Blame it on the rain.
Donald Trump’s Freedom 250 committee has booked musical acts for next month’s Great American State Fair on the Mall in the Washington DC.
It’s a group of acts ranging from ok to terrible, with Martina McBride, the Commodores and Morris Day and the Time* at the high end, and Vanilla Ice below the low end. (*The group says they are, in fact, not playing at the Festival. See below.)
But even worse than Vanilla Ice is a group that’s actually non existent now, and was back when they existed.
That would be Milli Vanilli, disgraced in the mid 80s for turning out to be lip sync frauds.
The pair, comprising Fab Morvan and Rob Pilatus, were signed to Arista Records out of Germany. They had a contemporary look and did some disco dancing while they sang hits like “Blame it On the Rain,” and “Girl, You Know It’s True.” They were so hot they even won the Grammy Award for Best New Artist. They returned it after the reveal.
The duo was eventually unmasked as frauds. They were lip syncing to music pre-recorded by other singers. The actual vocalists who recorded the songs for Milli Vanilli were Brad Howell, John Davis, and Charles Shaw.
The scandal was enormous. Ultimately, Pilatus died of an accidental overdose ten years later, in 1998. He was only 33.
That was the end of Milli Vanilli. From then on, the name came to mean ‘fraud’. Anytime a singer is caught lip-synching, the nane “Milli Vanilli’ is invoked.
So how they will play on the Mall? And who are they now?
Apparently, Morvan, the living member, is on the road with actual back up singers. They appear in something called I Love The 90’s Tour. I guess Freedom 250 feels they exemplify the best of American music, even though they’re German and they’re fakes.
Other acts on the bill for Great American State Fair include performers far from the public eye including C&C Music Factory, and Flo Rida. The whole thing culminates with Trump’s old friend, Bret Michaels, one time contestant on “The Apprentice,” who would have to pay us to hear him, and even then he’d be rejected.
