James Brown - Tami Show (does any better performance exist?)

[Len Cnut]

The answer is no..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_jqhXNF98A

[J Dog]

I have got to say, I don't care what genre or type of music you are talking about, that is one of the best entertainers ever. He was a bad man.

[Len Cnut]

'original bloodclot bad bwoy' as a wise man once said He fuckin' was though, weren't he? Really and truly speaking, his moves, his work was the archetype of the frontman. Not to mention his vocal stylings. He's the root to the fruit, he really is. I mean if you really think about it Jagger, Roger Daltrey, Iggy Pop, Jim Morrison, you wouldn't have none of these were it not for James Brown. Mick Jagger is the first established archetype of THE frontman and he got all his shit from James Brown, I mean literally ALL his shit, the guy used to be down at The Apollo taking notes for fuckssake.

And y'know what else? None of em could do it close to as good. Watch that episode of the TAMI show, the whole thing, people think that makes girls scream shit came from The Beatles, listen to the audience react to James then listen to the audience react to The Stones and all the others, it's not even fuckin' comparable, James just blows anybody and everybody off the fuckin' stage.

One thing I clocked from James that to me got to the heart of why there ain't no fuckin' good music out there no more and thats that James was OBSSESSED with fuckin' presentation. How shit was presented to the crowd, he played for the audience, and thats what it's all about. I mean there's something admirable about we're gonna play this whether you like it or not but that doesn't mean you shouldn't be presenting your shit FOR the audience.

Songs were wrote with that in mind, whole performances, the cape, the big lead in like 'AND NOW LADIES AND GENTLEMAN, IT'S STAR TIME, ARE YOU READY FOR STAR TIME? INTRODUCING THE MAN WITH OVER 30 SOUL CLASSICS, AMONG THOSE ARE TUNES THAT WILL NEVER DIE, TUNES LIKE TRY ME....OUTTA SIGHT....PAPAS GOT A BRAND NEW BAG...BECAUSE YOUR SUPER-BAD, INTRODUCING THE WORLDS GREATEST ENTERTAINER, MR DYNAMITE, THE AMAZING MR PLEASE PLEASE HIMSELF, THE HARDEST WORKING MAN IN SHOW BUSINESS, LADIES AND GENTLEMAN THE STAR OF THE SHOW, MR JAMES BROOOOOOWNNN!

You know what I mean? Fuckin' lead in like that and you got my dick hard before even hitting the first note But it's all geared towards the audience, the dance shit, the singing right TO the girls, the getting overcome like some kinda pentecostal preacher and falling to your knees and then the two dudes coming and helping you up by the arms while he has this anguished look like he's fuckin' about to die from the music or something, it's just high theatre, it's dramatic and it's fuckin' perfect, it drives audiences wild.

And this is why we don't have good music no more cuz people don't write with their audience in mind...thats basically what it means when people say y'know, 'will this sell or not?' like will people like it, The Beatles were like that, a lot of the great bands were like that. This idea of like, 'making music for yourself', fuck offffff, you wanna make music for yourself go play it to yourself, you're supposed to entertain people.

Music has gone from this thing where people wanna entertain the audience to some guy wanting to read you his fuckin' diary onstage or something, fuck that. And it's right down to the details like keep your hair tight, make sure your shoes are polished, James Brown had those motherfuckers drilled, he'd be docking pay on em for missing notes, the guy tyranical about that shit but the result was the show was fuckin' tight.

James Brown lit up the Harlem Apollo and he's the reason why it's this seminal venue. Live at the Apollo are the greatest live albums ever fuckin' created (with number 3 being the best to my mind) the guy was absolutely fantastic and quite frankly none of the copyists who came after can really stack up against him.

It struck me the other night how deliberate that shit is, how contrived in the best possible sense, what theatre and what a performance it is. Then i think about the last band i saw, at the Brixton Academy...scruffy lookin' herberts with fuckin' Converse All Stars (GOD, i hate those shoes!) and fuckin' shirts that look like the pulled them out of the bottom of a cupboard and like, they're all lost and purposeless and the amps are feeding back and it's like 'and i fuckin' paid money for this?!?'.

And a bunch of people all looking up at em, the guy next to you pulling a constipated face cuz you jumped up and down a bit and your arm brushed against him or something.

Edited December 24, 2014 by Lennie Godber

[J Dog]

Nice breakdown, 100% correct. He gave his sweat and heart to the audience. Just an awesome performer.

I can't add much to that post but I will say, I love the fact that he was a ladies man. He loved them and they loved him, and a majority of his music was for the ladies. But at the same time, he got respect from the fellas. Because they knew, he was a real dude. Tough guy that wouldn't take anything off anybody. Type of guy that kept a .38 in his boot.

[The Black]

This interview might top that performance

Saw James live back in 2004, nice little party. Took long enough for him to get on stage though.

Edited December 28, 2014 by The Black

[Len Cnut]

Nice breakdown, 100% correct. He gave his sweat and heart to the audience. Just an awesome performer.

I can't add much to that post but I will say, I love the fact that he was a ladies man. He loved them and they loved him, and a majority of his music was for the ladies. But at the same time, he got respect from the fellas. Because they knew, he was a real dude. Tough guy that wouldn't take anything off anybody. Type of guy that kept a .38 in his boot.

When the civil rights movement was all kicking off they tried to get him in on the marches etc and although he was obviously all for the cause he refused to participate because he didn't approve of non-violence and he 'carried two guns everyday'. This guy endorsed Nixon too, which is a bold move being who he is, a lot of the black community turned on him over that shit.

Edited December 28, 2014 by Len B'stard

[dalsh327]

Some idiot threw a bottle on Mr Brown's stage

[Len Cnut]

From a man that used to pull shooters out on people thats quite amusing

[dalsh327]

Roger Daltrey: In the early days, before Pete started to write prolifically, we used to listen out for all obscure American records. Every group in England, after the emergence of the Beatles, groups like us, got into Tamla-Motown. Almost every group played "Heatwave." But we just stuck with it longer than most (laughs)... I cant remember half the names of the people we used to copy. James Brown was one. It was the extension of the Chicago blues. When we first heard James Brown, it was the next step in the ladder and it all made sense. He was doing songs like "Please Please Please." Marvin Gaye, "Baby, Dont You Do It." We used to do a lot of James Brown, Martha and the Vandellas stuff. Doris Troy, we used to do quite a bit of hers. Wilson Pickett. We did some Major Lance songs but I cant remember what they were.

[Len Cnut]

There's a quote from him in one of the big docu's where he's like 'it's amazing how I'm trying to sound like James Brown as well as a bunch of old bluesmen, listening to these white english kids in their late teens trying desperately to sound like old black men from the mississippi delta, quite funny really!'.

[J Dog]

And a bunch of people all looking up at em, the guy next to you pulling a constipated face cuz you jumped up and down a bit and your arm brushed against him or something.

Just wanted to say, this must be across the board. Saw Jack White at the Fillmore earlier this year, small venue, fairly packed in there. I swear there were like 3 people around me that acted just like that. I mean they were staring at me and everything, and I wasn't even going crazy, just a little dancing and hopping here and there. I was just like come on man, it's a rock concert. They ended up moving. It was ridiculous.

Nice breakdown, 100% correct. He gave his sweat and heart to the audience. Just an awesome performer.

I can't add much to that post but I will say, I love the fact that he was a ladies man. He loved them and they loved him, and a majority of his music was for the ladies. But at the same time, he got respect from the fellas. Because they knew, he was a real dude. Tough guy that wouldn't take anything off anybody. Type of guy that kept a .38 in his boot.

When the civil rights movement was all kicking off they tried to get him in on the marches etc and although he was obviously all for the cause he refused to participate because he didn't approve of non-violence and he 'carried two guns everyday'. This guy endorsed Nixon too, which is a bold move being who he is, a lot of the black community turned on him over that shit.

You know what, I doubt he even cared that much. As long as he was entertaining people, and people were still going crazy at the shows, he was probably at peace. Plus he gave them this, so he at least he let them know he cared, he just didn't need to do all that other stuff.

[Len Cnut]

Oh I'm not saying he weren't a man of his people cuz he was, depply so, i just meant he was less of the MLK end and more of the Malcolm X, H Rap Brown, Huey Newton end of it. He more than ticked that box definitely, and also, to show it ain't all about this way and that way, he performed at the end of one of those big 60s marches, as kind of a gift to the marchers. And then that Boston concert, ever see that before, a fuckin' stage invasion where the star basically tells the would be rioter (too big a word for what they were maybe but possibly not) to get off the stage, sit down, shut the fuck up and not embarass your people with uncouth behaviour...and the funny shit is they actually listened That my friend, is sheer fuckin' class.

I love that famous story where they're discussing the next days rally, MLK and them, combing over the final details etc while James Browns getting ready to blow and MLK is like 'you can all sit here and argue if you want to, I'm goin' to see James Brown' That cracks me up. This guy, on the precipice of history and he's like 'not before i see this fuckin' show, i'm not'

He was also part of the Ali and George Foreman fight in Zaire in the sense of like, that shit was like the breaking down of a barrier for black America, these entertainers that went across the ocean to break bread with their African brothers and put on a show and represent for Black America, BB King, The Spinners, James Brown etc all went down there with Ali and...y'know, you gotta have some kinda feel for your creed to do that kinda shit.

There's a lot more than that too man, like most of these kinda black power types, when they're getting on that musical end they just make kinda that broad sloganeering thing and then veer off into whatever they're known for but James Brown made whole albums that were like a community manual, he set up James Brown foodstamps, he set up restaurant chains for his people, he fuckin' bought 3 radio station to kinda expand on and create and bring together a real community and give it a voice and kinda like a beacon to gather around.

But yeah, referring back to that community manual aspect, it's like that album James Brown Sings Raw Soul and you get shit like:

And like, more importantly, this guy was a millionaire by the early 60s. Yeah, a millionaire. A black American millionaire in the early 60s, i mean FUCK me. Not that there weren't before but they came about as a result of like...some obviously lucrative enterprise whereupon there was sort of a prescedent for black success, like Ali as a boxer or, i dunno, I'm not an American and i don't particularly care for baseball but Jackie Robinson, boxing most of all had kind of a history of it but you didn't become a black millionaire based on two hit singles, which is all James Brown was about in the early 60s, Please Please and Try Me and thats it...the rest of it he did by sheer fuckin' graft, just one the road all the time, everyday of the fuckin' year minus like 5 days around Christmas, the man LIVED to work and just didn't do or know anything else. I mean at times we're talking about 6 shows a day at places like The Apollo, with 90 mins a show, thats basically working an entire 12 hours of a day....and people wonder how Maceo and Melvin and Fred Wesley and them were SO fuckin' tight.

And like, thats just the Apollo, which was kinda like where you showed off the results of all your hard road work, your honed act, the rest of the year it was just playing in some shithouse in God knows where, where often you get a double barrel shotgun in your face in place of your days dues.

My point in rattling all that shit off was that if ever there was an example of like, a black man showing and proving by way of example back in them days that there IS a way...then James Brown was an example in theory as well as in action, on lots of different levels but none more convincing that kinda...self actualisation of like...i mean fuck me man, have you ever heard, even in this day and age, nevermind back then, of someone becoming a millionaire purely off of roadwork? (two singles, big wow, that don't heat your swimming pool), it's just phenomenal and it's all about the power of him and his act and his unwaivering dedication to what he did. Relentless is not the word. First of all there was like...years and years between Please Please Please and then his second hit single, most everyone else would've packed up their fuckin' tents and moved on. And this is back in this 60s, when a million really was a million, it was something, y'know? From a kid that used to dance in the street for soldiers for nickels and dime (literally too), to that, just purely off the sweat of your brow? Thats fantastic.

And like, last thing now before i keep writing this shit into the next fuckin' day, Live at the Apollo, no one wanted to release that shit The greatest live album ever recorded and the fuckin' record company guys weren't on it, 'where's the single, people won't come to see your show in you put it out on record cuz they'll have it at home'...album goes number 2 in the charts, a fuckin' race record for fuckssake, number 2 in the album charts. That album was so fuckin' big, so MASSIVE it even charted in England and y'know what, i don't have the stats but I'll put money on the fact that there probably ain't but a handful of others who done that shit too, maybe 5 i bet? Then listen to your Beatles, your Who, your Stones and tell me you don't hear Live at the Apollo all over their shits?

Alls I'm saying is James Brown would've fired Keith Moon I find it amazing that the archetype of your rock n roll frontman, the traditional shit I'm talking about, Jagger, Daltrey, Jim Morrison, Iggy etc etc can all be traced pretty squarely back to black men...and there ain't none of rock n roll. And, to my money, the black guys were the better performers. Now don't get me wrong, I ain't trying to make a race case over here cuz everybodys seen that movie but i mean even like later into the late 70s, the 80s, the 90s, one kinda never....came up.

Roger Daltrey: In the early days, before Pete started to write prolifically, we used to listen out for all obscure American records. Every group in England, after the emergence of the Beatles, groups like us, got into Tamla-Motown. Almost every group played "Heatwave." But we just stuck with it longer than most (laughs)... I cant remember half the names of the people we used to copy. James Brown was one. It was the extension of the Chicago blues. When we first heard James Brown, it was the next step in the ladder and it all made sense. He was doing songs like "Please Please Please." Marvin Gaye, "Baby, Dont You Do It." We used to do a lot of James Brown, Martha and the Vandellas stuff. Doris Troy, we used to do quite a bit of hers. Wilson Pickett. We did some Major Lance songs but I cant remember what they were.

That thing, that saying of theirs, that slogan upon which their shit was forged, maximum RnB...thats basically what that shit means, the real thing, the James Browns, WIlson Picketts etc of the world. Thats what they meant when they said that shit, thats what they set out to be

Edited December 29, 2014 by Len B'stard

[dalsh327]

This is fascinating and sad to look at.

http://www.christies.com/lotfinder/salebrowse.aspx?intsaleid=22007&viewType=list&action=paging&pg=1

[J Dog]

And like, more importantly, this guy was a millionaire by the early 60s. Yeah, a millionaire. A black American millionaire in the early 60s, i mean FUCK me. Not that there weren't before but they came about as a result of like...some obviously lucrative enterprise whereupon there was sort of a prescedent for black success, like Ali as a boxer or, i dunno, I'm not an American and i don't particularly care for baseball but Jackie Robinson, boxing most of all had kind of a history of it but you didn't become a black millionaire based on two hit singles, which is all James Brown was about in the early 60s, Please Please and Try Me and thats it...the rest of it he did by sheer fuckin' graft, just one the road all the time, everyday of the fuckin' year minus like 5 days around Christmas, the man LIVED to work and just didn't do or know anything else. I mean at times we're talking about 6 shows a day at places like The Apollo, with 90 mins a show, thats basically working an entire 12 hours of a day....and people wonder how Maceo and Melvin and Fred Wesley and them were SO fuckin' tight.

Damn homie, it will take me like 3 days to break down that whole post But I'll start here.

To your point about him being a millionaire and how unprescidented it was. I've been through the town where he was born a few times. Just a small, hole in the wall, low class/middle class type of town. Nothing special, blink and you miss it. I bet the population can't be more than like 5,000 people. One of those places where you don't make it out. Now I know he relocated to a bigger city early on in life, but still, not only did he make it out, he became the fucking Godfather of Soul. It really blows my mind sometimes to look at the drive and ambition people like him had. It would have been very easy for him to just fall in line with the rest, go with the flow, live a boring nice little life and die there. But you can tell, that shit he had in him, it had to come out. Got to have respect for self made men like that. And the fact that he had the best moves since Elvis didn't hurt either.

[Len Cnut]

Those shows, his chitlin circuit work in the early 60s yielded a million a year. Thats fuckin' phenomenal. And you'd understand that better than me, all i know about Augusta Georgia is what a map and books tell me. A fuckin' shoe-shine boy, a kid whoose Mum and Dad both left him to live in a whorehouse with his Aunt, a guy that hustled soldiers and found hoes for them.

I remember hearing somewhere James saying how he used to see all the good church-going ladies selling themselves on the sly while their old man was out, to make a little extra money, living this double life and it was this real window for him, at a really early age, to the way human beings work.

Moves-wise i think he moved Elvis under the table, with the greatest respect to Elvis and his moves, the moves themselves weren't exactly like, hard to do it's just the sexy motherfucker doin' em and the way he did it that made the cash registers ring, which I guess is what it's all about but James was doing mental shit.

Edited December 30, 2014 by Len B'stard

[dalsh327]

James had a great manager who helped him develop a business acumen, but everything he did comes from working hard and knowing he wasn't a "great" singer like Sam Cooke or Elvis or had matinee idol looks, so he made up for it in a lot of other ways. We know Little Richard had a pretty big influence on him.

If it meant doing this, so be it.

I always felt like this was a mutual admiration, James knew Sammy as a child star, tap dancer, drummer, musician and broke the barriers, made a lot of money, wore bling, and were also supporting the same politicians like Nixon and Reagan (they both got labeled sellouts and Uncle Toms).

There might be country code copyright BS so hopefully you can watch it, but Nelson George put out a documentary about funk music called "Finding the Funk". It's no Ken Burns miniseries, but it's pretty good.

http://www.vh1.com/shows/vh1_rock_docs/finding-the-funk-full-episode/1721346/playlist/#id=1721346

[Strange Broue]

I just throw this for ya Lenny!

Charles Bradley is the reincarnation of James Brown, imo

Check out 'How long' from him

But first, check out this Sabbath cover, amazing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOd_naCOcK0

[Len Cnut]

I shall have to have a listen fella, thank you