Trump’s cheesy idea of class comes out in myriad ways – gold-colored plastic trim in the Oval Office, a triumph-free triumphal arch – but nothing drives it home like his plans to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
The tackiness of holding UFC bouts on the White House lawn isn’t even the worst part. That distinction goes to the musical lineup for what’s billed as the Great American State Fair, a series of concerts on the National Mall: It’s a collection of has-beens the Delaware State Fair would be too embarrassed to stage.
Country singer Martina McBride, who hasn’t released a non-holiday album in a decade, is the most recognizable name. Most of the other headliners had their heyday around 1990 – Vanilla Ice, Poison frontman Bret Michaels, Young MC, the C+C Music Factory and … Milli Vanilli.
Yes, Milli Vanilli, the act famous for lip-syncing to voices not their own, exists again. Not the original duo of Rob and Fab – Rob Pilatus died of a drug overdose in 1998 – but Fabrice Morvan, who owns rights to the name, tours with several of the very acts the Trumpsters have hired on what’s now the oldies circuit.
If you weren’t around back then you can’t appreciate what a big deal was made over Rob and Fab faking their vocals while dancing vigorously to choreographed routines. Most performers who do a lot of dancing use pre-recorded vocals – they’d need superhuman lungs to both sing and dance as if in a music video. The problem for Frank Farian, the producer who put the act together, was that the hot-looking guys doing the dancing weren’t the ones doing the singing.
Milli Vanilli was a sensation in 1989. Their “Girl You Know It’s True” LP spent eight weeks atop the Billboard album chart and spawned five Top 10 singles. The title track, which reached No. 2, was the first; the album released as “All or Nothing” in Europe was retitled to reflect it. They won the Grammy Award for Best New Artist, then had it revoked when the ruse was exposed.
Though few realized it at the time, Milli Vanilli’s biggest hit was a cover. Two years earlier, “Girl You Know It’s True” was written and recorded by a Maryland hip-hop group, Numarx, who rapped over a groove by a local guitarist. It was a modest hit in the Baltimore-Washington area, but caught on in dance clubs in Germany, where club denizen Farian undoubtedly heard it. It also launched the industry careers of several members of Numarx.
