Friday, August 1, 2014

JAMES BROWN Escape-ism (Part1)

There's a new movie out about James Brown.  You know him, Soul Brother Number One, the Godfather of Soul, the Hardest Working Man in Show Business.  I've read a couple of reviews of the new movie, and the best quote so far is:

This movie is a little long on the Godfather and a little bit short on the soul.

I paraphrase, but the jist of it is that the movie focuses a little bit too much on James the man, and it neglects the music, which was epic, original, wild, passionate, very popular, and classic in every way. 

Sure, James gets some credit for the music that he created, with the band that he put together and led.  But of all things, amazingly, it's way, WAY too little credit, really.  James was a ground breaker, no, he was a ground shaker, no, he was a planet smasher.  How many musicians could say that they influenced Miles Davis?  A few, but James was up there with any of them.

This was evidently a warm up session, just the boys fooling around with the machines on.  But this three minutes and twenty seconds is worth most people's entire catalogs. 

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