Brothers toiled away in Motown’s Studio A -- "The Snakepit" -- anonymously turning out some of Hitsville USA’s most famous licks, while their more visible brothers and sisters got the glory. Thanks to last year’s documentary Standing in the Shadows of Motown, the surviving Brothers are on a world tour that brings them to Philly for their third official gig.

"We’re having a time of it," says 69-year-old percussionist Jack Ashford, who joined in ’63 at the request of Marvin Gaye. "The songs are old, but people know every line." While The Funk Brothers played on more chart-toppers than The Beatles and Stones combined, none of that mattered when Motown taped a note to the studio door in ’72 announcing it had "Gone Hollywood" (literally), effectively ending one of pop music’s greatest eras.

"It was God who made this [reunion] happen," Ashford says. "Who else could have done it?" Despite nearly 30 years apart, the sizzle was still there when the Bros. got cookin’ again -- no surprise to Ashford. These days the group fronts modern-day popsters like soul aficionado Joan Osborne, whose wailing rendition of "What Becomes of the Brokenhearted" was a film highlight.

Sat., April 12, 8:30 p.m., $46.50, with Joan Osborne, Maxi Priest and Darlene Love, Keswick Theatre, 291 Keswick Ave., Glenside, 215-572-7650.

—Nicole Pensiero