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fungchewuchi said:
since so many liked this, let me point out some of the better parts you might have missed; it's a long video and some of the better parts are in the back half. james brown puts on a SHOW and not just a concert, and if you're just putting it on to listen to in the background, you're missing some visual treats:

39:40 - making a point to show he's NOT looking at the 2 dancers when he suddenly syncs up with them as if to say "y'all think we DIDN'T plan this out?", followed by a couple group locks a bit later.

42:48 - maybe the funkiest 40 seconds i've ever seen, and my fav instance of a frequent dance move of his, even though the darn cameraman doesn't show his feet.

47:43 - at this point he's taught the audience what he wants them to sing, then taken some time to ask different parts of the band if they're ready, when he gets to asking the dancers... starting a short comedy routine about how over-excited one dancer is. the one dancer plays the straight man trying to reign him in, but whether he tries to hold his upper or lower half, the other half is still going wild.

the cape routine is of course in this, but it's a shorter version.

1:19:05 - i don't know how new strobe lights are in 1968, but it's clearly not the electric kind yet and is done with something that physically spins in front of the spotlight, and seeing james dance in strobe was likely pretty mindblowing at the time. b&w camera and cameraman weren't fully up to the task but still pretty cool. done with restraint only once as an end show kicker.

the comments all say the band was super-tight this night, but i know less about how difficult the instrumentalism was. this WAS at the height of his power to demand perfection of his band (through frequent fines for being less than perfect) and that old big-band kind of perfectionism. shortly after, he'd fire his band and hire a bunch of teenagers that could play his songs, who he couldn't control half as well, and later left him to largely become parliament funkadelic.
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Loved his music. Unfortunately, I have no respect for him though. He wasn't a very smart fellow but was surrounded by people that were.


 
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Twobuttons said:
Loved his music. Unfortunately, I have no respect for him though. He wasn't a very smart fellow but was surrounded by people that were.
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there's all kinds of different smarts out there, and most of us aren't the leonardo davinci "renaissance man" that can do it all. dancers will tell you his dance repertoire was limited, but what he did he did well. he could be a horrible human being to his employees, and of course his position on drugs became very hypocritical. mike judge's "tales from the tour bus" episodes on him were probably the best non-rosy-glasses take on him i've seen. still, he was absolutely foundational for a lot of later music, and it can't be understated how important he was to black people who desperately needed sources of pride and identity during a tumultuous time. school textbooks should mention how he put on a free tv concert after mlk was assassinated to try to keep people home instead of rioting in the streets.
 
fungchewuchi said:
there's all kinds of different smarts out there, and most of us aren't the leonardo davinci "renaissance man" that can do it all. dancers will tell you his dance repertoire was limited, but what he did he did well. he could be a horrible human being to his employees, and of course his position on drugs became very hypocritical. mike judge's "tales from the tour bus" episodes on him were probably the best non-rosy-glasses take on him i've seen. still, he was absolutely foundational for a lot of later music, and it can't be understated how important he was to black people who desperately needed sources of pride and identity during a tumultuous time. school textbooks should mention how he put on a free tv concert after mlk was assassinated to try to keep people home instead of rioting in the streets.
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Drugs? - Fine
Asshole? - Fine
Beating multiple wives - Not fine. Not smart. I can't respect that. Lotta great ground breaking musicians were all of the above but this.


Here's one...



Let's not forget, James Brown was inspired by Little Richard, Elvis Presley, and Ray Charles. Plenty of people before him that were ground breaking.
 
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Twobuttons said:
Drugs? - Fine
Asshole? - Fine
Beating multiple wives - Not fine. Not smart. I can't respect that. Lotta great ground breaking musicians were all of the above but this.

Let's not forget, James Brown was inspired by Little Richard, Elvis Presley, and Ray Charles. Plenty of people before him that were ground breaking.
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drugs less because he faltered, more because he faltered AFTER setting himself out as an anti-drug role model. some of what he's said about heroin is some of the most eloquently i've ever heard said. now one has to put an asterix on anything you quote about him on the subject, as it's like the opposite of the arguing from authority fallacy. as far as i'm concerned it just goes to show how avoiding addiction isn't purely a matter of logic and willpower; people who know WELL better will still fall into it.

if you rank beating wives worse than being an asshole to his bandmates, i think you underestimate just how low-down-dirty-rotten he'd been to them. again, mike judge's episodes on him cover this well. there's some overlap on these two subjects anyway.

little richard, chuck berry, elvis and the rockabilly /early rocknroll sound descends pretty closely from a certain kind of gospel music that had evolved... they copy pretty closely what sister rosetta tharpe was doing. i posted a vid of hers earlier but this is a longer good bio on her


james like everybody pulls from people before him, but few sit at the fulcrum points of transition quite like he does. many strong pulls from the big band era at first, the "hit it on beat one" sound that he didn't quite invent, but completely brought to prominence, on to doing disco and enabling a lot of rap. who else can stand alongside cab callaway, glen miller, AND snoop dog, run dmc, as a titan in both worlds?
 
Man I’ve been so obsessed with this video on YouTube recently of Reggie watts, Erika Badu and marc ribillet
One of purest most feel good jam sessions I’ve seen on YouTube since watching ginger bakers airforce live performances or something it’s incredible and super trippy
 
more of that west side sound
magic sam died of a heart attack a couple months after this.
 
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