James Brown

[naughty boy]

oh yeah

[jimboo]

The sound of someone choking out of time to a bar mitzvah for hire funk tribute act , constantly pray that someone will perform the Heimlich manoeuvre ending the misery , unlistenable.

[Quaco]

Sure, he's good.

[naughty boy]

Like the bricks you use to build your house - essential but hardly worth talking about.

Or so it seems

[naughty boy]

Yep.

Not prog enough.

[Matt Wilson]

Maybe if he played a flute...

[Quaco]

Why don't YOU guys talk about him then!

[Muskrat]

I personally prefer the pre-funk years, but I'm surprised there's a question.

[Rayge]

He was a great soul singer who traded his talent in for funk gold. His stage act (nb not the music but all the fucking acting - almost as embarrassing as Jim Morrison) was shit, and his conk and pomp hairdo was ridiculous.
He made the odd interesting record after he sold out - King Heroin for instance - but if you're not a fan of strict tempo dance, there's nothing to him but what jimboo said above. And if he's going to set himself up as a spokesperson for his people, lay off the PCP, coke and wife-beating, yeah?
I've written all this before, many dozens of time on here and elsewhere, and I bet anyone reading this has glazed over if they got as far as this paragraph, and that's why he's not got many of us writing about him. All we've got is our entrenched positions. Nothing's going to change.

[clive gash]

I can’t agree with you about the pompadour, magnificent do.

[Rayge]

I can’t agree with you about the pompadour, magnificent do.

it looked great on Little Richard (and especially Esquerita, see below) in the ’50s, but by the mid-’60s it got to have political implications, which is why he switched to an Afro, eventually. I know more about African-American hairdressing than I really want to, because it was such a big deal culturally when I was working on my doctoral thesis (the one I abandoned) about African-American literature

[naughty boy]

oh STOP IT

[Rayge]

oh STOP IT

Posting in general, talking about hairdos, posting pics of Esquerita, mentioning my doctoral thesis, doing all this in a thread about James Brown, or having and sharing opinions about canonistas that don't conform ?
I'm glad to comply with all but the first and last, although I am willing to discuss those if considerable sums of hush puppies money are involved.

[Goat Boy]

Supporting Copehead was bad enough but this is BCB unforgivable.

[naughty boy]

It really is.

JB is one of a very small number of artists whose achievements in music border on superhuman. I'm in awe of what he did. It's ridiculous.

Phenomenal bands, too, of course. But what a voice! what vision! what presence!

[Goat Boy]

We've talked about this stuff before but just watch the first 8 minutes of this at least and make sure you turn it up loud.



It's truly phenomenal. Such power! He's like a funk shaman! There's something so primal about the music yet sophisticated too. It's so far beyond most artists it's not even funny.

But hey....

The sound of someone choking out of time to a bar mitzvah for hire funk tribute act , constantly pray that someone will perform the Heimlich manoeuvre ending the misery , unlistenable.

Which is kinda funny but also so hopelessly off beam

[Rayge]

Supporting Copehead was bad enough but this is BCB unforgivable.

It really is.
JB is one of a very small number of artists whose achievements in music border on superhuman. I'm in awe of what he did. It's ridiculous.
Phenomenal bands, too, of course. But what a voice! what vision! what presence!

Meh. I speak as I find as far as Copehead goes, but as to the rest, I'm hoping that neither of you were knitted-brow serious, but I'll explain myself one more weary time (regular readers can look away now).

Here, now, I don't really give a shit about James Brown or his music either way, but I used to, both ways. I was fairly passionate about him and it in the ’60s, owned a lot of it on record, had opinions about it and him that changed over the decade. Now I'm someone for whom music is no longer anything like as important as it was, but as you, John, have pointed out on several occasions, that can get old pretty quickly in a music-based forum.

But I do love to fill my days - at least, the gaps between bongs and dog walks - with creative things such as photos, cooking, gardening and especially writing. That was my first love, it was my job, I got good at it and, as a firm believer in the apothegm 'Use it or lose it,' I like to write stuff every day, just for the sake of it, and a forum such as this is a great place to indulge that. I'm sure you're both with me on this; you, John, are always pleaing for new things to read or listen to, trying to stimulate talk on music, heating things up, while you, Dougie, are one of the very finest writers on here when you're talking about things you love (and you happen to love I'll Never Need More than This, which cancels out legions of minor misdemeanours against taste in my eyes ).

So, given the basically disinterested and unimpassioned nature of my current life in music, when artists from my youthful less old years (up to about 1985 or so), when I cared, are concerned, I can write more entertainingly and amusingly (even if it is only I and one or two others who are entertained and amused) if I riff on my memories of how I felt back then. But I've already done this schtick several times re James Brown (who made indubitably made some great records and some rather unpleasant ones, although we may disagree which ones fit in which category, and was both a mesmerising presence and a right old ham on stage) on this Forum, as Machucki, for one, will eye-rollingly testify: which was the point of my original post on this thread.

It was only gash encouraging me by praising haircuts that made me elaborate – Now look what he made me do...

Ray
XX

[George P. Smackers]

It really is.

JB is one of a very small number of artists whose achievements in music border on superhuman. I'm in awe of what he did. It's ridiculous.

Phenomenal bands, too, of course. But what a voice! what vision! what presence!

Agree and I'd have to go down a long and lonely road of if/then arguments with myself and aborted dissertations about African American hair to think otherwise.

[naughty boy]

Supporting Copehead was bad enough but this is BCB unforgivable.

It really is.
JB is one of a very small number of artists whose achievements in music border on superhuman. I'm in awe of what he did. It's ridiculous.
Phenomenal bands, too, of course. But what a voice! what vision! what presence!

Meh. I speak as I find as far as Copehead goes, but as to the rest, I'm hoping that neither of you were knitted-brow serious, but I'll explain myself one more weary time (regular readers can look away now).

Here, now, I don't really give a shit about James Brown or his music either way, but I used to, both ways. I was fairly passionate about him and it in the ’60s, owned a lot of it on record, had opinions about it and him that changed over the decade. Now I'm someone for whom music is no longer anything like as important as it was, but as you, John, have pointed out on several occasions, that can get old pretty quickly in a music-based forum.

But I do love to fill my days - at least, the gaps between bongs and dog walks - with creative things such as photos, cooking, gardening and especially writing. That was my first love, it was my job, I got good at it and, as a firm believer in the apothegm 'Use it or lose it,' I like to write stuff every day, just for the sake of it, and a forum such as this is a great place to indulge that. I'm sure you're both with me on this; you, John, are always pleaing for new things to read or listen to, trying to stimulate talk on music, heating things up, while you, Dougie, are one of the very finest writers on here when you're talking about things you love (and you happen to love I'll Never Need More than This, which cancels out legions of minor misdemeanours against taste in my eyes ).

So, given the basically disinterested and unimpassioned nature of my current life in music, when artists from my youthful less old years (up to about 1985 or so), when I cared, are concerned, I can write more entertainingly and amusingly (even if it is only I and one or two others who are entertained and amused) if I riff on my memories of how I felt back then. But I've already done this schtick several times re James Brown (who made indubitably made some great records and some rather unpleasant ones, although we may disagree which ones fit in which category, and was both a mesmerising presence and a right old ham on stage) on this Forum, as Machucki, for one, will eye-rollingly testify: which was the point of my original post on this thread.

It was only gash encouraging me by praising haircuts that made me elaborate – Now look what he made me do...

Ray
XX

You're a gem, Ray x

[fange]

Well, i'm never gonna change your mind Ray, but i've still gotta put in my 2 cents to say how great i think a lot of Brown's post-'66 music was.

If "The Funk" is not your thing, that's fine, but the power and singularity of some of his music during this period mustn't be forgotten.





Nobody sounded like him and his bands, no matter how much they tried, and a lot of it was down to the guys he had in his groups - Pee Wee Ellis, Maceo Parker, Jimmy Nolen, Bobby Byrd, Johnny Grimes, Fred Wesley, Clyde Stubblefield, Bernard Purdie, Bootsy Collins etc, it's like a who's fucking who of some of the best players of the period. And him producing and directing it.

It's not all about the songwriting in the traditional sense here, it's more about that special sound that he and his groups pretty much nailed on some of the hottest singles made in the late-60s and into the '70s. That's where the magic is.